This is Daisy eating her GM free corn stalks. She always pulls the best faces!
Minutes later the little red plane roared back overhead. And this time the spraying was very thorough and very close. The USDA has approved even heavier sprayings of crops and the soil now. Please be careful of what you eat. At its simplest we will wash an apple before we eat it but these mega crops are not washed before they are added to your cereals, breads, beef, etc, etc, etc. Not only corn and soy either, GM potato skins have some of the highest rates of residual pesticides than any other food, the list of dangerous foods is long. This is why I grow as much of my own food as I can. This is why I wish you could too. And this little plane on his second trip over the corn in the field next to me made me want to run for the hills. 
I just wanted to hide. To get far away from the industrial cropping. It is hard to farm the old fashioned way here.
And while we are on the bad news the chickpea is lost. I could not find him yesterday. Both peahens are back in the top of the barn looking a little confused. No sign of the baby. There is safety in numbers and little chickpea was a flock of one, next year we shall make a plan to increase the numbers and I will keep the hens in the Palace. What happened to your baby, Pania? Like the cats, we will never know. 
However with all the troubles that farm life throws at us the universe is always careful to deal some successes too. (The secret is to SEE the good stuff) and this good stuff is hard to miss. ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTY NINE bales of good dry hay off our little two acres of hay field.
Even The Hay Man was surprised. While he and his father baled the hay, his young sons and I went down the rows and picked some bags of fresh sweetcorn, to take home for their dinner. Yes, I know it was freshly sprayed, but hopefully the wrapping has kept the kernels safe.
The view from atop the stack of hay. My little square oasis.
This happens every year. The spraying. At least this time it was a very calm day and the spray dropped straight down so the farm was not hit with very much drift. But some will be on the hay and some will be on the vegetables. We can only hope that the fields of clover, that the bees are working at the moment, were not sprayed.
Last night we carried roughly half the bales of hay into the barn and today I shall do my best to carry the rest in by myself. It is The Matriarchs day out after I have visited The Old Codger, (Friday is a favourite day) and there is rain in the forecast for this afternoon so I had better get started and get the rest of that hay under cover. The scent of the newly baled hay is delicious!
You have a lovely day too. I have a fairly heavy busy day ahead but all the hard work makes sense when you have a good stock of hay at your back.
your friend on the farm, celi
The Kitchen's Garden 
51 responses to “This is why I can never be called Organic.”
I too am so sad to hear about little Chickpea and the many losses you have sustained yet handle–as bitsandbreadcrumbs says–with grace and care. I love the picture of Daisy and am happy you have had a wonderfully abundant harvest of hay. I don’t know whether this will feed your brood for the winter or not, as I’m a city gal, but it seems you’re very happy with it and that’s what counts.
Oh Celi, so sorry about that bloody plane! I know how hard it is to try and grow the right things, and then to have some ignorant bastard spray is so frustrating! Luckily I am not near any farm fields and surrounded by trees so I don’t have that problem on my small patch of veggies.
Question – do you know of a good seed company? Only I had been getting mine from Territorial Seed Company and have just found out they have links with Monsanto!!
I so hate the spray plane…I also dread the drift from the plane. Come sweet corn harvest the corn is sprayed every two days (EVERY TWO DAYS) after the corn starts making ears. Then in the in-between sprays….the last two days before harvest the harvest begins. You can count on a perfect ear of corn at your grocery store…not an corn worm in site of each and every beautiful row. The consumer demands perfection.
When I was a child we would go with a bucket of mineral oil and a rag (or our hands) and rub mineral oil on all the silks..it would deter the moth that laid the corn worm. My grandparents and parents would raise about two acres of sweet corn for our and others use.
Of course, there would be some ears that had that nasty corn worm in it, but we just broke off that part (chickens loved it) and into the pot the corn would go. I suppose you do something like that now.
When raising our children I did the same as my parents. Today I don’t raise sweet corn, but if we did I would do as I used to do. Mineral oil and a rag on the silks.
Your hay is lovely. We are off to hauling in our bales. Most of it is sold right now, we just have to get it into the yard.
Linda
http://coloradofarmlife.wordpress.com
http://deltacountyhistoricalsociety.wordpress.com
It leaves me speechless…it’s like some awful horror story, but if we read a book or saw a film about how we set out to kill ourselves and the planet by poisoning ourselves, we wouldn’t believe it. And the trouble is that you stop breathing too if you bury your head in the sand ! If that makes sense. Your efforts are so valiant… and at least you know that the sane world is behind you… that means bloggers !!!!
You must want to stand outside and shake your fist at the plane in the sky and curse and stamp. I know I would. 😦 But hooray for the hay nonetheless!
Sigh.
Oh – I hope Chickpea turns up, none the worse for his adventures. In my (limited) experience, Peahens (along with ducks) are kind of lackadaisical mothers. They just seem to be a bit vague at it. We have ducks nesting, hatching and raising ducklings at work, and every year they lose some if not all of them. It’s sad but it seems to be the way of things. Daisy looks like she’s having a whale of a time munching her way through the corn bits!
Doing what you can with what you’ve got is better than doing nothing at all and letting the greedy Corporate Bastards get away with it. Running away always sound good but staying and fighting means they don’t get carte blanch control. You are inspiration for many 🙂
Oh poor little Chickpea….maybe he will turn up…it could happen! I’m so sorry and don’t even get me started on the GM thing…Grrrrrrrrrrr…Don’t those people realize they have to feed their families the same poisoned food or just don’t they give a s…??
Anyway, you have a whole barn full now of good, healthy hay, so there is a bright side today! We still need to keep plugging forward in spite of the crap in our way…we can’t let them win!!
The good and the bad, as usual: If my maths is correct you should now have some 200 bales under cover: didn’t you say you needed about 350 altogether or am I taking that figure out of thin air? The security blanket is growing 🙂 ! The aerial spraying is horrifying: one of my current weekend tasks is to get as much info as possible about what happens Down Under: I know we have a whole lot less GM stuff than you and everything has to be marked: many foodstuffs here carry big ‘Non-GM’ labels . . . but pesticides and herbicides? I keep the peel on everything as most of the vitamins and minerals are situated there . . . ?
I did hear a Radio 4 programme some years ago that stated that all the soil in the western world will be contaminated with DDT for many years to come and it can be measured in our bodies. These days organic farming means that no pesticides have been used for a specified number of years, but it doesn’t mean that there aren’t any residuals in the soil. We could be kidding ourselves, though i’d prefer not to any any more chemicals to the soil – less is more 😉
I’m so thankful the hay was kept dry, baled and safely stored. That is sad about the cute little chickpea.
Nice hay! Brent has been bringing in the bales for the last two days. A tough job to do in this heat and manipulating the French countryside can be tricky.
The heat is the thing. We are very cool. Perfect weather for heavy work.. c
Congratulations on bringing in such a good crop of hay, successfully baled and stored. You are right about needing to focus on the good. It’s sad about the little chickpea, but I guess you help us all to realise that losing animals is an inevitable part of farm life.
I hate seeing that little plane coming so close, but I guess the spraying farmers don’t want to waste any of the nasty stuff and will put a lot of effort into getting it all onto their land rather than adjoining properties. Good that there was no wind.
You might enjoy the post about our family’s midwinter dinner and ritual. Like you, we extend the arms of our family to include others:
http://seasonalinspiration.blogspot.co.nz/2013/07/winter-magic.html
That first picture made me laugh!