Size matters!

First some good news: Baltimore orioles arrived at the grape jelly feeder this morning. Ruby-throated hummingbirds have been seen at both the front window and the rear deck nectar feeders. The water in the bird bath wasn't frozen this morning. A hen turkey has been showing up the past several days, apparently to check out any droppings from the deck feeders. In a subtle and understated way, her feathers are beautiful.

Second, it's cloudy again and supposed to shower this afternoon, but, we need the rain, sort of like we all need a shower from time to time. More less good news, the conservative area of Wisconsin we drove through last Friday just elected a Trump-supporting Republican in a special election. Pundits are arguing about  what that means. I say we may need rain from time to time but these days we don't need more Republicans. As I type up this blog posting, I can see more and more clearly why Harry Truman wanted a one-handed economist. But, these days finding lots of plain old good news is a challenge. The best we're able to come up with (and keep a straight face) is the old "... on the  one hand, ... etc."

we haven't found CAFO numbers for bison

Photo by J. Harrington

For example, we got excited when we read about Senator Booker's legislation placing a moratorium on large confined animal feed operations [CAFOs]. Then, this morning, we began to read through it and were appalled at the numbers required to be considered "large." According to Wikipedia, these are the numbers in current regulations:

Animal Sector	Large CAFOs	Medium CAFOs	Small CAFOs
cattle or cow/calf pairs	1,000 or more	300–999	less than 300
mature dairy cattle	700 or more	200–699	less than 200
turkeys	55,000 or more	16,500–54,999	less than 16,500
laying hens or broilers (liquid manure handling systems)	30,000 or more	9,000–29,999	less than 9,000
chickens other than laying hens (other than a liquid manure handling systems)	125,000 or more	37,500–124,999	less than 37,500
laying hens (other than a liquid manure handling systems)	82,000 or more	25,000–81,999	less than 25,000

We've lived in the country, toward the rural edge of the Twin Cities peri-urban area, for quite awhile. The air sometimes gets ripe in the Spring in some parts of our county. There's no way we'd want to live next to or downwind of most medium-sized CAFOs, let alone a large one. Our neighbors had a handful of horses and we could always tell when they mucked out the barn. Although not listed in the table above, a large horse CAFO is 500 head; sheep, 10,000. That's a lot of manure.

think about what to do with the manure from 500 of these

Photo by J. Harrington

We hope Senator Booker is successful with his proposed legislation, and we may return to this subject as we learn more about it, but we doubt very much it will make progress as long as substantial numbers of rural voters persist in voting Republican and urban folks believe cheap food is worth  destroying the countryside and the air and water we all depend on.

Becoming a Redwood

By Dana Gioia

Stand in a field long enough, and the sounds   

start up again. The crickets, the invisible   

toad who claims that change is possible,

And all the other life too small to name.   

First one, then another, until innumerable

they merge into the single voice of a summer hill.

Yes, it’s hard to stand still, hour after hour,   

fixed as a fencepost, hearing the steers

snort in the dark pasture, smelling the manure.

And paralyzed by the mystery of how a stone   

can bear to be a stone, the pain

the grass endures breaking through the earth’s crust.

Unimaginable the redwoods on the far hill,   

rooted for centuries, the living wood grown tall

and thickened with a hundred thousand days of light.

The old windmill creaks in perfect time

to the wind shaking the miles of pasture grass,   

and the last farmhouse light goes off.

Something moves nearby. Coyotes hunt   

these hills and packs of feral dogs.

But standing here at night accepts all that.

You are your own pale shadow in the quarter moon,   

moving more slowly than the crippled stars,   

part of the moonlight as the moonlight falls,

Part of the grass that answers the wind,

part of the midnight’s watchfulness that knows   

there is no silence but when danger comes.

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