“Corporate America is taking over and putting people in our government. They have the government on their side and they’re making it harder for farmers to be farmers.”
ajh
Feds take aim at organic farmer in Pennsylvania
Tag Archives: Farming
Locust Plagues (1873-1877)
The timing of easterners’ migration into the Great Plains coincided with devastating swarms of locusts. The insects, really a species of grasshopper in swarming phase, mainly stayed in the Rocky Mountains until the jet stream facilitated movement to the Plains, where heat helped them breed.
The hungry scavengers devoured all crops in their path and sometimes, fences, blankets, and wool. When the food was gone, the swarms moved on in a flying cloud. Insects caused an estimated $200 million in crop damage in Colorado, Wyoming, Nebraska, and elsewhere. In Minnesota, where author Laura Ingalls Wilder witnessed the plague as described in On the Banks of Plum Creek, locusts destroyed more than 13 million bushels of wheat and 7 million bushels of oats. “The rasping whirring of their wings filled the whole air,” wrote Wilder, “and they hit the ground and the house with the noise of a hailstorm.”
The largest swarm, recorded in 1874, covered 198,000 square miles. A report that year showed only one family in 10 had enough food for the winter. The government relaxed Homestead Act residency rules so settlers could seek temporary work elsewhere. In 1875, Uncle Sam spent $30,000 on seeds for farmers. Less than 30 years later, locusts mysteriously died out.
Eighteen Sixteen — The Year Without a Summer
In 1815, Mount Tambora in Indonesia erupted, spewing tons of volcanic dust into the air. It floated around Earth’s upper atmosphere, causing a dramatic climate shift worldwide. Crops failed as frosts struck even during the summer of 1816 in New England. Delaware farmers complained about the price of corn for their hogs. Masses of people left the Northeast, seeking better prospects in the Midwest.
American religious revivalists held meetings and formed new sects. Sporadic Sunday worshipers renewed their faith. In the November election, dissatisfied voters replaced 70 percent of the House of Representatives. France and England experienced political unrest, too. Typhoid broke out in Ireland, and starving families fled to America, making 1816 and 1817 the leading edge of famine-related migrations. Poor nutrition contributed to the first worldwide cholera epidemic.
On the bright side, English artist J.W. Turner’s paintings featured the spectacular sunsets caused by the volcanic ash in the air. Read more about this tumultuous period in Volcano Weather: The Story of 1816, the Year Without a Summer by Henry M. Stommel.
Bill & Melinda are destroying small farmers in africa with a terrible corporate paternalism
AND TWITTER DOES NOT LIKE
ME BRINGING ATTENTION TO IT
Despite Twitter trying to censor me yet again, I have a blog, and of course many other varying platforms where I can post, so that is precisely what I have been doing. Idiots at Twitter HQ have been suspending me quite frequently.
I am just coming off a week time-out from one of the idiots. There is a lot of stupid at Twitter these days. The company employs a lot of dumb young people with little to no life experience who are seriously deficient in common sense. These losers have a great deal of control, unfortunately. Thankfully, so far, I have experienced no censorship by WordPress.
Moving on, I wanted to post the following:
In Africa, the Gates Foundation “is destroying traditional small farmer production of essential food crops in favor of monoculture crops and introduction of expensive chemical fertilizers and GMO seeds that are bankrupting small farmers.”
ajh
Dust Bowl America
I’ve been looking through some books and photographs of the Dust Bowl.
ajh
1941, Seattle
My great uncle died earlier this year, in February. He lived to the age of 101. Before his death, I interviewed him in-depth multiple times about his life and what he remembered.
He taught me a bunch, indulging what corn cribs are, the storms of the Dust Bowl, and a slew of humorous stories, his particular talent, which I wish had been documented in some way.
While living in Seattle, from 1939 to 1941, he was recorded in the phone book, which are quite hefty to lug around. He lived with the Neilson family, who came from the same South Dakota town as him, Lake Preston.
Nineteen forty-one was a pivotal year. Everett married his longtime girlfriend, his father died from cancer, and the Japanese launched a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, prompting America’s entry into the Second World War.
The death of his father, George Hay, impelled him and his newlywed wife to return to South Dakota, where he took over operation of the family farm, until doctor’s orders made him give it up in 1953, the year they returned to the Pacific Northwest, moving to a berry farm in the Willamette Valley in Oregon.
ajh
Ezra’s Farm in 1860
By the Numbers
Six bushels of Irish potatoes. Are Russet potatoes Irish potatoes? That’s what I am assuming.
Two hundred pounds of butter! He and Caroline, who I am sure did most, if not all of the churning, had 200 lbs. of butter on hand?!
Ten tons of hay. That’s a lotta hay. And their granddaughter Geneva, my great grandmother, would go on to marry a man named Hay.
Forty gallons of molasses. What’s that for, cooking & baking?
Eight pounds of beeswax. Candles? Soap?
Ezra had 180 acres of land, 40 of which were deemed “improved” and 140 considered “unimproved.” What these mean beyond the basic, fundamental understandings I don’t know. The cash value of the farm was recorded as $1440.
Eight milch cows. Gonna have to look up the word milch.
One working ox. Or given that it reads oxen, is that two?
And one “other cattle.” What’s the purpose of this one? Why a separate listing?
No sheep.
Twelve pigs. Or swine. Man, how I love bacon.
The value of the livestock was listed at $238.
There were 60 bushels of wheat and 300 bushels of Indian corn on hand.
It’s quite the list. Everything was tabulated on June 12, 1860 on his farm in Lime Creek Township, Washington County, Iowa.
There is a precipitous decline in these numbers on the 1870 ag census. Why? It is unclear. But did Ezra focus on other endeavors, such as the post office?
ajh
I love reading details about ancestors in books
Google Books is a terrific resource. Today, I learned a few more details about my great-great grandparents, John Conner and Ellen Lint.
I didn’t know that my great-great grandfather lived in Missouri before marrying Ellen and that he came to Iowa in 1873, the year of a
financial panic and the beginning of a depression. And he was still farming at the age of 66.
ajh
Three million is a heckuva lot of cage-free chickens
A corporate food producer plans on building a big egg farm near Lake Preston, South Dakota, hometown of my grandmother and great grandparents. The place will house three million cage-free egg-laying hens. It sounds like it will be quite the operation.
I visited my great grandparents farmstead a few years back, during a family reunion. It was fun. I was there with my nephews and lots o’ cousins.
I don’t have many memories of the place, though cousins have told me that we did visit the homestead as kids. I do recall my great grandmother’s funeral, which must have been at the now-shuttered Methodist church in town. My younger brother was crying, having been scared by seeing her laying in an open casket.
There’s a museum in town with items related to the family, including a lot of her father’s items from his dentistry practice.
I spent quite a bit of time in South Dakota that summer and just scratched the surface doing research on the family. In Watertown, my mom’s hometown, I pored through microfilm of old newspapers for a few days and only got through a year or two.
I also learned that I had lived there for the first two years of my life, which I didn’t realize, as I was born in Iowa. I really need to get back there to explore some more. Maybe I should just pick up and go for a bit this summer.
ajh
A Snapshot of Warren Hay’s Farm in 1860
Warren Hay, my great-great-great grandfather, was born into a family of farmers. He had a farm in Hanover Township, Ashland County, Ohio. On August 20th, 1860 the federal government conducted an agriculture survey of the area.
Warren had 44 acres of land, 34 that had been “improved,” and ten that hadn’t. The cash value of the farm was $1200, and he had equipment worth $300.
He had five horses, three milch cows, three cattle, forty-two sheep, ten pigs, with the total value of the livestock amounting to $450. He had one hundred bushels of Indian corn, fifty bushels of oats, and sixty lbs. of wool.
Sadly, Warren died four years later, in 1864 at the age of 42.
ajh
AARON HILL’S NOTEBOOK 