Flee to the Fields, part 2: The case for subsistence farming

This is the second in a series of reflections on Flee to the Fields, the founding papers of the Catholic Land Movement....

Part 1: Why farming is not a business

"The Catholic Land Movement proposes Subsistence Farming as the first remedy. This does not mean, as its enemies assume, that the farmer lives on his farm as on a desert island, and sells nothing. Rates and Taxes alone would make this impracticable. Subsistence Farming means that the farmer grows the greatest practicable variety of crops, with a view to feeding first himself and his family. He sells his surplus, not his substance. For the farmer, on the whole, sells wholesale and buys retail. On the economic side alone, any practical diminution of this kind of traffic cannot fail to be a net gain to him." ~ HAROLD ROBBINS

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Reflection

I have a hard time explaining to people exactly what type of farmers we are. It is true that I work part-time from home. Even if farming brought in all of our income needs, I'd still be teaching.  I love teaching for Mother of Divine Grace, the online program directed at Catholic homeschoolers that my own boys are enrolled in. Yet we're hardly homesteaders or mere "hobby" farmers either, as more than half of our income last year derived from our working of the land. So we're not hobbyists, and despite the fact that we're Wisconsinites who milk goats twice a day, and despite the fact that the goats take up a lot of our daily attention here on the farm, I wouldn't dare say that we're dairy farmers either.

Perhaps the strongest case is that we are produce farmers. Last year we made nearly $14,000 off of garlic after expenses. We also grow enough winter squash, brussels, and cabbage to market these crops wholesale through a produce cooperative. But if we're produce farmers, we're awfully distracted produce farmers. We're distracted by the attention we pay to a growing herd of meat goats. We cut and baled nearly two thousand small squares of grassy-alfalfa hay last summer. We process and sell turkeys direct-to-consumer every Thanksgiving. We recently had a few sows farrow, and we have two steers that we're bottle feeding. 

I want to tell people that we're subsistence farmers because, really, that's the most accurate description. But I'm taken aback at how alien the concept is to many folks, even -- and perhaps especially -- the folks involved in agriculture. The concept of subsistence farming conjures up African farmers raising small plots of maize in desert conditions and living on the edge of starvation. Or it brings to mind people who enjoy living off of the land, but who earn the money to pay the bills by employment off of their homestead. Well, I can assure you that we're not starving. And as already noted, more than half of our income derives from our land.

When you talk to older folks, subsistence farming is only a generation or two back in time. The idea had been that you lived off of your land, and you sold things from the farm to pay for the items that you didn't produce for yourself -- new shoes, perhaps, or household luxuries, or the occasional new farm implement . This was the most common form of farming well into the 20th century. Then here in Wisconsin, dairying became a specialty. In other places, it became a cash crop like wheat, cotton, or corn. At some point it became easier simply to focus on the cash crop and to buy everything else ready-made.

And what is wrong with a total focus on a cash crop? Absolutely nothing in a good year, I suppose. But what happens in the year when your cash crop fails? If you are a subsistence farmer, then you don't buy household luxuries or new farm implements that year. You put away vegetables from the garden and butcher a hog. You stack wood in the shed, light a fire, and stay warm and well fed all winter as you plan and pray for a better year next year. If you're not a subsistence farmer, you'd better hope that the government intervenes with a highly subsidized crop insurance program. Seriously, American taxpayers, are you aware that you are paying farmers to focus on their cash crops? Why is that? Why are we paying farmers to produce so much corn that we are depleting our soil and inventing strange new uses for it? 

It's not subsistence farming that's strange, it's the other way around that is strange. Why in the world would a farmer concentrate on a single crop? If I were encouraged to do that, it'd be produce since produce is our major "cash" money maker here on the farm. The first few years I had to purchase fertilizer simply because there was no other option. Also the first year, I had the tough experience of learning that a great deal of produce is deemed unfit for the market due to the most annoying, tiniest of defects. In short, I had additional costs with respect to inputs, and I had product that was unsaleable. I was losing money on both ends of the equation. 

Add in livestock, however, as we gradually have, and loss becomes gain on both ends. After making up a $2,000 investment into an old manure spreader, our growing goat herd began to provide ample fertility for the produce acreage. Outside fertility runs about $700, and for that price you get pelletized chicken manure that can only be used for so many years before you risk the build-up of micronutrients like calcium. In three years we've already made up that investment, and the goats are still there producing more free fertility for the produce operation than ever. On dairies they call manure "liquid gold." For goats it's a little different-- a little dryer and easier to work with -- but just as valuable (and not as unbalanced by excessively high nitrogen).

Add some feeder pigs too, as we also have, and the loss of unsaleable produce becomes the gain on the other end. Last year we sold nearly a thousand pounds of zucchini to our wholesaler, for example. But for every saleable zucchini that is under seven and one half inches and perfectly cylindrical, there's another one that curves slightly or comes in too large or too fat. This past December we processed five feeder pigs that were fed on zucchini through June, July and August; that feasted on winter squash through September and October; and that were finished on brussels stems and leaves and fattening homegrown corn all the way through to their processing date.

It's so hard to account for all the benefits of subsistence farming on the balance sheet. For example, Rosemary objected the other day when I was grumbling about the cost of the goat herd. I pointed out that we'd be $5,000 richer if I sold the hay that the goats are burning through this winter rather than retaining it. I pointed out that we made only a few thousand dollars off of goat sales last spring, and that the herd only produced the equivalent of $700 worth of manure. But then Rosemary reminded me that we processed a number of cull goats and pressure canned their meat to keep our own hungry brood well fed. And depending on the time of year we get half a gallon to two gallons of milk per day. Consider the price of all the milk that the boys go through, and all the cheese that we've made and enjoyed, and Rosemary makes a convincing case that the goats actually turn a small profit. Add to this the fact that the size of the herd -- and therefore the real value of stock on the farm -- continues to increase without any cash inputs (apart from $350 spent on a buck with new bloodlines a year and a half ago).

The point is, subsistence farming doesn't necessarily look good on paper. But I can assure you, we're eating really well, and we stay warm through the winter. We have enough cash to pay the bills, even when things are a little tighter when one of our several cash crops fails, as our squash did the year before last. Which has me thinking that I should also write about Robbins' point in the quote above about growing the greatest practicable variety of crops. But maybe I'll save that for the next post!