Every year a busy Spring, and a seemingly endless hot Summer finally give way to the comforts and finality of Fall. It's around this time of year when I first start getting the signs things are coming to a close. The last batch of chickens is about to arrive. When they do the brooder countdown will be on. There have been baby chicks or turkeys staying warm in the brooder since late February, but in a couple of weeks we'll turn those lamps off and clean them out for the season. Turkeys are starting to reach market weight, soon they will be off to the processor. When the turkeys and all of their personality leave the farm, the finality of the year really sets in. As we harvest this last cutting of hay, we take more care to tidy up the fields and ditches so that they are clean going into the winter. Some seed will be planted in a couple of weeks and then these fields will be left to weather the winter season on their own (with a nice blanket of cool season grass of course). The cycle is my favorite part of farming. It's different from making widgets. making widgets is a fairly linear process. Parts (ingredients) come in the back door, they are manipulated and/or assembled in a certain way, then the widget goes out the front door. Unfortunately, many aspects of modern agriculture have evolved to greatly resemble widget making. Not here! Everything we do here is more circular in nature, a cycle. We can feed the cycle to make it work better. We can find ways to make the cycle a little more efficient. We can even layer the cycles on top of each other (my favorite), by running cattle and poultry across the same pastures (benefiting the cows, the chickens, and the pasture). What we cannot do is stop or drastically alter the cycle. Our role is to be a steward of the cycles, and we embrace that role.
