When Good Things Happen to Good People

Last Saturday night found Main Street Clinton, MN packed with cars and an overflow crowd at the Memorial Building. It was a community gathering in support of a steadfast neighbor who found himself with a severe health crisis.

In all honesty, it is the first of such events I've ever been to in my life. Sure, I've seen posters and even sent in an occasional check or stuck a couple bucks into the coffee cans sitting on convenience store counter tops. But I hadn't ever attended or brought food to contribute. So, it was another of life's firsts for me.

The particular gentle man for whom this event was held is, as one of the people in line for dinner said, "an old-school good guy." He didn't just offer to help everyone, even those he didn't know well, he just stepped in an lent a hand. For example, just last fall I went to Ortonville to pick up some furniture. This kind hearted "Norwegian" bachelor farmer was in the store and quietly lugged a few loads to my car with a smile on his face. I first met him in church where, week after week and year after year, he ushered the congregants in and out. He was the youngish guy with a great head of dark hair and gentle smile. Being usher, you don't exchange a lot of words, but tend to each person as they come and go from the sanctuary.

And then just like that, he's struck with cancer and goes from being a strong vital farmer to being, well, disabled. A lesson for all of us about this ephemeral life.

And so on Saturday night 500 people showed up (in a town of 400 people) to help out a quiet, solid neighbor, friend, and relative. And I think 'what a treat to know that you are beloved-- beloved by your community.' In life, you seldom see such a dramatic display of what you mean to the people around you. Generally speaking, a person has to die to have such a gathering in their memory/honor.


So I don't mean to be flippant, because a sudden and traumatic health crisis is a tragedy. But sometimes, just sometimes really good things happen to really good people.

Last Picture Snow

The last of good sledding for winter 2010-2011

Even though we woke up this morning to snow covered fields, these are the last snowy pictures I'm posting for winter 2010-2011. By all accounts, it's been a long winter. I think we're approaching 100 inches of snow, record snow days, and community fatigue with all things dark, cold and wintery.


Spring is so much later this year. All our Girl Scout cookies were eaten before there was any sign of snow melt or migrating birds. At least the birds knew enough to delay coming north this year (or so it seems). I'm afraid I missed the waterfowl migration this year. Too much traveling to other places. But I did get to see a few swans, geese and ducks as they passed through the farm. Not in as many as years past. The Pelicans are returning flock by flock. They are so dramatic and rhythmic in the sky.

Landlocked (or My Big Wet Squishy County

Road going north from our farm (note: the land on either side of the road is our normal crop land)

A few days ago the Otrey township supervisor stopped by our farm to let us know the road had been washed out to the south of our farm. Not a huge problem since we can get off our farm by going north. Then on Monday, the flood waters washed out the road to the north of us. We were landlocked.

From my point of view it is a grand adventure-- Headline: "Prairie Family Landlocked on Farm." Mike didn't find it anywhere near as invigorating as I did. In fact, it gave him nightmares. Within a day or so the water was down, the county brought in a few loads of gravel, and we were mobile once more. Hardly even an inconvenience. Since it is still April, there's still every hope that we'll be able to get crops in the field in good time.

As it turns out, one of the reasons I had to drive away from my lovely farm was to get to a meeting at the U of M's Center for Transportation Studies. The juxtaposition of having washed out township and county roads at the exact same time that I have to drive to this prestigious Center to discuss sustainable transportation over the next 25 years is priceless.

I am grateful for good roads. I am grateful for a responsive and caring township and county. I am grateful for the speed and comfort of individual car transportation. I don't take it for granted-- at least not all of the time.

But how can we as a society continue to support the extensive transportation infrastructure that we have? Oil is at $112.12 a barrel at this moment. Our asphalt roads are, simply put, concentrated hard packed oil. Besides which, I do not believe that the earth is a gooey nougat of unlimited oil. We're going to have to rethink this sooner or later. Maybe our gravel roads are easier to maintain and I am THANKFUL that they are, but really-- we are the only family living on this road. Those two flood washed out road repairs-- they will be done for us and for all practical purposes, only us.

I got into a fight on a RUPRI (Rural Policy Research Institute) call last month. It was a nationwide call to talk about the opportunities and impacts of renewable energy on rural communities. I said "hey! this is our chance to discuss how we can build communities around the sources of renewable energy. Instead of building the infrastructure to bring energy from it's source (like our windy prairie) to concentrated populations areas (big cities), we can bring people to live where the energy is." Oh boy! That started the sparks flying. And when the argument got too hot, I was accused of not understanding the Laws of Physics. How do you spell "p-shaw"? Seems to me that it is the Law of the Center Sucking from the Periphery. The flow of resources is unidirectional- to centers of power.

Enough already.

If I had my druthers, I'd build up this rural renewable energy system with a switch that says "Us First." When energy gets to be in short supply, we flick the switch and keep our own lights on. Then watch as the people start flowing out the cities and to places like Buffalo Ridge, where they can still keep up on Facebook because the juice is stilling running there.

Well, here's hoping the roads are good enough that they can still reach us. Or maybe, I'll be happy to be land locked with a nice steady turbine blowing in the breeze.


[KJD Notes: This post may be a big more vitriolic than I actually feel. I suspect I'm affected by the closing this week of Minnesota Rural Partners. We lost another great advocated for thriving rural places....]

The Best Laid Schemes of Mice and Men

Our corn waiting to be planted... May 27, 2011

Any farmer seeing this picture will know that it's not looking good for us to get that corn seed planted in 2011. Time's up folks. The window is closed on planting corn in Big Stone County. Or I should say the window is closed on getting a corn crop planted and harvested. Same difference.

Time for plan B.

But first I'll reflect on plan A. A plan that was based on, well..., a form of greed. The decision process was not unlike the familiar "Make hay while the sun shines." Instead it was "Grow corn while the commodity prices are in the stratosphere." Corn at $7.50 a bushel was just simply too promising to say "no" to. Yeah, sure, we were going with the morally superior Organic Corn, but corn all the same. And we weren't going to market it as organic, just deliver it to the elevator with all the other RoundUp Ready GMO Corn. The decision was simply a "count your chickens (or corn as the case may be) before they hatch" calculation that we could make a chunk of farm payment off those 40 acres of corn-- even a fair to middlin' crop.

The sky got progressively darker this morning until is started to rain at 10:30am. When I stepped to the door as the rain started I yelled "NOooooo!!!" It is the second time this year that we were close, really close, to getting into the field when the rain started back up.


To add insult to injury, 80% of the State's corn crop is already in the field. You may not know me personally, but I don't take kindly to being in the trailing 20% of anything (except maybe in youth and those days of being the youngest person in the room are fading fast as well). I don't mind being on the fringe, but let's make it the leading fringe please. So it's depressing as hell, frankly, to be looking at this from my farm house window.

View of our silos from my 2nd floor window

Which leads me, finally, to Plan B. Oh yeah. There is no Plan B. Plan A is bought, paid for, and sitting on pallets on our machine shed floor.

One of my rare talents is to recite Robert Burns poems in my made up 1785 Scottish accent, with strong overtones of Minnesotan and a hint of Iron Range. But since the old Scottish is indecipherable, I'll leave you with the standard English version of the great Mr. Burns' last two stanzas of his immortal "To a Mouse, on Turning Her up in Her Nest with a Plough." Oh and ask me sometime to recite this for you... although you may have to buy me a couple beer first. And frankly, that's sounding pretty good about now. As they say "it's 5pm somewhere."

But little Mouse, you are not alone,
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best laid schemes of mice and men
Go often askew,
And leave us nothing but grief and pain,
For promised joy!


Still you are blest, compared with me!
The present only touches you:
But oh! I backward cast my eye,
On prospects dreary!
And forward, though I cannot see,
I guess and fear!

Five Feet High and Risin'

About a quarter of our farm is underwater. You can hear the water rushing through the large drainage pipe into the slough from about 1/4 mile away. It's not safe to walk from our house to the pond right now. The water is fast, ice cold, and treacherous.

An increasing portion of our farm is subjected to flooding due to the upstream drainage tiles that have been put in over the years. There's more and more incentive to install field drainage tile as the price of ag land and commodities rises. Big Stone County had not had such an aggressive tiling mindset, but it is increasing here. This is a complex issue with folks on all side and high emotions. We've waded into those hot waters. We're trying to find some peace on the extremes of the continuum-- from throwing in the towel and turning a recurring flooded area into a permanent wetland to installing more drainage for another part of our farm to seeing what regulatory interventions exist to stop the increase of tiling the points to our farm. I.e. we are both solving and exacerbating the problem.

That said, we're lucky. Our house and barn were built 100 years ago up on high spots on the farm. The thaw has been happening very slowly with the days only flirting with above freezing temperatures. It's only March 26th, so there's time for the water to go down before it is time to plant. Hope springs eternal- right?

One of my fictional heroes is Neighbor Rosicky from Willa Cather's short stories and novel. Anton Rosicky asked his wife to prepare a nice picnic on a particularly hot day during a drought. The young family enjoyed the unexpected break from farm work. As they relaxed, his wife asked if he wasn't worried about the effect of the heat on the crops. Nope, he said, no sense in worrying since the crops had all died in that day's heat.

We are no way as dependent on the land as the Rosicky's were in Cather's novel. But in keeping with being mindful of the moment to moment joys in Full Catastrophe Living (re: Jon Kabit-Zin) we enjoyed a wonderful dinner on Friday night. It was Mike's birthday and all three kids were at play practice with the Prairie Fire theater troupe. It was, by our calculations, the first time in 11+ years that Mike and I had dinner alone in our house. We took the best steak left from beef in the freezer, baked up our potatoes and the last of the squash, and sipped a fine Minnesota wine with some fresh sliced pear and smoked salmon. The sun sparkled on the water around the farm.


Our best hopes go to those facing flooding in the days and weeks to come.

The Stonehenge of Snowmen

Feb 2011 on the pond

For the very first time ever, I went to the pond by myself on a weekend. The kids were too tired to join me and, frankly, I didn't twist their arms. I try so hard to spend my weekends with my kids, but I needed a bit of time to myself. So I strapped on the snow shoes and headed down to the wildlife area alone.

As I snow shoed over the tops of the 5 foot high cattails I saw the remains of our snowmen from the trip there a few weeks ago. They were melted and the drifts had formed around them, scouring the ice bare.

There is something thrilling about finding the signs of people who passed this way before us. I remember the first time I came upon a rock stile in the wilderness, you know those stacks of rocks that mark a trail. I thought I had come upon an altar of some kind- a holy place. And maybe it was.
Those historic remains are all around us here in Big Stone County-- so many farmsteads that were once small, diversified farms. There are still standing windmills, barns, chicken coops, well hand pumps, wooden granaries and outhouses. To me, it is a comfort to see these sites on the land. Like those rock stiles that mark a way that someone went before me.


And there were our snowmen like yet another a historic relic on the prairie. A happy reminder of good times past.

Ag in the Middle

Blizzard Prep

The term "Ag in the middle" is given to farms of a certain size... Say 250 to about 650 acres. That's too small to justify the bigger, better, faster machinery. Yet too big to be a hobby. Lately it seems like we're In the middle of blizzards, decisions, arguments, and cold weather that seems to have no end (-11 and dropping right now).

You know, I sometimes stop and think that I wouldn't have to be in the middle of any of this. We are farmers by choice. I suspect most farmers are. But we had a comfy, easy life in the City. Double incomes, high end neighborhood, and I could bike or bus to work. And we left it by choice-- to farm-- to raise our kids on a farm-- and to create a legacy of healthy land and community.

As Mike and I were walking back to the house after getting the snow blower back on the JD 4440 (a tractor in the middle-- middle size and made closer to the middle of the last century than today) we talked over what to do with that north 40. "We came here to create a legacy for our kids" I remind him. "For whatever reason that just doesn't seem to figure in as much now" Mike said. And he's right.
Now that we're 3 years into this, we have to farm for us. This farm has to be what serves our wants and our needs. When we left the city, it was a dream. On this bitter cold night, it is reality.

We are late in making decisions for a 40 acre parcel that will be first year organic transition. Do we go for the short term, highest potential financial return for the coming field season? That would be planting some high density non-GMO corn. Or do we nurture the soil and plant some oats for hay (feed the cattle) mixed with some legumes for green manure? That would set us up for some better weed control and greater fertility for a future crop.

I suspect if we were conventional farmers the choices may be simpler- corn or soybeans.

And just when I was starting to feel whiny and overwhelmed by all of it, I remember to go outside to stoke the wood boiler. Outside in the pitch dark, I rake the orange coals and fill it up with wood. I take a walk down the driveway in the still, arctic air. The lights from the farmsteads around us are just blazing in the crisp, clear air. I can see stars crazy low on the horizon- unnaturally low. The Milky Way and stars are so bright they are making reflections on my glasses. I stop and the stillness is absolute and complete. Sunny nuzzles her nose in my hand. A person can be overwhelmed with the raw, unfiltered awesomeness of just being. Present.

A jet flies high across the sky. I watch it blinking, passing over and wonder if anyone on that jet to Seattle or Vancouver, BC is looking down on our dark and lonely land. They have no idea of what this place holds. Probably couldn't imagine how it feels to have the veil of modern life pulled and to be alone on a dark starlit prairie on frigid night.

I'm thinking we'll go with the corn.