(Originally posted April 24th, 2009)
I spent Earth Day with some of the best people on this planet. They were not fancy, and hardly any of them would consider themselves to be activists, or even environmentalists. I passed the day without any real thought to doing something “special” for the Earth, and I’m okay with that. I spent April 22 at an auction with several hundred of my bretheren, talking about farming, bidding on equipment, eating good food, and generally enjoying the company of farmers. My wife had her own bidder number and spent a few hours under the tent, looking over things for the house. I walked around with by best friend, who now lives in NY, catching up on his 11 children and the current state of the dairy business.

I have absolutely no guilt about missing Earth Day. Nor did any of the others at this auction. Caring for the earth is something of a full time job for me. I know Earth Day is nothing more than a PR campaign. Its not as if 1 day is going to set to right the other 364. But perhaps it is at least a moment to consider the possibilities of reforming those other days in order to better our planetary nest.

I prefer to think of myself and our guiding principle here at The Lamb’s Quarter in terms of conservationism rather than environmentalism. A conservationist is someone involved in actually taking care of what is their’s to take care of; an environmentalist is someone involved in the act of telling someone else how to take care of it.

I’ll take a plain farmer any day over a concrete-pounding activist.

(Originally posted on April 20th, 2009)
I just heard the most amazing thing on the radio – Monsanto is a sustainable farming company. It’s true; they told me so. The biotechnology giant has once again given new meaning to painting shades of grey. Of course, their view of sustainable agriculture centers upon their own corporate sustainability by creating “frankenfoods” (that the majority of the world doesn’t want), to be sprayed with their trademark “Roundup,” creating weeds that cannot be killed, and giving us food that is poisoning rats in Scottish test studies. It was Monsanto to gave the dairy industry rBGH/rBST, the synthetic growth hormone that many dairy farmers used to boost production in their cows. Cows went from 5-7 lactations or more down to 3 or fewer. The consumer rebelled, and now its hard to give away milked produced by using rBGH.

The fact that a company like Monsanto would try to pirate the term “sustainable” should not surprise anyone. Monsanto is certainly not the first to attempt subtle shifts in the meaning of words, and quite frankly, both the left and the right are guilty of language manipulation. Unfortunately, modern culture makes this task all too easy. Put some glitz and spin on something, turn it just a little to the side, and most people will never notice. We can put a person into space, but can’t figure when we’re being hoodwinked by the PR machine.

I just had to endure the annual visitation of our bishop. I saw firsthand how concepts that are fixed in scripture can be spun into new meanings that completely gut the original definition. By the end of the day, the unsuspecting thought all our troubles could be solved by group hugs, social activism, and marches. An incredible dumbing down of the basic teachings of Christ.

So what does this have to do with farming? Part of being involved in authentic sustainable agriculture is honesty. Honest work, honest food, honest living. It’s the honest food part that grabs most people and makes them want more. Whole food (no, not the hyped-up store) has always been in style. Processed foods are a lot like the PR machine that sells them – a lot of calories without a lot of nutrition. Quick and easy is seldom the path to success in any venue – nature is simply not made to work that way.

Slow is what we have this spring, as the temperatures warm up ever so slowly, leaving us wondering about harvest timing and succession plantings. We have put the row covers on to warm up the soil, and we continue to seed and work in the greenhouse. We have outgrown of current propogation greenhouse, and have ordered a 16×48 replacement.

In a world of confusing words, and subtle shifts in meaning, the key is to listen attentively to what is being said – and what isn’t. Thinking, like farming, is not an armchair sport.