Eat Local KC

Fried chicken, mashed potatoes, green beans, and antibiotics.

I'm not normally a complainer.  I've been pretty lucky in life, and, even if I hadn't, I figure "what's the point."  I don't like annexation of rural property by burgeoning metro areas, I'm not a fan of seemingly monopolistic "ag service" companies forcing products upon small producers, and I hate to see small towns and Rural America (where I grew up) suffering.  I added another frustration to my list today....but first, let me back up and set the stage for you....

Have you ever noticed that when you try cooking those nice looking, easy to cook, CHEAP, boneless skinless chicken breasts, your pan fills up with weird looking liquid?  And then you end up with about 1/2 the size of meat you started with?  Oh, and lest I forget, they taste like a wad of wet paper?  Hence began my desire to raise chicken that tastes like chicken.  Hell, pretty soon we won't even understand the old adage "tastes like chicken" because we won't even remember that chicken used to have A TASTE! 

So, when we decided to buy a farm and start raising food, one of our goals that excited us the most was growing pastured broiler chickens, chickens that taste like chicken.  They would be started inside, in a very controlled environment, then put outside in a bottomless pen which is moved each day, allowing the birds to supplement their diet with green grass and bugs.  Most of today's chickens still need supplemental feed, so we have to purchase feed for the chicks.  Here is where my issue lies. 

Yesterday I had planned on buying my first chicks of the season, so my two year old and I headed to the farm store that was holding "chick days," intending to come home with our first 50 chicks of the season (we will raise an additional 200 or so throughout the spring and summer).  Luckily, having had problems in the past, I decided to buy our feed prior to buying the chicks.  However, after going to two feed stores and calling four others, all we could find was chicken feed medicated with antibiotics.  I have raised chickens for years without medicated feed, and growing up we had chickens every year, none of which were fed any medication.  In today's world however, we've apparently taken the view that without the miracle of antibiotics, we cannot even grow what nature has grown forever without us. I'm all for free markets, and if someone can find a way to build a business and make some money, go for it.  But please, keep it out of my food!

Personally, I can find ways around the medicated feed.  There are (thankfully) a few small custom feed mills left that will grind feed to meet my specs, and actually I am happy to support their local business instead of the agri-giants pouring medication on feed bound for food.  What really struck a nerve for me was all the other folks buying a handful of chicks to raise on their own, who didn't really stop to think about the antibiotic laden feed they were purchasing for their chicks.  I'm sure they are all there with good intentions, growing their own meat, "free" from all of the negatives associated with confined poultry.  But there they were, nonetheless, wheeling out bags of medicated feed, medication that will remain in their birds after slaughter and be served up next to the mashed potatoes and fresh green beans.  Raising these birds is a lot of work, as is growing the potatoes and green beans that go on the plate with them...too bad it is getting harder not to get a side of antibiotics along with it.

This Land is Your Land

  So, the issue at hand is the annexation of 9,600 acres of Southern Johnson County land by the city of Overland Park.  This amount of annexed land would amount to the largest expansion in the city's history.  This amount of land, if farmed in its entirety, would grow more than one million bushels of corn each year.  This amount of land, if managed properly, could grow enough vegetables, fruit and meat to feed more than 3,000 families every year.  Kept in its current state, this land is a natural buffer for pollution from population, rainwater runoff, and also serves as a tremendous carbon sink, thus serving as a check valve on global warming.  This land is beautiful land to drive through, to bike along, and to visit.  This land, in essence, is your land.

  However, due to current projections of growth, and obvious constraints that can only force any NEW DEVELOPMENT south, the city of Overland Park has advised that they, not Johnson County, are better suited to control the inevitable growth of the region.  Their idea is to develop the land correctly, allowing only high density housing in some regions, and green space in others.  Infrastructure needs would be controlled, and as such, tax dollars more wisely spent.  Makes sense to me.  Maybe this land should be their land.

  Growing up, I remember wanting a new baseball glove because I had left my old one out in the rain overnight.  Well, truth be told, it wasn't that old before I had left it in the rain, but now I really wanted a new one.  My father taught me the hard lesson that you don't get something new just because you didn't take care of the old one.  Man, I could just imagine the feel of the new glove, nicely oiled, with dimples in the palm, just like the big leaguers used!  But, my dad was right, I hadn't taken care of my old one, so, no new glove. 

  I guess my point about the glove, in relation to land annexation is why doesn't the city of Overland Park take better care of its old land?  I drive down 119th street now, once THE area of O.P..  I see abandoned stores and 'upper end' stores that have been replaced by less 'upper end' stores.  Where did they go?  135th street.  I'm sure the story is a repeat of what happened in the 95th and Metcalf area when 119th was developed, and to 87th and 75th before that.  To me, the city is just buying into our disposable society.  Tired and bored with your current development?  Annex some farmland!

  I know there are those that will say, "don't want annexation?  move further away from the city!  Johnson County has been one of the fastest growing metroplexes in the country for decades!  Get over it!"  The problem with that logic is one of the reasons that Overland Park and Johnson County have been so appealing for so long is its wonderful mix of urban amenities and beautiful rural surroundings. If the annexation occurs, and continues, this mix goes away, and the city loses.

The other reason that O.P. has been so appealing for so long for so many different citizens and businesses is the mix of people living and working there.  They bring a certain vibrancy to the area that doesn't exist elsewhere.  When you live in an urban subdivision and work with not only neighbors of that subdivision, but also people who live on 40 acres and commute 20 minutes to the office, you get a very unique office environment.  You build a community that is much stronger than a homogeneous population of cookie cutter houses.  Take that diversity away, and all of the sudden Corporate Woods becomes a lot duller place to work.

  As a farmer and landowner south of the proposed annexation area, I suppose I should be thinking about my financial future.  After all, in the short term, annexation equals more customers closer to my farm.  In the long term, the value of my land should increase as the city comes closer.  The reality, however, is that my farm is what I want to do.  I don't want to position myself in the path of urban sprawl, as a speculative land investment group would.  I want to be able to enjoy MY LAND as I want to, and I want my children to do the same.  I want to share the experience with those from Overland Park that want to enjoy it with me.  I want to continue to be able to look out my living room window at night and see only a smattering of lights, and know that each of those lights marks the home of a unique individual.  No homogeneity here.

If annexation is allowed to continue, I know it will reach my land some day.  I wonder how many empty Lazy Boy Furniture Gallery Showrooms will dot the landscape between my street (343rd street) and 119th street by then!  In a world where your food travels an average of 1,500 miles to reach your table, we fight wars over oil, and our inner cities are in disrepair, how much longer can we truly afford to keep pushing farms further away in order to "manage growth?"  I think it is time that city planners start thinking about how to take care of the old land before they go out and annex new land. 

Enjoy your next hamburger!

I hated to post so soon after my introductory blog, but I have had these thoughts rattling around in my head since Valentine's Day.  My day began very eventfully, very early in the morning...

You might not recall, but mid February this year was extremely cold and bitter.  Also, out here in the country, we had a solid sheet of ice covering everything for almost the entire month.  And I, like most beef producers in this area, found myself in the middle of calving season.

Most of the time, a mature cow can give birth to her calf with little if any human intervention.  After all, although some producers may not believe it, animals have been surviving without human intervention forever.  During extremely cold weather, however, a cow cannot warm her calf in time to keep it alive.  This, combined with the fact that my cows weren't mature cows, but first timers, meant that I was out checking on the mothers to be every two hours.  Two hours is about the time it takes for a cow to go from active labor to birth, so whether the cow is having trouble birthing the calf on her own, or if the calf is born and needs to be warmed and coddled a bit, I had about a two hour window within which I could be inside, warming up, resting, doing whatever.

On Valentine's Day, I checked my heifers at 1A.M., and it was 6 degrees with a strong north wind.  Needless to say, a newborn calf won't survive very long in those conditions.  On this particular trip out, I found a newborn calf, which was already frozen to the ground.  I literally peeled the new calf from the icy ground, and, with its mother in pursuit, carried the calf out of the lot and into a barn on the farm which is finished with living quarters and a wood burning stove.  I sat with the baby calf, coaxed its first meal of colostrum, a vitamin rich milk, into it, and waited for it to warm up.  Eventually, the new calf was able to eat on its own, and even got up on its feet and was bawling for mom.  My spirits were lifted, knowing that I'd leapt a big first hurdle, saving the calf from the cold.  However, not all of my troubles were over.  Anytime you take a new calf away from its mother, you run two big risks, one that the calf may not ever latch onto its mom once you reunite them, and the other that the cow may not accept the calf.  Luckily, when I marched the new calf back out into the cold, at around 8AM, and united her with her mother, they immediately bonded.

As I went back inside the house to shower and revive myself with some warm coffee, I was thinking about how many beef producers were going through the same struggles as I was, fighting the cold and ice to save one calf at a time.  For me it was hard enough, even with my small herd of 25 heifers.  But some of my friends and relative calved out over 200 cows this winter.  Not all stories are successes, but we have to work hard whether the calf ends up living or not.  In the end, we sell the calves that survive at some point, either through traditional channels where it will end up in a crowded feed lot, or, in my case, directly to the consumer.  Either way, as cow-calf producers, we all spend some time as mid-wife, and this winter, that role was extremely hard.  But, it is what we do.  We don't get paid more because we had to work 3rd shift to keep the calf alive, freezing our hands and feet in the process.  It is just what we do, in most cases because we don't want to do anything else.

So, as you cut into your next steak, or bite into that hamburger tomorrow, take just a moment to remember, food isn't fast, and food isn't easy.  Someone might have spent a Valentine's night out in the cold so you could enjoy wholesome, cheap, food this summer.  Bon appetit.

Allow me to introduce myself

Hello, my name is Marcus Moreland, and I am a food producer on a small farm south of Louisburg, KS.  I wanted to blog for the Eat Local Challenge because I believe it is important for people, both producers and consumers, to reconnect to food and food production.  As you may notice, I don't call myself a "farmer".  I come from a long line of farmers, I grew up on a farm, my wife grew up on a farm, our parents still farm, and each of us has one brother who farms.  We, however, consider ourselves food producers.  We believe farmers have moved away from producing food and toward producing raw materials for manufacturing;  more on this throughout my blogging.  We are not against typical farming per SE, but we realize that the typical farm upon which we grew up is no longer where food comes from.

Since we both grew up on farms and like the idea of raising children in a rural, farming environment, and since we both LOVE to cook and eat good food (and drink good wine), several years ago we bought our land with the intent of starting an organic farm and winery.  Now, more than 3 years later, we live on our farm with our daughter and two dogs.  We've produced vegetables, which we sold at farmer's markets one year, and through a CSA for a shortened season the following year, we raise and sell grass fed lamb, and we have grown many pastured chickens for ourselves, friends, and family.  This year we have added a herd of cattle, from which we will grow and market grass fed beef.

As a consumer and producer, I hope to add some insightful thoughts about food production, eating, and the greater socio-economic impacts of today's agriculture and diet.  While my beliefs of sustainably & locally produced food are passionate, I will devote some time in my blog to supporting and defending mainstream agriculture.  I look forward to writing for you, and I hope you find my comments thought provoking, informative, and, perhaps above all, entertaining.