farming time

Tobacco cutting seems to be more exhausting than I remember it being. I spent most of the day cutting and didn't even get 500 sticks. Last year we had an amigo that could cut 1200 sticks on an average day. The work is harder than I thought. We have found a new source of help around, one of my brothers friends from high school that has nearly caught up with me cutting speed wise. This is a good sign for me, I don't neccessarily need to be known as our fastest cutter. We finished our first field in what amounted to 4 days, but Dad is keeping a pacing that I don't quite understand. He likes to keep cutting toacco when I think we should be hanging. If I was in charge, we would completely finish one field before we moved on the the next. He is ready to go and start cutting my field tomorrow. I may not be the expert sage that my grandpa and dad are, but the more tobacco we have on the ground, the faster we have to work if a rain is in the forecast. I think we should take it easy and get everything off of the ground before we put more on the ground. Muddy tobacco doesn't sell at the market at the end of the year. I did make up a nifty book that should help me get an idea of how much work each acre of tobacco is. From the first field we finished, it seems we have about 1300 sticks per acre and have to pay about 50 hours of labor per acre to put the crop in the barn.

I also took the oppurtunity to watch food inc. this weekend. While this doesn't put farmers and agriculture in the best of light, I thought it was very good. Our farm doesn't do the extreme feeding practices that are seen in the field. Our farm has 30 cows that are currently pasture grazing on grass. We are feeding our calves a corn mix with supplements, but they also have hay given to them everyday. What really surprised me is the leadership roles in our government. Many of the rule writers so to speak seem to have come from industry. This is very suspicous at first glance, but the more I thought about it the better it seems. If someone who wasn't in our industry was given the job, farmers in general wouldn't be happy. We want and need someone in the know who knows our needs and wants. They may be putting money in thier accounts and getting paid off from their former employ, The seed industry run by monsanto thing is the most worrysome to me. Hopefully I can navigate our farm into practices I am more comfortable with. Being pursued by monsanto and running up legal fees would be no good for anyone.

times typed "oftern"-0