Farmer Musings

It’s All About The Grass June 2025 Today was a monumental day for the farm.  I made my first bale of hay. In fact, I baled my entire “first cut” for 2025 today and got it put up in the hoop house.  Now this might not sound very exciting – farmers make hay all the time. In fact, if you live rurally, chances are that, over the last week or two, you’ve passed many full hay wagons or tractors with balers trundling from field to field while the weather is nice. Make hay while the sun shines and all that. So, while everyone was panicking about heat waves and warnings, I was making windrows and rotating them around to dry out something that people don’t really think about: Grass.  As I pulled my ancient New Holland Super 55 rake around, I started looking at the long fluffy rows of faintly green and golden stems and saw it for what it really was – the real reason for everything I’m doing here.  If you’ve followed us for any length of time, you’ll have seen Kate or myself talking about soil quality, organic matter, water and carbon retention. You’ll hear about keeping trees in the pasture to add to biodiversity and to give our grazing animals something to do and somewhere to hide from the elements. One thing I’ve struggled to properly articulate to people is what exactly I’m doing here. Of course; environmentalism, carbon sequestration, resilience in the face of a drought – these are all good things and are worth striving for. What it doesn’t explain is how this is actually farming and what separates it from any other farm besides buzzwords. So what exactly is the weirdo near Waupoos up to? Basically, I’m a grass farmer. If you drew a giant thought map of everything I’m doing here, eventually every line would end up meeting at the same point – the grass.  “Pasture” is a fancy term we use for the areas of the farm that our grazing animals forage and move from place to place. What makes the pasture a pasture instead of a cornfield or an orchard, is what grows on it – and what grows on it is grass. We talk about our paddock rotation sometimes, and this is what’s known as “rotational grazing”. Rotational grazing serves a few purposes; firstly, the animals don’t spend too long in a single location so they don’t overgraze and damage the grasses. Secondly, it keeps the animals moving so their manure gets spread all over the farm where it can be absorbed into the soil naturally, and prevents a materials handling problem for me. Why do we want the manure spread around nicely? To improve the soil and thereby improve the grass. We run chicken tractors across the paddocks after everyone else. The broiler chickens scratch at the ground lightly and leave trail of droppings along their path that create an incredible deep rich green grass that lasts for years after they’ve moved along. The rich green grass represents all the nitrogen and other nutrients that have been absorbed into the soil which helps improve the grass. We have a pretty large compost pile which consists of winter bedding, old hay, wood chips, and yes – the occasional deceased animal. It runs red hot and makes the most incredible rich compost that we use in our vegetable and berry gardens. The other place we use it? We broadcast it around the pastures to help improve the soil which will improve the grasses. The trees we keep around the pastures do serve environmental purposes. However, they also help cool areas of the pastures and their deep roots help pump water around when grasses alone couldn’t. Their shade helps alleviate evaporation from the soil when the grass is cut short or grazed. My son rode the hay wagon into the pasture from the house tonight and exclaimed: “wow, it’s a lot cooler back here!”. Yes buddy, it is. And do you know why? The trees, and the thick rich pasture which helps retain moisture and absorb the sun, stealing the rays of light for themselves and not just baking us. Draw another line directly to the grass. You can see where I’m going with all this. Better soil absorbs and holds more water. Better soil absorbs and sequesters carbon. So do the trees. Trees help protect and synergize with the pasture to improve the system as a whole. And on the surface, an evolved ape with a floppy green hat moves around homemade chicken tractors and a ragtag flock of sheep with one mission – to improve the grass. Now, the next foundational piece of the puzzle is fitting into place.  For the last three years, I’ve bought my winter hay for the sheep, rabbits, and chickens (yes chickens like hay). It’s a necessity, but I’ve always considered it a bit like cheating. I’m essentially importing nutrients every time I bring feed onto the farm.  Now the grass from the farm will become our winter feed and bedding, go into the compost, and then be broadcast back onto the fields, increasing their vigor. Another piece of the circle has clicked into the nutrient cycle on our farm. So to come back around to where I started, it’s all about the grasses. All the fighting with invasives, picking seed pods off dog strangling vine, mowing down grass that went to seed even when not grazing it. All the composting, environmental efforts, and carbon and water sequestration efforts are actually clever ways of improving the soil which improves the grass which improves the forage for the animals and the hay for the winter. The more hay and feed we make, the less I have to buy. The less I have to buy the more economical the farm becomes. When we say ‘sustainable’ this is what we mean. Using every inch of what we have and figuring out a way to leave the land better than when we arrived, all

Buying Local: Beyond the Buzzword May 2025 I’ve been wanting to talk about “buying local” for a while now. As a farmer, it’s been fascinating to watch the growing number of people suddenly start paying attention to where their food and goods are coming from. I don’t mean that as a passive-aggressive jab – really. It’s just that, for those of us on the production side, the origin of everything we use is always top of mind. And it’s rarely simple. Here’s an example: Should I use full aluminum wire for this section of electric fence? It’ll last forever, but I have to ship it from Alberta. Alternatively, I could use a poly line (essentially braided plastic with copper filament) that was made in China, but is available at the locally-owned farm store. They cost about the same. So what’s the right choice? And that’s the thing. There often isn’t a perfect solution, just trade-offs. My daily life in the pasture is a running series of these decisions. Where should I buy my breeder stock? Should I take a chance at auction for a deal, or go directly to a trusted farmer and pay a premium knowing every dollar stays in their pocket? Should I buy organic feed from London, Ontario, 500 km away, or go with conventional grains grown by my neighbor? Farmer-author Joel Salatin once said: “Imagine a farmer standing in a field alone with his herd of Gotland sheep. But he is not alone – he is attached to a thousand strings, all pulling in different directions.” That’s what it feels like. As a farmer, environmentalist, realist, father, husband, and business owner, you constantly wrestle with these questions, so it’s been heartening to see people start asking their own questions like, “What does ‘Made in Canada’ really mean? What about ‘Product of’ or ‘Produced in’”? Just asking those questions is a powerful start. In a world that’s become so heavily globalized, it’s easy to assume that when you reach for something, some multinational has it ready for you: don’t ask where it came from or who gets paid. But maybe it’s time to begin asking that again. As the old saying goes: “What’s the best time to plant a tree? Ten years ago. What’s the second-best time? Today!” In my opinion, the best place to start this journey is with food. Nothing is more essential than what we put into our bodies and, when you buy directly from a small farmer, your money stays right here in your community. Let’s do a quick thought experiment. Say you buy pork from us here at RTE. Here’s where most of that money goes: Weaner pigs – From local, reputable farms (Belleville, Foxboro, Odessa) Veterinary care – Quinte Vet Services (on-site and via correspondence) Feed grains – 100% Ontario grown, milled and locally distributed (In Quinte, or Eastern Ontario at large) Abattoir – Sprigglan Meats (Wellington) And that’s just the pork-specific expenditures. At a higher, more generalized farm level, our expenditures are even more locally-focused: Truck/trailer maintenance – JC Auto Tire work – Armstrong Tire Tractor parts – Anderson’s Equipment Supplies – Picton Farm Supply and Country Farm Centre   And all of that is just one slice of our farm operations! Each of our enterprises – pigs, sheep, chickens, maple syrup, rabbit – has its own network of local suppliers, trades, and supporting businesses. Real people. Real places. It’s not just “local”, it’s community; and it’s something you can sink your teeth into. This is why, to me, buying “Canadian” is a good start, but it doesn’t really go far enough. Is buying Canadian apples from a faceless box store the same as buying apples directly from a grower? Not really, no. But the good news is that it has never been easier to find the people growing or making what you need! Some of the responsibility falls to us: the farmers. We haven’t always been great at being visible or accessible. Tractors and greenhouses usually do what you ask. People, not so much. But we are learning: even if it’s sometimes kicking and screaming. And now, more of us then ever are pulling back the curtain and showing what we actually do every day. It’s about more than agri-tourism or pick-your-own apples. It’s about opening up and offering something you’ll never find in a shrink-wrapped package: real connection. Years ago, long before recent global events nudged us all to reconsider our supply chains, a friend of mine asked a simple but profound question: How do I participate? From his Toronto condo, surrounded by glass towers, it wasn’t obvious. And this is where eaters (i.e., the rest of us) come in. We’ve all heard the stories of someone posing as a farmer and reselling produce from the terminal at a markup. And while that may happen on the rare occasion, it’s not the norm. Most farmers are out here doing honest work.  So, here are a few tips to help you buy better: whether you’re in the city or the country. If You’re in a City or Suburban Area: A great starting place is to simply go to your local market and check out the variety of vendors there! Compare prices. Yes, good food often costs more, but do you really want the cheapest option? Shop like you’re hunting for the right pair of boots, not bargain-bin sneakers. Talk to the farmers. Ask how they grow or raise their food. You’re not interrogating, you’re building a relationship. Look for transparency. After a few conversations, the producer should invite you to visit their location, or at least show you their operation virtually. That’s rare in the industrial food chain, but normal with small farms. Follow them on social media. Choose farms that show the reality of daily life, not just glossy ads. If You’re in a Rural Area: You’ve got a head start as local vendors are everywhere! Drive around and you’re likely to find a scattering of “open” signs / flags with a plethora of offerings.

A Case for Stewardship December 2024 This article started as some errant thoughts when I was scrolling through social media.  There are a few social media accounts that I follow (which are fairly well known, but will herein remain unnamed) that are strictly vegetarian and, what would appear to be, anti-rural; or at least oblivious to the fact that some people like living in the country and not everyone is a city enjoyer. Now, of course everyone is entitled to their opinion (even if it’s wrong ) , but one point that comes up time and again with the anti-animal agriculture activist is that virtually all livestock farming is unethical from an environmental standpoint.  Animal agriculture uses too much land for grazing and too much land to grow grains to feed non-ruminant animals (like chickens and pigs). All that land, even quality farm land, should be re-naturalized and left to its own devices to heal itself from the horrors of humanity and prosper without those pesky humans ruining everything!  But between fiery, anti-agriculture / anti-rural, posts and articles (which are usually of high quality and contain data), there are light and fun photos of the account owners doing things like enjoying a secluded beach with their domestic dog. We will come to the topic of domestic pets shortly.Now, I am not at odds with every aspect of the position taken by these vegetarian activists. Humans have, after all, spent the last 100,000 years essentially ruining every environment that they encountered. But I do start to take issue with someone’s personal opinions when their opinions affect my life, my work, and my life’s mission – and it is, arguably, incomplete. In the book ‘Sapiens’, Yuval Noah Harari creates a very strong historical case to show that, according to the fossil record, as soon as evidence of humans appears in a region, virtually all the megafauna immediately go extinct. Once humans became seafaring, the clock started ticking for everything that didn’t have giant teeth and claws. Only some extremely secluded islands like Madagascar and the Galapagos survived our prehistoric explorations – and we spread across the earth extremely quickly (from a historical context). I know that starting with “humans have been ruining everything since time began” doesn’t seem like a good foundation for an anti anti-agriculture argument, but trust me. I am going somewhere with this.  Humans have forever been shortsightedly eliminating everything that lives. Sometimes, like in the ancient world, our conquest of the natural world would have been born of necessity; if I have a pointy stick and nothing to eat, it’s reasonable that an unfortunate Diprotodon would end up on the other side of it. These days, however, with New Zealand lamb, oranges from Florida, grapes from California, and canned pears from South Africa all adorning the shelves of your local supermarket, it’s hard to keep “necessity” in context. What I’m saying is, humans have long been doing what humans do: led by our desire to survive. Then suddenly, in the 19th and 20th century, humans started riding a wave of cheap fossil fuels. Moving people became cheap and fast. Ships from Europe came regularly. Planes traveled around continents with ease. Suddenly, people (and more importantly – unintended stowaways) from everywhere were now everywhere else virtually instantly.  Think about all the wildly damaging species that have been devastating native flora and fauna even in our own short lives: Dutch Elm Disease, Emerald Ash Borer, Japanese Knotweed, Zebra Mussels, Sea Lamprey, Gobie. The list goes on and on. These species have devastated native populations of grasses, leguminous plants, trees, animals, fish, and birds. And then there’s the indirect human impacts. In Canada every year, domestic cats kill 200 million birds. There are 8.5 million domestic cats in Canada compared to 6,000 cougars. Approximately 8 million domestic dogs compared to 55,000 wolves. Why am I talking about things like invasive species, petroleum, dwindling songbirds, and super-predator populations? What I’ve been slowly bringing in to land is that, to put it bluntly, this is the hand of cards we have been dealt. While we might not agree with the way things have happened, our predecessors did what they did and we are where we are.  Such begins my case for forward-looking land stewardship. Grasslands are an integral part of any environment. Whether it’s in Alaska or Southern Ontario, a key component to any biome is grasslands. One very important aspect to this specific ecosystem is the edge where a forest or brushy area meets short and medium grasses. This is where a huge majority of action – of life – happens. Wild turkeys like to live in forests and brush, but specifically seek out openings like pastures and other farmland to feed and can be seen grazing these areas alongside deer.  On our farm, we have a small 6 acre pasture carved out of the bush. To the south is our hardwood forest, to the north are wetlands, and straddling the pasture on the east and west are mixed forests and old, abandoned farm fields. That pasture is home to a revolving door of species that come to forage off the short grass that I chop once per year as we prepare it for grazing animals. As the year goes on, the abandoned farm fields east of my property overgrow. Thistles and dog strangling vines can be seen flowering and seeding. What grass remaining in these fields grows, goes to seed, and then languishes: turning brown and blocking the sun from hitting the ground. The area that I mow is green and lush, the new flowers of Queen Anne’s lace, new milkweed growth, and the beginnings of clover patches sprout proudly from the ground. Deer congregate around the southeast corner, grazing on the greens while the fields of dry brown grasses stay un-grazed and abandoned. There is no better way to see the benefits of caring for the land responsibly than living on it every day. Since taking over the farm in

The absolute state of being a small Scale egg farmer in ontario August 2024 This essay is piggybacking off of a YouTube video I did on the economics of being a small scale egg producer (100 or less hens) in which I spoke about some nitty gritty elements related to expenses, marketing, and whether or not you can actually make any money. In this piece, I’d like to dig into the regulatory state of trying to produce eggs on a small scale in Ontario.  I got thinking about this after I had a conversation with a customer at our farm. She wanted some eggs and, after running inside to get some for her, she told me she would love to stop by on her way back into the city to pick some up. “Sure” I said, expecting her to want a dozen or two. “How about a dozen, dozen” she responded matter of factly. I explained to her that 12 dozen would be 3 or 4 days worth of production for my free range flock. She looked disappointed and I was disappointed that I couldn’t provide what she wanted – and that I was forced to let a good sale go due to something outside of my control.  Now, in my definitely very free province of Ontario, nobodies like me are allowed to own an absolute maximum of 100 laying hens. Why is this? Is it for the protection of the birds? The protection of me? The protection of you? Let’s look at the pork industry for a second. There are currently no regulations defining how many hogs I can have: I could have two, or twenty, or two hundred. Nobody wants to come and inspect my property to ensure they have adequate space. Nobody comes to look at what I’m feeding them. Pigs, as you probably know, have the capacity to be a vector for human diseases and can be highly destructive to property if they escape. Yet there is no regulatory body preventing me from doing whatever I want with pigs on my own property.  Now, I’m not looking for some overzealous government employee to jump up out of their chair and hurry off to regulate my modest hog operation. I’m just shining a light on one of my other enterprises to show the lack of congruency in regulations for farmers.  All of my animals are regulated by different governing bodies that have varying levels of control over their respective industries. Chickens, and chicken eggs, are one of those industries that lean almost into cartel territory. For chicken eggs, specifically, the governing body in Ontario is the Egg Farmers of Ontario (EFO); a private body that has been deputized with regulating egg production within Ontario including the who, what, when, where and why you can access eggs. Like other government-adjacent corporations, they are run by people you and I did not elect. In fact, you likely have not, and will never hear about the people running the EFO or, in most cases, the EFO itself.  As a small scale egg producer, the EFO mandates that I may only have 100 hens. I also cannot sell my eggs anywhere outside of my own property without first undergoing an expensive and time consuming ‘grading’ operation which, it should be noted, is not generally available or viable for such a small amount of eggs. The EFO can show up at any time to confirm these rules are followed. Case in point, if I try to sell some eggs out of a cooler to people at the local arena, the EFO can come with a cease and desist – or else.  I know some backyard chicken holders might not think 100 chickens produce a ‘small’ amount of eggs, but keep in mind a chicken lays, at best, one egg daily. The production of my free-range heritage flock is booked solid every week at my little on-site farm stand. I also don’t think the 100 bird max is for the protection of the birds. Here’s a photo taken from a training video provided for me in my artisanal broiler chicken farming program. This is a battery cage hen, clearly worse for wear, who is in fact alive at the time this screenshot is taken. Battery cages – where birds are crammed into tiny cages and unable to flap their wings or stretch, are currently how the majority of eggs in Ontario are currently grown. Notably, the growers employing this practice happily have their quota.  The chicken in this photo is ‘inside’ the system, while I am outside it. This hen does not look very protected to me.  **Note – The source video for this image is on vimeo and I am unable to provide a link as it’s only accessible through certain accounts such as my meat chicken governing body** So back to my question: Why the limit? Could it be to protect the existing egg farmers from competition? So, you say “stop being a silly libertarian and play ball! Get in the official system and start producing eggs!” Okay let’s explore that.  If I want to play ball, I need to purchase “quota” from the governing body. Quota speaks to how many chickens – or ‘units’ as they call it – I am allowed to have on my farm. What do you think the minimum quota required to get involved is? After scouring documents, forms, and contracts I can only find the following number: 5000. And, as of 2022, according to the EFO, a “unit” was $295 (**UPDATE** as of 2025 this unit cost has increased to ~$450).  So, to step foot into the “real” world of growing eggs, I need to lay out $1,475,000. Yes, one million four hundred and seventy five thousand dollars.  This is just for the privilege to grow the eggs. It doesn’t include the actual chickens, or the barns, or the silos, or the myriad of other equipment that would cost another million or two to get started. How in the world do they expect anyone to get involved? Ah, but they’ve