Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["TradingPostPaul" <tradingpost@riseup.net>]

Out of respect for your age (I'm only 63) I'll ask you to refrain from
posting about this, rather than kicking you out. Possibly you don't realize
what you've been writing is just nonsense. Since you haven't been keeping
up with what your tenant farmer does, you wouldn't know what he calls
no-till or whether he's now mining the soil or building it up. No one has
criticized your family's past farming practices, since we've all made many
of the same mistakes in the past. 

paul tradingpost@lobo.net

*********** REPLY SEPARATOR  ***********

On 3/15/2007 at 5:35 PM Barbara Fischer wrote:

>I do take it personally as that is what it is.  My family did not need
>the money from the farm to live, had other employment and income.  There
>was no reason to treat the land badly....after all, it had been in our
>keeping for more than 150 years.  I'm sure they did use chemicals as
>everyone did.  Future generations may berate Paul for the way he now
>farms.  We do no-till now as everyone is coming to do.  I can remember how
>we used to "walk the beans" to put weeds after the beans got to thick to
>get a culivator in.  I am 77 years old  and my family has nutured this
>land for longer than I can remember.
>
>Barbara
>  ----- Original Message ----- 
>  From: Gloria Baikauskas 
>  To: Healthy soil and sustainable growing 
>  Sent: Thursday, March 15, 2007 3:13 PM
>  Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] "real" farming? was (no subject)
>
>
>  Every farmer thought they were farming right.....and then in the 1930s
>the topsoil blew away.  They had farmed the way they were taught.....but
>more importantly....the way agribusiness was beginning to teach them. 
>So...they were taught to plow in a different pattern.  
>
>  The damage from the loss of the topsoil was huge, though.  By the 1950s
>the US was still importing food because we could not feed ourselves.  
>That is when those in charge decided to take the chemical route.  The
>chemicals killed what was alive in the soil.  No farmer knowingly did
>that. 
>
>  My grandfather <mom's dad> was a farmer in Kansas....grew up on a farm
>in Kansas because he was the son and grandson, and so on back of farmers. 
>He later farmed in Washington State until he was incapacitated.  He did
>not knowingly damage his land.  I know when he scaled back from the
>acreage down to one acre of garden he did things more the old-fashioned
>way.  He grew the best peas I have ever eaten.  <g>  
>
>  Farmers have been getting advice from ag agents for decades now that has
>been wrong.  Yet, now the USDA has them advising differently....when they
>will listen to them.  Or they were.  NOw the USDA is packed with folks
>from the big agribusinesses and is also making their own GM food product
>line.  It is a delicate balance of pleasing the agribusinesses that line
>their pockets, and the research scientists that work for them advising
>farmers not to till....not to mow....and so forth.  
>
>  No one is trying to cast bad reputation on your family of farmers,
>Barbara.  The topsoil is again blowing away.  Here in Texas it has been a
>horrible problem the last two years because of the drought, as it has in
>other Western states.  More folks than you can possibly imagine have had
>to be hospitalized because of lung problems and diseases caused by the
>soil in the air we can't even see most of the time.  
>
>  I used to garden wrong.  I used chemicals.  I prided myself on my
>gardens....and my food crops in them.  Now I wonder what damage I did to
>myself since I am a cancer survivor.  I thought I was a good example of
>someone from a farming family that could grow just about anything.  I was
>wrong.  Took coming here to dead soil to change me.  Took failures to make
>me research.....and the warnings of the farmer's daughters next door as to
>what was on the land.  They had had to use stronger and stronger stuff to
>get good yields.  
>
>  Please don't take it personally.  
>
>  Gloria, Texas
>