Spring Hill Farms

I'm always so frustrated when I read about other farmers coming under such attack from our elected officials and government workers.

As small farmers and local food supporters we have to stick together and the Farm-to-Cunsumer Legal Defense Fund is one of the best ways to do that.

Read the full story here.

The cost of food continues to rise. If you didn't realize it, you either don't do the grocery shopping, or you haven't ask the person who does!

You can do a search on the 'net and find all kinds of numbers indicating how much food products have gone up and what others believe they will do in the future.

  The viewpoint I liked was from Lynn Carpenter she believes "We have been enjoying a 60-year trend of low food prices that is crashing to an abrupt end this very year."

Lynn says (and I agree) the government numbers released, and what I see at the grocery store never seem to match up. She recommends figuring out how many hours you must work each week to pay for food.

She did some serious research and came up with some very interesting numbers! You can read it all here.

But all that aside if you go to the store a few times you get an idea of what it costs to eat and you suddenly feel a bit of gnawing worry. Now the mistake you might make is to leave the grocery store, get the groceries put away, and dismiss the gnawing worry telling yourself "it'll all work out somehow."

Don't fall into that mindset!

Nothing just "works itself out" and if it does, it is seldom in your favor.

Planting a garden is a proactive way to cut your food bill and improve your overall health.

Feeling overwhelmed when you think of  gardening?

Start Small

One of the best ways to get started growing your own food is to start small. Plant a few tomato plants and some bell peppers along the house.  Make a garden four feet by eight feet. Make raised beds etc.

I love High Density Gardening by Ric Wiley. Gardening is work no matter how you cut it but you can reduce the workload and space needed by using Ric's methods.

He covers everything from A to Z in this ebook.

• How to plan your High Density Garden in order that you can maximize the quantity of crops you can grow
• How to build a High Density Gardening bed
• How to propagate seeds
• Home made compost. How to make it quickly.
• Much more

I'm a lover of ebooks because you can be reading them five minutes after you decide to purchase them! Which might be why I spend so much at Amazon on my Kindle.

Take a look at High Density Gardening and download a copy and get started planning now. It takes some planning, money and effort to harvest a successful garden.

But it is worth it!

Imagine your very own lush, green, vibrant garden this spring. Can't you taste the garden fresh tomato's, beans, onions, peppers, cucumbers, water melons, peas, carrots, cauliflower, broccoli, sweet corn, cabbage, you get the point……

until next time!

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I recently read an article in the Columbus Dispatch about the manure problem in Ohio.

The article starts out "Under the best conditions, raising livestock is a dirty, smelly business."

The truth is under the right conditions, raising livestock is not dirty or smelly.


Until last year I let my hogs spread their own manure 24 hrs a day throughout the pastures. Then I decided I needed to keep some for specific applications. So I have been bringing hogs into the barn for winter to collect the manure.

As long as the carbon ratio is right there is no smell or mess. In my case, wheat or oat straw. Lots of it.

By keeping a good bed of straw in the barn I tie up the manure right along with the smell and mess.  Anytime you're smelling manure you know right away your carbon is low.

If you don't tie it up with a carbonaceous material you are losing valuable nutrients that you can use on your soil to fertilize it.

The nutrients either evaporate, which you smell, or leach away which wastes the nutrients by fertilizing the lawn around the barn. Or worse yet, running of into a waterway somewhere and polluting the water.

The whole idea of a huge amount of animals in one place (for long periods of time) is so unnatural it's no wonder big Ag had to come up with all these nifty, yet environmentally unfriendly ways, to store it or get rid of it. 

Big Agriculture spreads manure that is usually 100 percent raw manure. Nothing added like straw or sawdust. Heck just put those critters on concrete or slatted floors and let the pure manure pile up and then we can overload the soil with it.

Bad idea all the way around in my opinion.

If you read any old books they tout the benefits of manure as a fertilizer. But that manure was loaded with straw or other material which added to the organic material in the soil.

The combination of the manure with the organic material in my opinion is far superior to just raw manure you get from a factory farm.

As sustainable farmers we have to make sure we are doing things right. No manure running off into waterways or overloading the soil.

The American public is getting tired of factory type farms ruining the environment with all these unsustainable ways. I don't blame them I'm tired of it too.

The best way to send the message is to stop giving the factory farms your money. Give to a farmer who is acting responsibly towards the environment and the animals or crops they raise.

At Spring Hill Farms we think that's the right thing to do...

Until next time! 

 

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The USDA recently announced they are going to lose 150 Million dollars in a budget cut. Listen to what Tom Vilisack mentions in his announcement. 

I'm always amazed at the waste found when somebody actually looks for it. He mentions office buildings and equipment that are vacant, 700 hundred different cell phone contracts, 70 crop reporting days cut back.

The things we find necessary when the money is flowing!

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