In case you were wondering how regulations can strangle agriculture

Bob Greiff, 85 years-old at the time this photo was taken

Link

Bob farms 160 acres in Spokane County, Washington. He rotates alfalfa, oats, hay, and barley. His fields are evenly split by a road—two 80-acre tracts to the south and north of the ribbon. The property has been in the family since the 1930s and their water-rights (totalling 136 acre-feet per year) date back to 1949. In 1953, Bob's father ran a pipe beneath the road so he could irrigate the higher field which was flatter and had higher quality soil.

Bob uses rotation to break-up disease cycles and to minimize the money he spends on fertilizer.

In 2019 he was fined $121,000 and a lien was filed against his property because he was using some of the water on the OTHER SIDE OF THE ROAD from the parcel that was listed on the paperwork granting the water rights. Furthermore, he had to cease using the water on the better half of his property.

Bob has been contesting the fee based on how long he has been using the water on both sides of the road and the fact that they are contiguous properties AND HE DID NOT DRAW A DROP MORE THAN 136 acre-feet, EVER! He hired an expert. The expert found out:

“The research showed Bob’s water rights don’t cover south of the road. Ecology doesn’t seem to register the significance of irrigating in plain sight for decades, but I found an explanation for it. In 1968, Bob filed to irrigate both north and south, and it was approved in 1975. But when Ecology certified the right in 1983, they left out the south part, possibly in error.” 

The board verbally agreed to withdraw the assessment and liens but then changed their minds. 

As it stands, Bob has to take out a reverse-mortgage to pay the fine while it is contested.

List of the Water Conservancy Board for Spokane County, Washington

Sort of makes you wonder if anybody on the Irrigation Board has a nephew in real-estate. 

Hat-tip to Coyote Ken 

A few thoughts on the price of beef

The US cattle herd is at its lowest level since 1976. At that time, there were 216 million people living in the US. There are now approximately 340 million. On a per-capita basis, in 1976 there were 50% more cows per person than there are now.

I was surprised that the mass culling of cattle herds is not considered a major reason for the reduced number of cattle. Those actions primarily impacted dairy operations and the price of milk.

Rising costs to running a business are the primary drivers of the smaller cattle herds.

Cost of land

The cost of land in the Rocky Mountain states is at a historical high. It takes between 2000 and 10,000 acres to have a viable ranching operation in Wyoming. With costs running approximately $1800/acre for non-irrigated land, that means that you need to spin-off enough cash EVERY YEAR to pay the interest on a $3 million loan.

If you have a ranch near the low end, say 2000-to-2500 acres, you better have some water-rights so you can grow some irrigated alfalfa. That is going to bump the price up even more. 

It probably comes as no surprise that much of the land is being bid-up by people who made their fortunes in California and cashed-out their house in Silicon Valley or Los Angeles. THEY don't need to run an economically viable ranch so bidding "more than the land is worth" from a cash-flow perspective is a non-issue.

Another reason they don't typically try to run a viable cattle operation is that it consumes a huge amount of time and is often under brutal weather conditions. 2000 acres seems huge to somebody who lives in a suburb (it is, after all, more than three square miles) it is too small to pay for a professional manager. So the new owner might keep a few head of cattle around as animated lawn ornaments but will not keep the property alive as a viable business enterprise. Ergo, no calves sent to market.

Side note: Not all rich people do that. I have heard good things about Beau Turner (Ted Turner's kid). One nice thing about having an external supply of money is that he can experiment with different kinds of livestock and iron the kinks out of the system. 

Cost of interest

Interest impacts more than just the true-cost of the land.

Except for horses and camels, there are no other domesticated animals that take longer from birth-to-market than cattle. Furthermore, there is a long time-lag between when a heifer-calf drops and the age at which she can safely give birth to her first calf. Additionally, cows very rarely give birth to more than a single calf.

Together, that means that there is a very long time-lag between when economic signals trigger "expansion" and the actual number of carcasses being delivered to the meat-packers increase.

The rancher has to walk a fine line. If he holds back too many heifers he is foregoing revenue. If the increased prices are temporary he will have walked away from money on the table and be stuck with more mouths to feed after the prices tank. He bears the brunt of the carrying-costs of maintaining those animals and high interests rates makes that a brutal situation.

Cost of feed

A typical "value chain" for beef is that an operation in the Rocky Mountains runs a cow-calf operation. At a weight of 600 pounds the calf is sold at auction and purchased by a feedlot which feeds it a diet designed to first add muscle to the frame and then to add enough fat to meet the markets' demand for marbling. That diet is rich in grain and soy products.

If the price of grain and soy goes up, then the prices the feedlots can afford to pay at auction goes down.

Even though the ranchers in the Rocky Mountains feed very, very little grain to cattle, they know the dynamics between the cost of corn/sorgham/barley and the prices they will get at auction. When they read that Canada (for instance) is passing laws to limit the amount of fertilizer that farmers in Manitoba, Saskachewan and Alberta can use on crops, they know that the domino effect will cause a permanent rise in the price of grain in the US.

 

Fine Art Tuesday

Ernst Erwin Oehme was born in Dresden in 1831 and died in 1907.

Most of his work is done in heavy, dark colors or are overlaid with a hazy murkiness which remind me of winter in southern Michigan. Maybe he had cataracts.

A tip of the hat to Lucas Machias for suggesting this artist

Results oriented people need to know when to abandon their schedule

 

Skip ahead to the 2:55 mark to get to the meat of the video. I have been watching this guy's videos and I think he has his head screwed on straight. He is plain-spoken and doesn't seem to be interested in blowing smoke up anybody's pant-leg.

Today did not go as planned. Quicksilver insisted on dressing in a frilly dance outfit, so we did not go outside.

Then an opportunity to pick up some livestock popped up. Not only was it a species that is on my list, but it was the breed I was looking for and they were only ten miles away. Did I mention that they were at a VERY attractive price and it included three females and one male?

The only fly in the ointment is that I did not have housing set up for them because I hadn't been actively looking for them.

I reached out and made the deal. Drove over and collected the animals. Then they sat in the driveway while I cobbled together some housing.

Today's goal was to put together housing and a run that will contain them. Tomorrows goal is to make it predator proof and make it easier to maintain them.

Presented without comment

 

Rust, rot and depreciation are the agents of entropy

Much of what I am doing right now is either "not exciting" or involves activities that don't need to be advertised.

Not Exciting

The sides of my light work-coat were splitting out at the pockets.

I stitched them up today in an effort to get a few more months out of the coat. This and the previous picture are of the left side.

 

The right side was more involved and had been previously repaired.

More right side.

More more side.

Double-thread, #69, waxed, black polyester thread.

Not pretty enough to wear to the prom but plenty good enough for cutting wood with only the Blue Jays and squirrels for company.

The bottoms of the arms are the most tattered. I don't know if this damage is worth repairing. It is unsightly but doesn't impact the function of the coat.

The ability to milk a little more life out of old equipment is a valuable skill-set. Like all skills, it is perishable. I need to keep using them so I can be sure those skills will deliver when I really need them.
 

Odds-and-ends

What I am buying

Walmart had these for sale at an attractive price

I bought a new, light-weight work coat. My concern is that my work in the woods will shred my current one. I wanted a coat/jacket with a duck exterior for abrasion resistance, a very modest amount of quilted insulation, lots of pockets and a hood. 

I also did not want a brown coat (like most Carhartt's) because I work outside during firearm's deer season.

I think they are closing out this model as it is available in limited sizes and colors, but it fit the bill.

I bought some grass seed for Southern Belle's pasture. She had the brush removed and the ground beneath the brush is bare dirt. Rather than let random chance determine what grows there, I want to give it a helping hand. Festulolium "Gain" had good reviews from Wisconsin, grazing-based field trials. "Gain" showed good production and is highly palatable. "Gain" seed is also available in commerce which is a major bonus.

I also added to my supply of semi-precious, copper-based alloys.

I bought a 12V DC truck HVAC fan to cobble together a blower for the fireplace insert that can be powered by a solar panel. It was advertised as a 24V blower which is a better match for the output of my solar panels but there are ways to step-down voltage.

I bought a rope puller and some more logging chain.

Peppers

A friend asked me why I never write about peppers.

I like peppers but peppers no longer like me.

On a per-square-foot basis, nothing beats the amount of flavor you can get from hot peppers...although garlic gives them a darned good run for the money.

Alas, my digestion now takes offense at the mere passing of a chili's shadow over the pot of stew. My body is less sensitive to garlic...for now.

With regards to sweet peppers, Mrs ERJ likes bell peppers. Historically, we have only gotten reliable yields from hybrid bell peppers. I like Stocky Red Roaster for yield, flavor and how well the plants stay upright. SRR is open pollinated. It is beautiful when cut into wagon-wheels and frozen for use on pizzas through the winter.

Arab Spring

A short history lesson: "Arab Spring" was the name used in the press as they reported the results of the CIA directed attempts at destabilization and regime-change in Muslim countries primarily lining the Mediterranean Sea. The countries where the efforts gained traction were:

• Tunisia
• Egypt
• Libya
• Bahrain
• Yemen
• Syria
• Morocco
• Jordan 

The domestic strife causes a surge in immigration from those countries to Europe which in-turn destabilized Europe by adding to their cultural woes and debt load.

I "get" that the Cartels are the hand inside of Venezuela's puppet government. I "get" that we have been in a one-sided undeclared war with those Cartels and I appreciate Trump is not allowing the narco-terrorists Cartels (the forces prosecuting that war) to hide behind the technical term of "civilian".

I still don't like externally forced regime-changes. 

What kind of prepper are you?

It seems to me that there is a fundamental decision that prepared people make at the start of our preparation journey.

One branch is to prepare in a way that will allow one's life-style to continue without any change. The stressors will be totally invisible. An example is to have a whole-house, natural gas powered generator that has logic to automatically isolate from the grid during a power interruption and turn itself on. The grid can totally fail and the only impact (as long as there is pressure in the gas pipeline) to the people in the house is that the lights might momentarily flicker.

That is the decision that Cynthia Rose made. She had been entertaining at her lake house up-North when a thunderstorm knocked out the power. The party stopped. She vowed that would never happen again and had a $20k generator installed. Problem solved!

That seems to be the default branch for wealthy people, to build a bunker in Fiji or some other "safe place" so the party can go on.

The other branch involves fundamental steps down in lifestyle. It also means accepting the cascade-effects of those steps down.

Using heating as an example, it IS possible to heat your entire house with an outside, woodpellet-burning boiler and have very little impact on your life. Near the other end of the spectrum is to have an indoor woodstove heating one "warm room" and allow enough heat to leak out of that room to keep the plumbing from freezing.

Among the cascading effects of the warm-room strategy is that you will be severely restricted on the amount of laundry you can dry. Remember, that moisture has to go someplace. You can dry it in your warm-room but the water vapor will condense on the insides of your windows, around the power outlets in exterior walls and in your ceiling. That means that you will rewear your exterior clothes several times between washings, you will wear aprons to keep your exterior clothes clean and you will primarily be washing socks and underwear. You will also be scheduling your laundry day by the weather forecast. 

There is a significant difference in the amount of firewood demanded by the two different strategies. In a resource-starved environment, the warm-room strategy seems to make the most sense, especially if it is mainly heated during the daylight hours with a hot, no-smoke fire that fully combusts the wood.

So where am I going with this?

My back-of-envelop calcs are that if my insert burns four-or-five pounds of wood an hour and if I only burn it during the daylight hours from November 1-through-April 1 that I need 7500 pounds of wood. 

A cord of dry gopherwood (cottonwood, aspen, pine) weighs about 2000 pounds. A densely packed cord of seasoned oak or Black Locust might weigh 4000 pounds.

A cord of wood fits on two, 48", square-pallets when stacked to 48" in height.

In theory, I could stack 4000 pounds of gopherwood or 8000 pounds of premium hardwood on four pallets. In practice, I figure I need six pallets because the ends of the stack are rarely vertical and the wood I am cutting is rarely perfectly straight.

At this point, somebody is going to comment "There is no way in Hades that you will be heating your house in Michigan for the entire winter with only two cords of firewood."

Dude, I agree. I cannot heat my entire house with two cords. I am only planning on heating one room toasty warm, and only for the daylight hours. And I am shooting for three full cords because it can be darned chilly in April. Also, I am not planning to cook over a wood stove. The amount of LP needed to cook food isn't huge.