* Hey folks,
*
* The list has been quiet for a while, just
* thought I'd share a few winter insights:
Hi Folks,
It's nice to hear from anyone on graze-l. I greatly miss graze-l.
---
Sometimes when I read Steve Lucas, I think about the Tom Selleck movie,
"Monte
Walsh".
Steve probably didn't write the screenplay, but he should have and he could
have. Maybe he did.
"Monte Walsh" is my favorite movie. I highly recommend it to
everyone.
Actually, the opening scene is in my opinion the best opening scene of any
movie ever made.
But that isn't why it's my favorite movie.
It's Monte Walsh's uncompromising commitment to his way of life.
.....And the way he sits a horse, which isn't the same thing, but probably
comes from the same place in his soul.
---
I'm sorry to say that there isn't much to report on the subject of grazing
here at Owenlea Farm.
I only have three cows still here with me here at Owenlea Farm. All are in
their late teens. There were good show cows, scored Excellent, and 100,000
pound milk producers.
They are here because nobody wanted them ... they were too old.
And that was many years ago. They are darn old now.
I've sold thousands of cows for beef, during my life, and it never bothered me
too much.
Yes, It bothered me, but not so much I couldn't stand it.
The pressure of necessity. You do a lot of things in farming that you
wouldn't have to do if you had chosen another life.
But these three aren't getting that last ride. They were slaves when I was a
slave.
For their sake, I haven't pulled out the fences.
We have sixty paddocks and several miles of lanes, all intact and with water,
but all the gates are open and we are not managing the grass. Due to the
cost of gasoline and the pressure of farm work, we did not even mow the
paddocks in 2005. They look bad.
----
I still deeply regret that we were unable to convert a substantial portion of
the dairy belt to intensive grazing and seasonal calving.
I bitterly regret it.
It was absolutely the right thing to do. It could have been done, and it
should have been done.
Socially, economically, environmentally, it was right.
But the "golden moment" was lost.
Five or six people, trying harder, could have done it.
I should have tried a lot harder, myself, and been a lot more vocal. It was
my fault.
Another guy who should have been there at the crunch got himself "kicked
upstairs" at a major university. That shut him up effectively.
Another guy who worked himself into national prominence on Graze-L, did
terrible damage with a consistent "dog in the manager" attitude. He
instilled great doubt at exactly the wrong time. He could have been
positive. I think he was totally unconscious of the damage he did.
We failed to stand up against our enemies in the agriculture press, milk
marketing, extension, and the dairy support industry.
We had a lot of them successfully won over by 2000, and we could have had them
all, but we faltered.
Now, I believe that the opportunity is lost forever.
Regardless of examples we might maintain or create, or logical arguments we
might make. We have crossed a threshold. There is now insufficient
remaining equity in America's rural landscape.
Sure, there will be be some intensive grazing and seasonal calving farms, but
not the vast net of shining high tensile wire across the hills that I had
dreamed of.
----
Up course I'm not giving up ... just changing to reflect reality.
I now believe that we can keep a substantial number of small independent
farmers on the land with vegetable and produce production.
I want to lead by example, and not by talk. I detest talkers.
Here's what we produced at Owenlea Farm in the 2005 growing season:
* 1.25 acres of green bell peppers (about 800 bu)
* 10,000 fall mums in 5x8 and 6x9 pots
* 2500 spring hanging baskets in 10 & 12 inch pots
* 15 acres of no-till pumpkins
* large amount of tomatoes from high tunnels.
I did this pretty much alone however the peppers were my son's. We had a
pretty good year financially compared to any dairy farming year.
----
And of course the Produce Auction is here and a big part of Owenlea Farm.
It's in my best grazing paddock, and IS my best producing paddock.
We completed the ninth straight year of growth with a 40% increase in sales
over 2004.
This has grown to be a very large business in dollar volume.
Definitely big enough to substantially affect the amount of produce being
trucked into Ohio.
Most importantly, 496 small local growers sold produce in the auction here in
2005.
In case you haven't heard: "Organic" is no longer the buzz word
driving the
future in the vegetable business.
"Local" is the the right buzz word now-a-days. City people trust
"local" more
than they trust "organic".
----
I just got back yesterday from the Ohio Vegetable & Fruit Growers Congress
in
Columbus. We (the Produce Auction) had a booth there in the trade show.
My daughter, myself, and 10 of our top growers manned the booth. We had
signs, posters, graphs, and lots of photos of the 2005 produce auctions.
I'm thinking that we looked rather amateurish and homemade compared with the
polished exhibits of the national chemical and other big commercial companies
and highly funded government agencies.
But we had just as many visitors at our booth and maybe even a lot more. It
was a first effort, by a bunch of common ordinary farmers, but we were
satisifed that it was worth the cost.
Based on what we heard there, from growers and buyers, we feel we are looking
at another growth year in 2006.
----
By the way, anyone interested can get on our email list. This would get you
announcements of educational meetings sponsored by the Produce Auction, as
well as market reports issued following each auction.
These market reports were sent to people all over the US last year by fax and
email. Growers and buyers, who may never get to Ohio, seem to want them, and
use them as a tool for decision making.
They were definitely our best tool for attracting large volumn buyers.
We send them out as PDF attachments to emails so that they are identical to
the copies passed out here.
We have a person here at the auction whose title is "The Dockwalker".
The
DockWalker's job is to greet every buyer and grower with a big smile, and
hand them a fresh copy of the Market Report. That usually amounts to
hundreds of people per evening.
It's a big job and he's a busy guy. He is also in charge of allocating space
to trucks at the loading docks. He also assigns "loader boys" to the
different trucks and sees that the "loader boys" palletize and load
trucks to
suit the various stores and markets. He also tracks the pallet exchange
program. We exchanged 3700+ GMA wood pallets in 2005.
We also have detailed graphs available that show the weekly amount and price
on every major vegetable commodity sold here (tomatoes, cantalopes, pumpkins,
watermelon, cabbage etc). These are available to anyone, anywhere.
Finally, we had 82 auctions here at Owenlea Farm in 2005, during which our
auctioneers said "SOLD!" more than 34,966 times.
This resulted in a large amount of money going into local farmers pockets to
be spent, and circulated many times within the local area.
--
Kindest regards,
========================
F. W. Owen
Owenlea Holsteins
9430 Spencer Road
Homerville, Ohio 44235
e-mail fwo@bright.net
home page http://www.bright.net/~fwo
voice & fax 330.625.2369
cell 330.635.2287
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