Author: Myron Horst

What do we do all winter when there is “nothing to do” on the farm?

Leave a comment


Joel, our oldest son,  has been busy this winter building building bee hives to expand his honey production. In this picture he is cutting recessed handles into the sides of the bee hives using a jig on the table saw. There is an amazing amount of work that goes into building the hive boxes and assembling all the frames that go inside the boxes. It is a great job inside by the wood stove for those cold rainy days when we don’t want to work outside.


We bought a 2007 Isuzu reefer truck for delivering eggs and pet food to the stores. Our egg delivery van had become too small. The truck has been a wonderful provision. We bought it for 25% of its value at an auction. It had a leaking fuel injector sleeve which is why we were able to get it so cheap. To the left of the truck is the framing for some new lambing pens that our son, Nathan, was building for his sheep.


Daniel, age 16, had diesel mechanic class as part of his homeschool experience. He loves working on motors and is interested in crop farming. It was a great educational experience for him. It took the mystery out of a diesel motor as we took the head off the engine block, had it repaired and reinstalled the head again. The head is a thick heavy metal piece on top of the pistons that has the valves, fuel injectors, and cam shaft. The motor is only a four cylinder diesel with a turbo charger. In spite of it being only a four cylinder motor, it has plenty of power and gets a respectable 11 1/2 to 12 MPG on our egg delivery route which includes driving through the heart of D.C. The Isuzu truck is easy to work on. The cab tilts forward giving easy access to the entire engine. They even provide a “chair” to sit on while you are working on the motor – the front tires. I had never worked on a diesel motor before, so it was a learning experience for me, too. We had a good repair manual and took things one step at a time. It is not as difficult as it appears.


To stay in shape during the winter we work out in the “gym”. The exercise machine is rather low tech, consisting of a 6 pound metal weight fastened to the end of a stick. You swing the 6 pound weight and smash it into a piece of wood, making the wood split in two. It is entertaining and satisfying being able to watch big hunks of wood fly apart while you work out swinging the weight on the stick to get your heart rate up, tone up your muscles and burn the fat. We like our work out machine better than the high tech do nothing exercise machines with their fancy electronic readouts. Not only does it provide entertainment and a feeling of satisfaction as you work out, it will also give us a warm feeling next winter when it is cold – something one of those fancy do nothing machines in the gym can’t do.

So why would we split wood by hand while the wood splitter sits unused in the background? We do use the wood splitter on the harder to split pieces, but we have a lot of straight grained oak wood that splits easy. I timed one of the boys and he made 12 pieces of firewood in 60 seconds with a splitting maul and he was not trying to see how fast he could go. It is much faster than the wood splitter on easy to split wood. Notice how the chunks of wood are set up in rows. We start with a chunk of wood closest to us. We split that one and move to the next and then the next. You can split wood as fast as you can swing the splitting maul. Forget the old chopping block. It takes too long to only set up and split only one piece of wood at a time. We also dislike an 8 pound splitting maul because it tires us out too fast. A 12 pound maul is even worse.

.
Kara, our oldest daughter, made 50 seedling flats for the greenhouse. They will hold the plastic trays with the individual plant cells. We used plastic flats in the past, but they are flimsy and break easily. These should last a long time if they are stored in a dry place in the off season. The flats were made out of scrap pieces of wood that we had laying around. Kara has a bunch of onions, cabbage, and broccoli started.


We also stay busy all winter taking care of the hens, sheep and cows. The hens have been laying a lot of eggs all winter. What you see is just part of a week’ worth of eggs. The right side of the walk-in cooler is also almost full of cases of eggs. The hens are laying over 1000 dozen eggs each week. That is why we needed a bigger truck!

Major Changes in Hospitals

By Myron Horst

The news media has kept our focus on “ObamaCare” in recent years, and while our attention was diverted, some major changes have occurred in hospitals that are not related to “ObamaCare” or the pharmaceutical industry. Healthcare is the #1 industry in America. As such, it has attracted the attention of investors and others whose primary focus is on the money that can be made in healthcare.

I have been wanting to, and not wanting to, write an article on this subject ever since my mother’s hospital experience and passing this spring. My sisters and I noticed a significant change in how the doctors related to the patients than what it had been in previous stays that our mother had in the hospital. Some of the doctors were rude and had very poor bedside manners. We received a lot of pressure from multiple doctors to make a specific decision that seemed to be motivated more for the hospital’s benefit than for my mother’s health. It was obviously a coordinated effort and not just the decision of one doctor. We were so annoyed by the one doctor that we actually asked for him to be removed from my mother’s care. We also noticed that all the doctors seemed to be employees of the hospital.

About a month later, I read an article written by Virginia Hopkins about her mother going to the hospital with a slight stroke. She described her mother going through similar things that we had experienced. I realized that some major changes were taking place in hospitals. I strongly encourage you to read Virgina Hopkins’ article:
When a Parent Goes to the Emergency Room
http://www.virginiahopkinshealthwatch.com/2012/04/when-a-parent-goes-to-the-emergency-room/

A little over a week ago, the New York Times had a large article on our hospitals and how, in the last number of years, hospitals, private equity firms, and insurance companies have been buying up doctors’ practices, and the doctors have become employees of the hospital or the investment group. The parent company then puts pressure on doctors to admit people into the hospital, to request unnecessary tests, and to refer patients to doctors within the company system. The focus is on making money. Because of the monopoly that some of the hospitals have, they are able to charge excessive prices for their services. The hospitals are able to charge higher prices when doctors work for them than when the docters were in private practice.

This article, I believe, is very important for you to read. It explains why our family and Virginia Hopkins had the hospital experiences that we did. Times have changed. Doctors and hospitals are not operating the same as they did only five years ago. It is important that you know what is going on so that you can protect yourself and your loved ones from the healthcare system.

New York Times – A Hospital War Reflects a Tightening Bind for Doctors Nationwide
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/01/business/a-hospital-war-reflects-a-tightening-bind-for-doctors-nationwide.html?pagewanted=1&_r=2&nl=afternoonupdate&emc=edit_au_20121130

False Breast Cancer in 1.3 million Cases!
Cancer is big business for doctors and hospitals. We are hearing of more and more women are being diagnosed with breast cancer.  In November 2012, the New England Journal of Medicine released a shocking report stating that in 2008, 31% of the diagnosed breast cancer cases were not cancer at all. They state “We estimated that breast cancer was overdiagnosed (i.e., tumors were detected on screening that would never have led to clinical symptoms) in 1.3 million U.S. women in the past 30 years. We estimated that in 2008, breast cancer was overdiagnosed in more than 70,000 women; this accounted for 31% of all breast cancers diagnosed.”
http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1206809?query=featured_home&

Natural News has an article going into more detail: Shock Study: Mammograms a medical hoax, over one million American women maimed by unnecessary ‘treatment’ for cancer they never had. http://www.naturalnews.com/038099_mammograms_false_positives_overdiagnosis.html

After finding out the information in the New York Times article and the report on breast cancer in the New England Journal of Medicine, I reflected back on my mother’s case. I was with my mother when the oncologist diagnosed her with stage four cancer. We had read the lab report before we met with him. The lab report on the MRI and biopsy showed pneumonia and a very small speck of potential cancer. He was very quick to state confidently that it was stage four cancer and that she should start chemo immediately. We questioned him about his diagnosis and his response was basically that because of his expertise he could tell that it was cancer.

When my mother went to the hospital six months later because she was having difficulty breathing, they were quick to say that it was definitely the cancer in its advanced stages, and they basically gave up on her. The X-ray showed something in the lungs that could have been cancer or pneumonia. The oncologist, a different doctor and in a different hospital, was again quick to state that it was cancer. When I questioned him, he admitted that he had not looked at the X-ray before he came to talk with us. (He was the doctor that we fired). We were shocked recently when my sister read the death certificate and found that it stated that the primary cause of death was pneumonia! The secondary cause was advanced lung cancer. Did she have lung cancer, or was it only pneumonia? We will never know. But knowing what I know now, there is a possibility that she might not have had cancer.

Hospitals and doctors can be hazardous to our health and life. It is important, more now than ever, to do all we can to not need their “services”. It is our goal here at Jehovah-Jireh Farm to help provide good, healthy food to help keep you healthy and out of the doctor’s office and hospital.

Nathan’s Fiddle

Enough of the bad news and health care stuff. Now for something that you only hear about happening in years gone by, to someone you never knew, and maybe only a story that never really happened. This time it is a true story that happened a week and a half ago to our son Nathan. Nathan had been thinking that he should get another fiddle that had a better sound to it.


He went to an auction at the fairgrounds in Frederick and bought this old fiddle. The case is old and dilapidated. The bow did not have any hair on it and the fiddle did not have all of its strings. I (Myron) looked at it and did not think it was worth much. The auctioneer didn’t see much value in it either. Nathan started the bid at $10 and bought it for $40.


This is a picture of the old fiddle.  There is no date inside the fiddle. There is a paper glued inside, hand written in French stating that it was reconstructed by Arthur Vernier, a violin maker – luthier. In researching on the internet and examining the fiddle, we found some interesting things.


A new neck had been added and the old scroll peg box was grafted onto the new neck. In this picture you can see a small diagonal line on the top edge of the left side of the violin where the neck is grafted into the scroll peg box.


In this picture you can see the splice where the new neck was grafted in. The significance of that graft is that it dates the fiddle as most likely being pre-1760, before the US became a nation! In the Baroque period before 1760, the neck of a violin was shorter and the angle of the peg box was different than on violins after the Baroque period. This fiddle was reconstructed with a longer neck.


Both the top and the bottom of the fiddle are domed up higher, and at a steeper angle from the edges than on a modern violin, giving the body of the fiddle more volume. It has a beautiful sound.

The old fiddle looked like it was of little value to the auctioneer and to the crowd of about 200 people that day. It was God’s blessing to Nathan and an object lesson that, just like the old violin a person’s value is more than what their appearance may indicate. It reminded me of the poem and song, “The Touch of the Master’s Hand”. Check out this reciting of the poem. I think you will enjoy it: http://rosemck1.tripod.com/touch-of-the-masters-hand.html

Home Chiropractic

I used to be suspicious of chiropractors. I called them quacks that pulled your leg and took your money. I said that because the people I knew that went to a chiropractor would go two or three times a week for months on end. After we got married, I saw some people that were truly helped by chiropractors and my opinion of them changed some. I also went to Dr. Kevin Wyman in Gaithersburg, and he helped Cathy and me several times without repeated visits. He even taught me how to adjust a twisted pelvis with two wedge shaped blocks, and it has helped us on numerous occasions. His main job is working for an insurance company, evaluating chiropractic claims to spot fraud. He only operates his chiropractic office part time and does not have to have all his income from his practice. We highly recommend him.

Several years ago we got a book and DVD on home chiropractic that have been very helpful for our family. It taught us how to evaluate the problem and how to correct it. There have been different times that a vertebra was out of place on one of us, and within a few minutes Cathy or I were able to adjust the spine and make the vertebra pop back into place. Often the pain went away almost immediately. Sometimes the spine has to be adjusted a number of days in a row, because it keeps popping out again due to the weakness of the muscles . My opinion of chiropractic has changed since I have been able to experience first hand how to move the spine and see that it actually relieves the pain and corrects the problem.

“Home Chiropractic” is simple enough that each of you could probably learn how to do the basic adjustments to the spine to relieve pain. It is not a comprehensive chiropractic course, but it is a valuable tool. It gives you a tool to help correct the problem right away before the vertebra gets “set” in its uncomfortable position and becomes difficult to get it to go back to its correct position. It is my opinion that one of the reasons that people have to keep going to the chiropractor for weeks on end is that is how chiropractors make their money. If they corrected the problem in a visit or two, they would not have enough patients to keep them in business. The other reason that people have to go to the chiropractor for repeated visits is that a person tends to wait for a number of weeks, months, or years before going to the chiropractor, hoping that the pain will go away on its own. By that time the vertebra has become “set” in its wrong position or the nerve has been pinched for too long, or other damage has occurred. It then takes longer to correct the problem, and sometimes the problem can’t be corrected by chiropractic methods.

If you go to a medical doctor, his main tools are to give you pain killers, exercises, or surgery. When a vertebra is out of place and causing pain, the pain is not because you have a lack of pain killers in your body. Not all back pain is because a vertebra is out of place, but if it is, and a simple adjustment by your spouse fixed the problem, you have no need to go to a doctor whose solution is to do surgery on your back and leave you with potential lasting pain and restrictions on what you can do. Surgery makes the doctor a lot more money than taking two minutes to pop your spine back into place.

Learning simple chiropractic techniques is a health care tool that I believe is important for each family to have.  The spine contains the central communication network for the body. Because of that, the health of the spine can affect the health of the body. A pinched nerve in the spine can cause a seemingly unrelated problem in another part of the body that is serviced by that nerve.

The Home Chiropractic Handbook and DVD can be ordered from these websites:
http://www.home-chiropractic.com/
http://www.heattherapyprod.com/chiropracticpage6.htm

Chestnut Blight Inoculation Evaluation in the Chestnut Orchard

Earlier this year, several hundred of the chestnut trees in our chestnut orchard were inoculated with two different strains of chestnut blight. Last week a group from the American Chestnut Foundation came and evaluated the inoculations. We were pleased that many of the trees showed good resistance to the blight. The trees with the weakest resistance will be cut down and the trees with the strongest resistance will be kept for further breeding purposes.

This tree is an example of good resistance to the blight inoculation. The cracks in the bark are an indication that the tree is fighting the blight and is “walling off” the blight to keep it from spreading.


This tree has blight around the crotch of the tree from a naturally occurring source. It looks like the blight is really bad, but the tree actually has good resistance in the way it is fighting the blight. The chestnut orchard is an interesting project, and our family is learning a lot from caring for it. We are looking forward to what happens in the future.

Thankful for an Abundant Harvest

We are thankful for an abundant harvest this year from our two gardens. Cathy, Kara, and Melody canned and froze an amazing 1090 quarts of fruits and vegetables this summer and fall. We also have a bunch of squash, pumpkins, potatoes and sweet potatoes in the cellar and in cool storage. I say amazing because I did not expect that much as we were harvesting things from the garden this summer.

We made a decision at the beginning of the year to try to grow as much of our own nutrient dense food as we could for the health of our family. The fruits and vegetables that you can buy in the stores still look as good and nutritious as they did 30 or 40 years ago. But the nutritional analysis by the USDA shows that the calcium and mineral content has significantly declined and it is showing up in the health of people. 50 years ago there were only a few small drug stores. The “pharmacy” section in the grocery store consisted of basic things such as aspirin, cough drops, and bandaids. Now each grocery store has a full service pharmacy to provide drugs to supplement the poor quality food. Plus, there are a lot of other large drug stores conveniently located around town to keep everyone propped up with their medications. And they keep building new drug stores all over town.

In looking at the statistics for individual illnesses and diseases, the percentage of the population that has a particular illness or disease has significantly multiplied in the last 50 years. Plus there are many new diseases that were unheard of 50 years ago. The health care industry has grown to be the #1 industry in America. People are seriously sick! One Walmart we saw in Virginia had 32 handicapped parking spaces and many of them were filled – a testimony to the poor nutritional quality of their food. Cheap food has led to poor results.

There is a solution, and there is hope. Organic is a step in the right direction, but organic does not necessarily mean that the organic farmer has added any more calcium and trace minerals to his soil than what the conventional farmer has. The solution is to either grow as much of your own food as you can, or buy it from a farmer who you know has added the calcium and trace minerals to his soil.


The open pantry shelves in Cathy’s kitchen hold a sampling of each of the canned fruits and vegetables in the cellar. Everything came from our gardens except for the apples and peaches. A few of the jars are from last year.
Top shelf: Peach Jam, Salsa, Grape Jelly, Grape Syrup, Pizza Sauce
Second Shelf: Pumpkin Butter, Raspberry Jam, Bread and Butter Pickles, Apple Butter, Cucumber Relish, Peach Jam, Pickled Banana Pepper Slices, Pepper Relish, Zucchini Relish, Ketchup
Third shelf: Tomato Juice, Apple Pie Filling, Peaches, Stewed Tomatoes, Dilly Bean Pickles, Pumpkin, Dill Pickles, Pizza Sauce.
Forth Shelf: V8 Juice, Pickled Beets, White Grape Juice, Green Beans, Zucchini, Purple Grape Juice, Pickled Okra, Apple Sauce
Not pictured: Chicken Broth, Chili Peppers, Chunked Tomatoes.

Contrary to popular advice, it is possible to reuse regular canning jar lids if you are careful not to bend the lids when you remove them. We have had a very low failure rate in reusing lids.

Pantry Paratus Radio, Episode 019: Interview at Jehovah Jireh Farm

From homesteading to professional farming
Myron and our son Joel were interviewed for a podcast on Pantry Paratus Radio. It is a good overview of our farming philosophy, teaching children how to work, homesteading, how to produce food in the middle of winter if you don’t have any stored up, principles of growing healthy plants, etc. It runs almost an hour in length and might be something to listen to on your commute to work.

http://pantryparatus.com/blog/podcast_jehovah_jireh_farm

A Tribute to Daisy


Our old family cow, Daisy, was a casualty of Hurricane Sandy. It was her time to go. She was 11 years old, was not able to breed back, and had stopped giving milk. She had blessed our family with thousands of gallons of rich Jersey milk in the eight years that we milked her. This is a 2005 picture of our son Nathan walking Daisy down the road on her way back from being bred by the neighbor’s bull. (The average cow in a commercial dairy farm is only able to be milked for two years before being sent for hamburger!)

Curatorship Work on the House


We installed new steps and railing on the back porch of the house. Our daughter, Melody, is painting the porch posts.


Our son, Luke, painting the porch posts on the front porch.


Sons, Joel and Daniel, scraping paint on the back of the house.

To Plow or Not to Plow, That is the Question!

By Myron Horst

Note: Whether you garden or farm or not, I believe that you will find this article interesting. The subject “To plow or not to plow” is a much more important subject than what most of us realize. There is a surprising conclusion.

In farming and in gardening there are opposing voices, those saying that the ground should not be plowed or tilled and others saying that the soil should be plowed. Both methods appear to work, but which one is the best? One of the challenges in life is discerning the best solution to take.  There are many things in life that “work” and highly educated people promote them as being the answer, but in the end there are consequences or side effects that outweigh the good. It is also important to ask the question: “It is better as compared to what”. For our family, we are not just interested in producing food to eat, we also want to produce the most nutrient dense food that we can.

No-till farming has been growing in practice here in the U.S. The method used by most farmers today is to spray Roundup to kill the cover crop or weeds that have grown in the stubble of the previous crop. The new crop seeds are planted with a special no-till planter through the dead plant mat that is left on the ground. No-till farming has enabled farmers to be able to farm a considerably larger number of acres because all they have to do is spray and plant. No plowing and no cultivating.

For me, the subject to plow or not to plow came up again this past winter when we watched the video “Back to Eden.” It was a documentary of a man who had an impressive looking garden. The documentary had excellent pictures of beautiful plants. Most of the shots were close up and it looked impressive. He did not plow or till, but used a mulch layer on the ground to suppress the weeds and build a rich black soil. He had been gardening this way for a number of years and was getting good results. The method of gardening was presented as God’s method, and as an almost no work garden. I was convinced enough to try it on some of our vegetables.  A lot of Bible verses were quoted throughout the video. But is he right?

I found a website, called “Farming God’s Way”. It is an organization that is teaching African farmers how to farm and to provide for their families. They too advocate not plowing and putting down a layer of mulch. They call the mulch layer “God’s blanket”. They intersperse the teaching on the farming method with Bible verses. It sounds like a very Biblical method. But are they right?

The voices cautioning that the ground should not be plowed or tilled have been around for a long time. Newman Turner and Ruth Stout from years ago both strongly recommended that the ground should not be plowed.

About six years ago, our family went to visit the Rodale Institute’s organic research farm in Pennsylvania for their farm open house. I was very interested in their no-till system that appeared to be a real answer. They had developed an organic no-till system that did not use chemicals. They invented a large roller that would roll the cover crop and kill it by crimping the plants. The roller was mounted on the front of the tractor and a no-till corn planter was pulled behind the tractor for a one pass planting. The cover crop created a mat, or mulch layer that helped conserve moisture and provided nitrogen for the crop. I was impressed with the system and we went back the next year to learn more. That year I was not as impressed. There were a number of problems that they had not been able to fix and the yields were not as good as conventional tilling.

On the other side of the subject is the teaching of Carey Reams. Reams stressed the importance of plowing to reverse the calcium and phosphates in the soil. Calcium tends to move down in the soil which is evidenced by stalactites and stalagmites in caverns. Phosphates tend to rise to the top where they can be washed into streams and rivers. By turning the soil over, the calcium is kept in the topsoil layer and the phosphates are buried back in the soil. Calcium is an important element in producing nutrient dense, high brix food.

So which method is best, to plow or not to plow? For me as a farmer in researching a farming method, I like to go to the oldest agricultural book, the Bible, and see what it says. On this subject it opened a window into a totally new perspective for me, that enabled me to see the collision course that farming is on today.

About the Garden of Eden it says this: Genesis 2:15 “And the LORD God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it.”

  • The Hebrew word translated “dress” means to till. Even in the garden of Eden it was necessary to cultivate.

In Ezekiel 36:34-35a it says that plowing and cultivation was an important part in the land becoming like the garden of Eden. “And the desolate land shall be tilled, whereas it lay desolate in the sight of all that passed by. 35 And they shall say, This land that was desolate is become like the garden of Eden”;

  • Tilling, or plowing appears to be an important part of creating a fertile and very productive field or garden.

Isaiah 28:23-26 It says this: “Give ye ear, and hear my voice; hearken, and hear my speech. 24 Doth the plowman plow all day to sow? doth he open and break the clods of his ground? 25 When he hath made plain the face thereof, doth he not cast abroad the fitches, and scatter the cummin, and cast in the principal wheat and the appointed barley and the rie in their place? 26 For his God doth instruct him to discretion, and doth teach him.”

  • Plowing produces clods of earth. Cultivation breaks up the clods.
  • This passage says that God’s method is to plow the soil – the opposite of what the Back to Eden film said, and the Farming God’s Way states. In my research, on almost every subject, I have found Christians saying and believing opposite things to be true. It can be confusing and misleading if you take what one person says without checking things out yourself.

The oldest agricultural book has some strong words about no-till farming and this is what opens the window to a bigger perspective of the subject.

Proverbs 12:11 He that tills his land shall be satisfied with bread: but he that follows vain person is void of understanding.

Proverbs 28:19 He that tills his land shall have plenty of bread: but he that follows after vain persons shall have poverty enough.

  • Plowing and cultivation are important for success in farming and in gardening to produce an abundant crop.
  • “No-till” is following “vain” persons who think that they know and have the answers, but in the end it results in poverty.

So, is the old agricultural book right? Is no-till following vain persons? Does no-till result in poverty? There are some interesting things that have come out recently.

Rodale Institute, about a month ago, released the yield data for their 2011 yield trials of conventional tillage and their no-till system. The conventional tillage system yielded 95 bushels of corn per acre and 39 bushels of soybeans per acre. The no-till system yielded less than half the yield of corn even though more seeds had been planted per acre – only 40 bushels of corn per acre. The no-till soybeans only yielded 20 bushels per acre. Only half the yield with no-till is a sure way to poverty. http://www.rodaleinstitute.org/20120627_challenging-yields-challenging-weather

In conventional farming, no-till comes in a package. It requires the use of lots of chemicals – Roundup to kill the grasses and weeds, GMO (Genetically Modified Organisms) seeds to resist the Roundup, pesticides and fungicides to kill the bugs and fungus because the crops are so low brix that the bugs and fungus try to eat it up to return it to the soil. No-till is a method that is promoted by the Monsanto Corporation who gives huge donations to many of the big university agricultural departments. So, of course, the no-till trials show the no-till advantage. But one thing to remember is to ask the question: “No-till is better as compared to what?”. They are not comparing no-till to properly remineralized, plowed, and cultivated soil, and they are not looking at the long term effects of the whole no-till system. They are looking primarily at short term crop yield comparisions.

The no-till revolution has resulted in a very high percentage of conventional soybeans and corn being genetically modified to resist Roundup. A New York Times article talking about GMO Roundup Ready crops says: “Those crops made it so easy for farmers to control weeds by spraying glyphosate [Roundup] that Roundup Ready crops now account for about 90 percent of soybeans and around 70 percent of the corn and cotton grown in the United States. And use of glyphosate skyrocketed, at the expense of rival herbicides.” They go on to say how super weeds are becoming resistant to Roundup, and Dow Corning is looking for approval for their GMO corn that is resistant to 2,4, D (an ingredient in Agent Orange) so that 2,4,D can be sprayed after the corn comes up, instead of Roundup to control the Roundup resistant super weeds.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/26/business/energy-environment/dow-weed-killer-runs-into-opposition.html?pagewanted=all

We can see, that at the heart of the GMO controversy is actually the question, “To plow or not to plow?” No-till has resulted in GMO seeds being used in a high percentage of our crops. What is the effect of GMO grain? Does it improve health or destroy it? Just released this fall is a French study on the long term feeding of GMO grains to rats. The rats grew huge tumors and 70% of the females died. If you have not seen the pictures of the rats, the pictures are worth a thousand words. You can see the pictures at:
http://www.naturalnews.com/037249_GMO_study_cancer_tumors_organ_damage.html

Last week Russia halted all imports of GMO grain after the French study came out. http://rt.com/business/news/russia-monsanto-corn-ban-005/

We see a progression of following “vain” persons promoting no-till. No-till requires the use of herbicides, such as Roundup. The use of Roundup results in the need for GMO crops. GMO grains have the potential of resulting in cancer. But that is not all. There are more consequences of following “vain” persons:

The United Nations in a report states that the suicide rate for farmers worldwide is higher than for non-farmers. In the Midwest of the U.S. where most of the corn, wheat, and soybeans are grown, suicide rates among male farmers are two times higher than the general population! This is a sad and telling statistic. No-till farming has not resulted in grain farmers becoming more successful. They have become more dependent on the big corporations and the chemicals and seeds that they sell. The more dependent that they have become, the more it drains their wallet. Finally, in despair and financial hopelessness they commit suicide.
http://www.un.org/esa/sustdev/csd/csd16/PF/presentations/farmers_relief.pdf

The suicide rate among farmers dependent on Monsanto is highlighted by the suicide problem among farmers in India. The Infowars.com website reports that in India every 30 minutes another farmer commits suicide. Over 250,000 farmers have committed suicide in India alone in the last 16 years! They often committed the act by drinking the same insecticide that Monsanto supplied them with. http://www.infowars.com/monsantos-gmo-seeds-contributing-to-farmer-suicides-every-30-minutes/

The Hindustan Times reports: “India’s Bt cotton dream is going terribly wrong. For the first time, farmer suicides, including those in 2011-12, have been linked to the declining performance of the much hyped genetically modified (GM) variety adopted by 90% of the country’s cotton-growers since being allowed a decade ago. Policymakers have hailed Bt cotton as a success story but a January 9 internal advisory, a copy of which is with HT, sent out to cotton-growing states by the agriculture ministry presents a grim scenario. ‘Cotton farmers are in a deep crisis since shifting to Bt cotton. The state of farmer suicides in 2011-12 has been particularly severe among Bt cotton farmers,’ says the advisory.  Bt cotton’s success, it appears, lasted merely five years. Since then, yields have been falling and pest attacks going up.” http://www.hindustantimes.com/News-Feed/Business/Ministry-blames-Bt-cotton-for-farmer-suicides/Article1-830798.aspx

As I reflect on the above information, I realize that what that old agricultural book said: “He that tills his land shall have plenty of bread: but he that follows after vain persons shall have poverty enough.” is more accurate and not as radical as what it first sounds. The long term results of no-till is not sustainable because of its heavy dependance on chemicals and GMO seeds and the poverty that they bring with them, not only to the farmer, but also to those who eat the GMO grains. Healthcare costs have skyrocketed in recent years and are draining the wallets of the consumer, bringing them poverty and dependance on the government to supply healthcare.

It is helpful to be able to step back and see the bigger picture. In the end, the big corporations such as Monsanto and Dow Corning will fail because their products are not sustainable and end in poverty. It all goes back to a subject that at first appears to be relatively unimportant – To Plow or Not to Plow — That is the Question!

Tour Group from the International Chestnut Symposium

Recently we hosted a tour group of people from around the world who attended the International Chestnut Symposium at Shepherdstown, WV. The tour group leader later commented in an email that the chestnut orchard on our farm was really spectacular given its age. The trees are much bigger than what most are at their age. Earlier this summer, we helped inoculate about 2/3 of the trees with two different strains of chestnut blight. Next year the trees will be evaluated according to how they respond to the blight. The best ones will be used for further breeding purposes.


Two big buses drove up in the pasture to the chestnut orchard.


Part of the tour group.