Drought
9 09 2006I would like to say that our ranch looks as beautiful and green as the photo above, but we have been in one of the worst droughts anyone around here can remember. Extremely high temperatures for this area, hot windy days and absolutely no rain all summer have plagued all the ranchers and farmers in this corner of the state. It is a scary thing when folks are talking about having to start feeding their cattle hay in September! Many are selling their calves early and some are culling their herds so they can make it through the winter.
The hardest thing for me is that so many do not realize that the family rancher/farmer is almost a thing of the past. Like so many other family businesses, corporate America has taken over….that and the fact that so much of the meat and produce sold in grocery stores across the country do not even come from the U.S. Did you know that American ranchers are fighting for a bill called C.O.O.L. (Country of Origin Labeling) that would require your meat and produce to have a label showing where it was produced? We, in the industry, feel that Americans should know where the food they are eating comes from…goodness gracious, isn’t that more important than knowing where your tennis shoes were made? Did you know that most of the beef you buy, even in health food stores, comes from Argentina?
Well, I didn’t think I was going to say so much about this when I started!! I guess it is just that so many of our American icons, like the American Cowboy, are falling prey to the culture of materialism and greed. It saddens me to see this.
It saddens me too. I wish I knew how to support small farms. In fact, we’ve considered farming ourselves, but have no experience. This year, 2 local pick-your-own-berries fields were bought out by housing developers, and I hate to see them go.
Thanks for hanging onto the American dream.
It *is* sad. And it’s true in many countries, not just the US — kids don’t know where their food comes from. Here at home we try to alleviate some of this by growing some of our own food, from seed. So the kids know just how hard our farmers work. We also subscribe to the local CSA. And you probably already know about the Eat Local movement.