North Star Homestead Farms, LLC

Some folks think that farming is for the asocial, with lots of time alone on the tractor.  It’s a job for folks who like animals better than people or who just want to grow things and not deal with marketing.  But for the small-scale, farm-to-table producer, getting to know the people who intersect your path is an integral part of the process.

It only takes a generation or two to change cultural understanding.  100 years ago, most people were connected with the land in one way or another, whether through agriculture or trade.  Today, agriculture is constantly seeking to teach kids “where food comes from,” lamenting the social disconnect between milk in the grocery store and cows in the pasture, chicken tenders and the feathered bird.

You can pour all the money you want into promotional campaigning or school programming, colorful little pamphlets or TV time, but nothing is the same as actually spending time on a farm with a food producer.  Skip the rhetoric and illustrations and just get to know your farmers.  They have a story of struggle and joy to share, experiences that rebuild our connections with the land.

Building these connections is part of the work every day at Farmstead Creamery.  “Where is the farm from here?”  “What do you ladies raise?” and “How long have you been farming?” are common starter questions folks have about our farm.  Conversations that start with any of these simple questions sometimes stay there and other times delve into the throws of honeybee biology and the plight of CCD (Colony Collapse Disorder) or how Belle the guard donkey protects the sheep in the field.

Each encounter chips away at feeling that food-production has become the other, run by machines and migrant labor.  While this is certainly the case in many places, it’s not the story everywhere.  Sustainably-minded small farms push back against agribusiness’ alienation of food-growing practices.  Here, we still stick seeds in the ground by hand and feed the chickens with a pail of grains you can recognize.  It’s a breath of fresh air, a refuge for folks who see the lack of ethics and care for the individual in the mainstream food system.

The draw to reconnect and learn from growers on the frontline of the sustainable food systems initiative is also why we’ve had students from across the country seek to spend time on the farm.  Earlier this month, Natalie, a Waldorf high school student from Sacramento, California, came for a five-day intensive internship as part of her senior curriculum.  Her brother Elliot had taken our “Sustainable Foodie” class through Northland College and recommended us as a neat experience.

It was early on a sunny Monday morning when Natalie arrived.  As always, we start with a hug and “Have you eaten?”

“Well, I had some fruit and yogurt this morning.”

“Oh no, that won’t get you through chores!” and off we go to make our signature multi-grain pancakes with sausages and strong tea. 

Appropriately fortified, we jump into the day with the final milking of the sheep for the season; checking the survivor beehive and preparing it for moving into the aquaponics greenhouse; harvesting the tomatoes, broccoli, and cucumbers; pulling out the hay wagon before the impending rain and harvesting all the winter squash (including tromping through old pig pens to discover the interesting hybrids they’d planted); moving all the chicken and duck paddocks, with feeding and watering; and finally making chocolate milk and a yummy dinner of pork chops with one of the squashes and some of the broccoli we’d harvested that day.

By 9:30 pm, Natalie was wiped—but that was just 9:30 for us, with more to do!  But she needed time to write in her journal.

“So, my teacher told me not to write about what I did.  I’m supposed to be writing about personal growth.  But I’m going to start with a list of what I did anyway so I don’t forget!  This was an awesome day, and talk about totally amazing food.”

Throughout her time on the farm, Natalie helped make gelato, bake bread, make soup, process sheep’s milk soaps for sale, do chores, make meals, buss tables, work in the aquaponics, help with a Jewish harvest dinner we were hosting, and even run wildly in the snow.  Every day brought in some things that were the same and many that were different, which is part of what keeps all of us going in the cyclical journey of agrarian life.

Now back in Sacramento, Natalie will be presenting her internship (along with the rest of the senior class) to the entire school.  We both took pictures from the adventure, and I recently uploaded mine to Facebook for easy access for Natalie, though you’re welcome to logon and see them too—snapshots of a brief but intensive stay on our diversified homestead farm.  Perhaps someday she’ll be back for a summer internship, building on the connections begun this fall.

But you don’t have to live on the farm to be actively connected.  Some folks connect through farm tours, through volunteering, or through engaged conversation.  By reading this story, you’re engaging with our farm as well, even if you’ve never stepped onto the property.  As much as we may not like to think about it, ignorance is what protects the sins of the mainstream food system.  Building connections with responsible small farmers breaks apart that barrier and empowers all of us to make informed food decisions throughout our lives wherever we go.

Who knows where Natalie will take her new experience or how it will impact her life and the people around her.  So, far from being a place for the asocial, commonplace encounters on our farm are meaningful moments for building connections with the land, stewardship, and the story of those who live it every day.

Laura Berlage is a co-owner of North Star Homestead Farms, LLC and Farmstead Creamery & Café. 715-462-3453 www.northstarhomestead.com

September’s storm was a poignant illustration that no one is safe when it comes to severe weather.  Anything can happen at any time, and a placid cabin on the lake can instantly be transformed to a war zone.  Homes are damaged, the residents terrified, and the landscape changed for generations.

Unfortunately, this same scenario is true for the big issues facing agrarians right now as well.  Just as cabins in the Northwoods seem safe from earthquakes and hurricanes, so did our farm nestled within the borders of the Chequamegon National Forest seem sheltered from the tumults of big ag pressures that are destroying small farms across the nation.

But that isn’t true, and these last couple of weeks have been especially illustrative of that point.

Some of the creatures we tend on our farm are honeybees.  Since 2003, these eager little furry insects have been the pollination task force at the farm, as well as providing delicious honey from local nectars.  When still in undergraduate studies, I remember once checking the hive in September before heading off to a week-long residency in Vermont. The hives were vigorous, full of busy bees, and the honey flow was strong.

But when I returned, the hives were ominously quiet.  No winged bodies hurrying in and out of the entrance…nothing.  Inside, brood (baby bees) had been abandoned, the honey left to raiders (wasps and hornets), and no one was at home.  These are the classic symptoms of CCD (Colony Collapse Disorder), which had been a plague to beekeepers across the country and led to the nation’s honeybee population’s decline by at least 60%.  While the cause of CCD is still under scrutiny, the chemical industry has come under heavy fire with regards to insecticides that kill bees.

I hadn’t sprayed anything, so what had happened?  Then, years later but only a month ago, we were hit by two raging storms.  The first is the one folks still talk about when stopping in at Farmstead—the hail, the rain, the winds, the trees down everywhere.  I knew better than to check my bees after a hail storm because in their fury; they often blindly sting their beekeeper, sending some to the hospital.

But then there came the second storm, one day short of a week later, with strong north winds that tore up the Lake Superior shore, sent more trees toppling, and pelted rain sideways across the pasture.  It was after this storm that we noticed there weren’t any more honeybees searching the battered beans and zucchinis in the garden.  For that matter, there weren’t any bumble bees or butterflies either.  What had happened?

Mom and I were cleaning up from butchering chickens the Monday afterwards when she happened to pass by the hives.  “Laura, come quick!  This doesn’t look good!”  There were the three vibrant hives, still standing, but the entrances were crammed full of dead bees.

I suited up quick and began the desperate process of looking for survivors, trying to decipher what had happened.  First one hive, then the next were simply dead at the bottom of the hive, like finding a colony in the spring froze out from the cold.  But we hadn’t had the type of cold that should kill a strong colony of honeybees by any means.  Again, brood lay dead and abandoned in the frames, but the rest were simply dead.  One small handful of bees with one queen survived in the largest of the hives, barely enough to even count.

I asked my 90-year-old beekeeping mentor that Saturday at farmer’s market about the incident, still shaken and feeling that I had somehow been neglectful or that there must have been something I could have done to save them.  “It’s almost like someone came and sprayed them with pesticide,” I explained.

Mr. Rowe shook his head with the knowing that comes with age.  “You know, with all the silly things that people do these days, it wouldn’t surprise me at all.  With that strong wind you had, anything could have blown in.”

It’s called drift, and increasingly it’s becoming a huge problem in agriculture for the folks who don’t use chemical practices.  Drift from broadleaf herbicides is killing milkweed even in protected areas, destroying butterfly habitat.  Chemical drift is disqualifing certified organic farmers who live too close to conventional growers.  And every year, fieldworkers’ health is destroyed by exposure to chemical drift.  My bees were just another victim of big ag’s dependence on chemicals to soothe its self-inflicted ailments.

But the second part of the story was, at the same market, learning from another vendor who raises hogs in the Mason area that a CAFO (Confinement Animal Feeding Operation) is talking of opening a 6000 sow/piglet farrowing unit near the corner of HWY 63 and 2.  Right here, in the middle of the pristine Northwoods, where farms are small and concerned about the land, the animals, and the community, they want to plop in one of the huge systems that have infected the southern part of the state and dot the Iowan landscape.  No!  Not with all the horrible hog diseases going around these days.

I expressed this concern with an environmental lawyer who is looking into the issue.  He hadn’t yet heard about the disease side of the argument (PEDv), so this is what I shared with him.

Key issues of PEDv (Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea virus):

·This is essentially Ebola for pigs, it’s extremely easy to transmit through body fluids, body parts (via feed), manure, and water.  It can be spread via feed, feed trucks, boots, moving animals, etc.

·It is extremely fatal.  For young piglets, the death rate in infected facilities is 100% (it really doesn’t get higher than that).  Older pigs can carry the disease but tend not to succumb to the symptoms, which are vomiting and diarrhea, which leads to very fast dehydration then death.

·Once PEDv has infected an area, you can’t get rid of it.  It’s been in the country less than a year, so studies are just beginning.  One study indicates that the virus can live at least 28 days in the soil without a host.

·At least 8 million piglets nation-wide have died, with cases in at least 23 states.  There are now 9 confirmed cases on Wisconsin.

·As yet, there is no proven vaccine and no cure.  Prevention and biosecurity are the only methods currently available to keep PEDv from spreading.

Northern Wisconsin is lucky to be a PEDv-free region, and we need to keep it that way.  With continued losses of stock nation-wide, PEDv-free places are going to be one of the few refuges to replenish the population.  By the nature of a CAFO (confinement animal feeding operation), with overcrowding, the massive moving of stock, and hauling of large quantities of feed, and the fact that fecal matter is everywhere (not to mention that pigs are routinely fed back to pigs in these operations), there is NO WAY for a CAFO to honestly promise to stay PEDv-free, even if they bring in disease-free stock. 

The proposed operation that wants to move in says that they will be bringing in stock that is not from the area for farrowing (birthing piglets).  The piglets will be raised until they are big enough to withstand the virus, then be shipped back to Iowa (a disease endemic area for PEDv).  In essence, they want to take advantage of our area’s PEDv clean status, until it catches up with them, and then they’ll pull out and go somewhere else.  By that time, the area will be contaminated because the roads will be contaminated, the soil, the tires on the feed trucks that supply everyone else as well, and the local producers who have been so vigilant to keep their stock safe will be the collateral damage.  This is big-ag using the little guy as a shield from its own problems only to abandon the front lines when the demons eventually catch up with them, leaving everyone else to clean it up, which is likely not possible.

As an area heritage pig breeder, this is very scary for us, as well as the other small producers who have worked so hard to build healthy herds.  I hope that this information can add some ammunition against the big-ag invasion.  Thanks! ~Laura

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There are two things that we can do in the face of the destructive nature of big ag practices:  we can go on living our lives and pretend it doesn’t affect us, or we can step out and work to make a difference, to push back.  This could be anything from letting your representatives know your opinion to voting with your fork to letting others know what is happening.  Please stand with your local, sustainably minded farmer, or the system will simply squeeze them out of existence, one battle at a time. 

But at least for now, with my chin still up, I will defiantly say that I’ll still be persevering in order to see you down on the farm sometime.

Laura Berlage is a co-owner of North Star Homestead Farms, LLC and Farmstead Creamery & Café. 715-462-3453 www.northstarhomestead.com