When I asked Pam about writing a "Hidden Spring" for the March issue, she wasn't sure what to write about. She doesn't like to write too much about the down side of farming, which she had just been experiencing, and besides she was heading into a busy time. While the water pans for chickens and other animals still had ice that needed breaking each morning, she was also gearing up for lambing season. As labor-intensive as farming is, it always amazes me that she has the energy at work that she does.
My husband's brother also farms, in Australia. Angus left the life of the high-powered lawyer to buy land and follow his dream. He has 200 head of cattle, some grape vines, four dogs, some cats, and chickens. Sounds idyllic — at least it did when he first made the move.
For those of you who might not keep up with Australian news, there has been a very bad drought for five or six years now. Some scientists class it as possibly the worst in a thousand years in Australia. Angus bought his land just before the drought began. In his sixties, he and his partner Sally do almost all the hard work of the farm without hired help — including fighting some of the brush fires that broke out near or on his land last summer. Australia is facing a huge water crisis. It's not just drought. Apparently much of the river and groundwater is polluted, so that even if a river runs past you, you might not want to drink out of it. Rain fell recently in Sydney, but not in the watershed area that feeds the nearby dam. The prime minister warned on April 19 that if sufficient rain does not fall in the next few weeks, irrigation to the most fertile "bread bowl" area of Australia, the Murray-Darling river basin, will be stopped. This could have a devastating impact on farmers and consumers alike.
I recently read an article, possibly at the BBC news site, which mentioned that Queenslanders now drink "recycled" water that has been through the sewer plant, rather than "new" water. On Angus' farm the problem seems to be getting "any" water. When we talked to him in late February, it had rained a little bit. Just enough for green spears to be sticking up. Not enough to make a difference to his cattle, who in lieu of grass were enjoying cottonseed meal pellets and Lucerne hay (a.k.a. alfalfa, and becoming increasingly hard for him to buy). As for the humans on the farm, their water was running out; the stored rainwater supply was getting low.
For all the "happy chicken" photos we've run in the LSA News, there is always the unhappy underside of farming: crops fail, animals get sick and die, water runs out, the human energy needed to deal with it all flags and fails. The climate changes and leaves our soil a dust bowl and our plans in tatters. The farmer dies, and his children, who don't want or can't manage all that hard work for small profit, sell the land for subdivisions because it's worth two million more as a housing development than as land to grow food locally. The stores import strawberries from out of the state rather than from River Road. These changes affect not only the farmers, but us as consumers, our communities, and as we've seen with the recent contaminated pet food scandals, our country.
There's a growing sense that buying locally-grown food is better for us, as well as being better for the planet. It sometimes seems like the challenge is to change our buying patterns before all the farmland has been paved over. A recent trip to the Saturday farmer's market gave me a sense of hope, though — the market is always packed with shoppers, and the produce is always amazingly fresh and delicious. The Tuesday farmer's market opens this week. Community-supported agriculture is gaining more popularity too, it seems. But we may have just a little window of time — a few decades — to enjoy this, according to a recent, rather shattering article in the UK Guardian. If the author is correct, taking the bus (free to all of us on campus), buying locally, turning the thermostat down in winter and up in summer, changing light bulbs, and turning off the lights should take on a whole new importance for all of us.
Two months after our phone conversation, Angus and Sally's Australian farm has received a total of 8 inches of rain, so they are doing better as they head towards winter. Not well, but better. I believe they gave up on the grape vines months ago, but their cattle are still mostly alive. Lambing is over at Hidden Spring, with only one lamb lost out of eighteen born, and Pam expects the eggs currently in her incubator to hatch next weekend. Life on her Oregon farm appears to be going well. Meanwhile, California strawberries are in the stores — but I'm waiting for the local crop to ripen.
The University of Oregon has an Institute
for a Sustainable Environment. There is more about global warming
at its Climate Leadership Initiative page.