Bigger Not Always Better

  • The Hill's cows getting a sip of water while waiting for milking (Photo by Kinna Ohman)

In many areas of the country, small farms
are now the exception, not the norm. Farming,
especially with livestock, can mean thousands and
thousands of animals, and often distant, corporate
ownership. Even the smallest farms are pressured
to get bigger. So when a family decides to make
their farm smaller, they’re rebels. Kinna Ohman
reports:

Transcript

In many areas of the country, small farms
are now the exception, not the norm. Farming,
especially with livestock, can mean thousands and
thousands of animals, and often distant, corporate
ownership. Even the smallest farms are pressured
to get bigger. So when a family decides to make
their farm smaller, they’re rebels. Kinna Ohman
reports:

It’s five o’clock in the evening on the Hill’s dairy farm. Ray Hill just finished cleaning
out the milking equipment and is moving into the barn.

(sound of milking equipment and door)

Cows look around curiously, and afternoon light streams through the windows. Hill
moves comfortably among these cows, calling each of them by name, and cleans their
udders for milking.

(Ray describing the process)

Ray Hill and his wife Stephanie are full time farmers. They milk ten cows, twice a day.
They sell raw milk and yogurt directly from their farm. But getting to this point hasn’t
been easy. To survive, they’ve had to step away from the conventional approach to dairy
farming.

When the Hills got into farming eight years ago, they listened to the advice of farm
experts. They had more than forty cows, a tractor, and were selling their farm’s milk to the
regional processors.

But within a couple of years, they were deep in debt. Hill says the experts told him to get
more cows. He says he couldn’t see how that would help.

“Financially it just didn’t work. There wasn’t money to hire help. I had a couple of
kids and my wife and we were all running ragged and it just wasn’t fun. And there
were many days where I threatened to sell every cow in the barn.”

It’s common for farm experts and even bankers to push family farmers like the Hills to
‘get big or get out.’ Darrell Emmick’s with the Natural Resources Conservation Service.
He says he’s seen regions lose more than fifty percent of their dairy farms when using
this conventional standard.

“Getting bigger or get out really didn’t help a lot of the farmers. They got bigger
and they still went out of business.”

For a farm to get bigger, farmers confine hundreds or even thousands of dairy cows inside
large barns. That means farmers spend a lot of money and time bringing food to their
animals and hauling manure away.

Darrell Emmick says that model of agriculture started
in the 1940s when fuel was pretty cheap. But these days, it makes good economic sense
for farmers to go back to letting their milk cows out of the big barns to eat grass.

“Nothing can harvest a ton of feed any cheaper than the cow or the sheep or the
horse can by itself. Bringing food to animals is something I think we’re going to see a lot
less of, especially here and now with fuel prices going over four dollars a gallon.”

The Hill’s have made that switch on their farm. Ray Hill says his cows are healthier. He
believes their milk is better quality, too. And he’s excited about providing healthy
food for his community. Ray Hill says he wants their farm to be a place where people
come to buy quality food, and definately let him know if they have concerns.

“I want to have control over how I take care of my animals. I want to have control
over how I process or don’t process my milk. I want to have control over the price,
the quality. If there’s a quality issue, it’s up to me to take care of it, not say ‘let me
call so and so.’ I don’t think you can find anyone who’d that would tell you I’d
rather talk to a corporate person than the person who produced my food.”

But bucking against the system is not easy. There are days when no one comes to their
farm to buy their milk or yogurt. The Hills know they’re taking a risk. But they feel, at
least they’re not at the mercy of the industry, the banks and the whims of the market.

And for now, that’s worth it.

For The Environment Report, I’m Kinna Ohman.

Related Links

Horses Bring Logging Back to the Future

  • A horse logger directing his team through a forest. (Photo courtesy of Troy Firth.)

Some forest owners are going back to past practices to do less damage to their land. Commercial horse logging is finding a viable niche in woodlands around the country. Ann Murray has this story:

Transcript

Some forest owners are going back to past practices to do less damage to their land. Commercial horse logging is finding a viable niche in woodlands around the country. Ann Murray has this story:


In a hardwood forest, Troy Firth points out trees he’s marked for cutting.


“We put a blue slash on the trees that are designated as log trees.”


Firth is a sawmill owner in Northwestern Pennsylvania. He’s an advocate of sustainable forestry and says it takes excellent silviculture and mechanics to harvest timber.


“Silviculture has been defined as the art and science of growing trees. Mechanics is the way the logs are moved out of the woods once they’re cut.”


Firth believes the best way to get logs out of the woods is with horses. He contracts about a dozen men who use workhorses to haul or “skid” logs to road sites. One of his long time horse loggers is Ray Blystone, a brawny guy with a long ponytail. Today, Blystone and his team of Belgian horses are working with Jeremy Estock, an experienced chainsaw operator.


“I just need to bring the horses to come around and get ’em hooked up and out onto the skid road.”


The chainsaw is really, really loud, but Blystone’s well-trained horses calmly munch on leaves. The massive caramel colored animals are harnessed to a small open-ended cart called a log arch. Once Estock has cut down a tree and sawed it into useable lengths, Blystone hammers spikes into one of the logs. Then he attaches the timber to his cart with chains.


“It’s basically just to get the front end of the log off the ground. It makes it so much easier for the horses.”


Blystone stands in the cart. He looks a lot like a Roman gladiator. He gently urges the horses back to shorten the chain and then signals them to get going.


“Git up Billy, Kate.”


The surprisingly agile Belgians step around chopped wood and low bushes. The horse-drawn cart and log make a trail through the woods that’s barely six feet wide. There aren’t any visible ruts.


Troy Firth, who’s on site, says that’s one reason he prefers horses over heavy mechanized skidders. He motions toward another skid road in the forest just a few feet away.

“We have a skid road that was used by a rubber tired log skidder on a previous logging job and the tracks are still here from 30 years ago.”

“So damage could last for 30 years? That’s how much they’re compacting the soil?”


“It will last longer than that.”


Firth says when mechanized skidders compact the soil, it can make it harder for tree roots to grow, and these big machines can do a lot of damage to nearby trees that aren’t cut. But, that kind of power also means that motorized equipment can haul timber much faster than horses and with less cutting.


“Simply because you have so much power, you can bring a whole tree out at once. It’s the mechanics of getting through the woods.”


Getting trees out of the woods faster can mean a cost savings of nearly 25% over horse driven skidders. But Ray Blystone says he has more work than he can handle. He’s found that more and more landowners recognize the long-term low-impact benefits of horse logging. And besides all that, he really likes his job.


“It means a lot to me. I enjoy being around horses, and it’s important to me that I do something for a living that’s environmentally friendly.”


Although no one seems to have an accurate count, there are hundreds of commercial horse loggers in the United States. Most work in the northeast and the Pacific Northwest. They’re part of a small but growing movement going back to logging’s roots.


For The Environment Report, this is Ann Murray.

Related Links

Ash Borer Devastates Nursery Industry

  • The emerald ash borer is destroying millions of ash trees in Michigan, Indiana and Ohio. (Photo courtesy of the Michigan Department of Agriculture)

One of America’s favorite shade trees is being killed by the millions. A tiny invasive insect is to blame. The emerald ash borer has dealt an unexpected blow to cities, homeowners and industries that work with ash trees. The GLRC’s Rebecca Williams reports… the ash borer has been especially devastating to the nursery industry:

Transcript

One of America’s favorite shade trees is being killed by the millions. A
tiny invasive insect is to blame. The emerald ash borer has dealt an
unexpected blow to cities, homeowners and industries that work with ash
trees. The GLRC’s Rebecca Williams reports… the ash borer has been
especially devastating to the nursery industry:


Everybody thought ash trees were perfect. That’s because they’re great
shade trees, they grow fast, they turn yellow and red and purple in the
fall. Ash trees were the go-to tree for a lot of cities after Dutch elm
disease killed off most of the nation’s elm trees 30 years ago. Scientists
thought ash trees were pretty much invincible to pests.


Then… the emerald ash borer hitched a ride to the States in cargo from
China… and changed everything.


“We couldn’t believe it. It’s like We were stunned, you know, wait a minute,
this is something we can’t even sell anymore.”


Amy Camido is a certified nurseryman. She sells trees and shrubs at Ray
Wiegand’s Nursery. It’s a large nursery outside of Detroit… close to
where the ash borer was first discovered in 2002. In 2003, Michigan
officials banned the sale of all ash trees. That meant nurseries had to cut
down and chip or burn all of their ash tree stock.


“Gosh, when they told us we couldn’t sell them anymore, it was like, pick
them up and put them in the bio-grinder, they were gone. These trees,
they weren’t even trees that were infested.”


Camido says Weigand’s Nursery destroyed 6-thousand trees. That cost
them a half million dollars. She says the nursery lost out on three fronts.
They grew ash trees and they sold them to homeowners and landscapers.


Ray Weigand says the nursery… like many around here… lost a third of
its market.


“Once you lose it you lose it. It’s hard to make money up in any
industry. We just plant other products and hope that they bloom out and
people like them.”


Weigand says now… instead of selling lots of the same type of tree…
they’ll have to plant many different species to hedge their bets. Nurseries
also want the federal government to compensate them for their losses,
but that’s looking unlikely. Congress continues to slash funding for
fighting the emerald ash borer… and states are not putting up any extra
money.


Nursery groups say the beetle should be a national priority… because it’s
not just a Midwest issue.


Mark Teffeau is with the American Nursery and Landscape Association.
He says the borer’s hurt sales of ash trees nationwide.


“Right now it’s a buyer’s market. The ash prices have basically plummeted
to the point that I know growers who have realized there’s no market for
these trees and then they’re pulling them up and destroying them. Either
that or trying to sell them at reduced prices in places where ash borer isn’t
present.”


The only state that’s banned all sales of ash trees is Michigan, but the ash
borer has also infested trees in Ohio and Indiana. Those states have not
completely banned sales of ash. Instead, they’re restricting sales from
infested areas. Officials in those states say some nurseries are still able
to sell ash trees… but not a lot of people are buying them.


Nursery groups are putting pressure on state and federal officials to keep
the ash borer contained. The beetle only moves about a half mile a year
on its own, but people help it spread a lot farther… by moving firewood
infested with the beetle. Just one piece of infested firewood can start a
new outbreak.


Patricia Lockwood is the ash borer policy director for Michigan. She
says states are getting the message out that moving firewood spreads the
beetle.


“We’re continually on a daily basis outreaching through schools,through the
libraries, we are doing billboards, public service announcements. We
really are outreaching to a tremendous amount of individuals. We never
do enough but we’re doing the best with the resources that we have.”


But even though there are laws against moving firewood, critics say
those messages are not getting through to everyone. Nurseryman Amy
Camido says people don’t seem to care about the ash borer until it affects
them directly.


“Just as recent as last summer, last fall, people were bringing in branches
and saying, you know this tree isn’t looking as good as it should and I’d
say, ‘you know it’s an ash tree?’ and they’d go, ‘Yeah, so?’ and I say
‘you know about the emerald ash borer problem?’ ‘Nooo…’ ‘Like, how
can you not know? How can you not know??”


Camido says she hopes people in the rest of the country can be spared
losing their ash trees, but she’s not feeling very optimistic these days.


Scientists say a lot’s at stake if the ash borer isn’t stopped. They say if
the beetle spreads throughout the country, more than 8 billion ash trees
will be killed, and they say nurseries, the timber industry and taxpayers
will foot the bill for those losses… running in the hundreds of billions of
dollars.


For the GLRC, I’m Rebecca Williams.

Related Links

Maggots: Reviving an Ancient Medical Treatment

  • Maggots can be used as a medical treatment. Specifically, to help treat wounds. (Courtesy of the National Institutes of Health)

An ancient medical treatment is starting to be used again to treat wounds. But for many people, just the thought of the treatment is stomach-turning. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Melissa Ingells has the story:

Transcript

An ancient medical treatment is starting to be used again to treat wounds,
but for many people, just the thought of the treatment is stomach turning.
The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Melissa Ingells has the story:


Ray Peterson has already lost one leg to diabetes. On his remaining foot
there’s a deep wound, and it’s not healing. It’s not getting better because
of the diabetes. He could lose his second leg.


His doctor is taking the dressing off Peterson’s wound. The wound…is
ugly. It looks like someone drilled a quarter-sized hole deep into
Peterson’s foot. The wound smells bad, and then the doctor finds
maggots. The blowfly larvae are squirming around in there. The doctor
is not surprised, though. He put the maggots there a few days ago. It’s
part of the treatment to save Ray Peterson’s leg.


They’re not exactly the kind of maggots you’d find in your garbage can,
but they’re similar. Last summer the FDA approved maggots as medical
devices.


The maggots eat the dead tissue, not the live flesh. In a process
researchers don’t completely understand… the maggots actually clean
and disinfect the wound much better than a surgeon could. Apparently,
they’re attracted to the bacteria in the dead tissue.


Ray Peterson is in his doctor’s office, trading in some big, full maggots
for some new hungry ones.


The old, fat maggots are washed off with saline. The doctor has to dig around
with the tweezers to get a few strays out.


Ray Peterson says he doesn’t mind seeing the process.


“I enjoy watching them, truthfully.”


The doctor cleans the wound a bit more and then places tiny, new maggots on
it with a small spatula.


(Sound of office)


There are plenty of maggot jokes as Dr. Dowling and the nurses work on
Peterson’s foot. Dowling says that his staff has become comfortable with
the maggots, but many health care professionals are not.


“Actually the patients react much better than the doctors. Every patient
I’ve done it on has been very excited and enthusiastic. I can’t say that’s
always the case for the medical community at large. I’ve had some
doctors tell patients if you have maggots on your foot, don’t come in my
office, but I think that will go away with time the more it’s accepted.


The new maggots start moving around as soon as they feel warmth and smell
food. Dr. Dowling and his nurses quickly contain them with a bandage.


“We build a cage around the wound to hold the maggots in, we’ll put the
maggots in, cover up the cage, and leave it there for two to three days,
and during that time the maggots will increase in size two to three times.
And then, when they come in we’ll take the cage off and wash the maggots out
with saline solution, and look at the wound and decide if it needs another
application or not.”


Several clinical studies have been conducted on the maggot treatment.
The results have been overwhelmingly good, but because the idea is so
repulsive to many patients or their doctors, the practice is still not
widespread.


Robert Root Bernstein is a professor of physiology at Michigan State
University. He co-wrote the book “Honey, Mud, Maggots and other Medical Marvels.”


“Taking a maggot or a bunch of maggots and putting them in a wound and watching
them crawl around in there is not something that most people find appealing, and
usually okay for the patient – the patient doesn’t actually have to look. It’s the
practitioners who have to deal with these squirmy little things and have to put
them in and take them out who seem to have most of the problem with the therapy.”


Root Bernstein says maggot therapy might catch on. That’s because doctors are seeing
more and more diabetic wounds as the rate of diabetes keeps going up in the U.S.
When medicines such as antibiotics don’t work on the stubborn wounds,
patients and doctors sometimes turn to the maggot therapy as their last hope for
recovery.


Ray Peterson found out about maggot therapy when his daughter saw an
article in a local newspaper. He says at first his friends were a little put
off, but then started kidding him about the procedure.


“They call me maggot man. Just for a joke. I go along with them. You’re a pretty
good sport about this. You gotta be.”


And Peterson says the good-natured ribbing is sure a lot better than the
alternative. Peterson also thinks if people can get past the “ick” factor…
more people’s limbs might be saved by maggot therapy.


For the GLRC, I’m Melissa Ingells.

Related Links

Cash Strapped Biologists Lean on Volunteers

  • The lynx was recently considered extinct in Michigan until a trapper caught one. (Photo courtesy of USFWS)

For years, federal and state governments have cut funding for wildlife protection. That’s led to complaints from biologists who say they don’t have enough money to adequately do their jobs, but it’s also led to a new movement. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Celeste Headlee reports on how citizens are starting to take over duties once performed by trained scientists:

Transcript

For years, federal and state governments have cut funding for wildlife
protection. That’s led to complaints from biologists who say they don’t
have enough money to adequately do their jobs, but it’s also led to a new
movement. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Celeste Headlee
reports on how citizens are starting to take over duties once performed by
trained scientists:


Ray Rustem says wildlife biologists these days are often chained to their
desks.


“Years ago, when I first started with the Department of Natural
Resources, wildlife habitat biologists spent quite a bit of time in the field
actually doing fieldwork. With the types of things that are going on now,
they’ve become much more in getting the planning done and we’ve had
to shift some of that fieldwork done to the technician level. Frankly,
yeah, we could always use additional people out there.”


Rustem is with the Wildlife Division of the Michigan Department of
Natural Resources. He says state funding has fallen steadily for years,
and one way he’s made up the difference is by involving Michigan
citizens. Rustem says the DNR uses dozens of volunteers for its frog and
toad survey in the early part of the summer.


“This is our tenth year and we’ve got at least 120 people who’ve been
doing this all ten years. That’s a tremendous amount of data that’s being
provided for us on information about species and where they’re located.”


Many groups are now using so-called citizen scientists to collect data.
Sally Petrella is a biologist who works with the non-profit organization
the Friends of the Detroit River.


“We’ve cut out so much of the funding for regular science that there’s a
real lack, and citizen scientists can cover far more areas than
professionals can, at a much lower cost.”


Petrella is standing beside the murky, reed-choked waters of the Rouge
River Watershed. It’s home to six species of frogs and toads. Every
summer, Friends of the Detroit River enlists the help of 700 people to
listen for the creatures as they call to each other from the marshy
grasses.


Petrella is standing beside one of her more loyal volunteers… Al Sadler.
Sadler admits that part of the appeal is the walk along the banks of the
river… but he also believes that public participation in wildlife
protection has become an absolute necessity.


“I think that it’s required if we plan on keeping any wildlife areas
around. I think that if citizens don’t get involved, I think that people
won’t know what they’re going to miss, and before we know it, there
won’t be much wild places left.”


Sadler is a fairly typical citizen scientist. He has a day job as an engineer
and volunteers in his spare time, but there are also people with advanced
degrees in biology and wildlife management who are called citizen
scientists simply because they don’t work for the government.


Dennis Fijakowski is one of those people. He’s the executive director of
the Michigan Wildlife Conservancy.


“We can’t count on the government to do everything for us. We have to
be a part of the solution.”


Fijakowski says ordinary people have made important contributions to
wildlife conservation. He says the lynx was considered extinct in
Michigan until a trapper caught one, and a rare Great Gray Owl was
discovered on a national wildlife refuge last spring by a photographer.


“You look back at the conservation history of our state and it was citizen
led. All of the important, the milestone decisions, legislation… it was
citizen led.”


John Kostyack with the National Wildlife Federation says involving
citizen scientists is great, but…


“They’re not really a substitute for having staff in the wildlife agencies…
state and federal and tribal. Because they are the ones who are going to
take this initial data, which is going to be very rough from volunteers,
and then use it to decide upon where to take the research next.”


And there have been cases in which citizen scientists have clashed with
state and federal governments. They are consistently at odds with government
officials over issues related to global warming and the Michigan Wildlife
Conservancy is locked in a bitter battle with state biologists over whether
the state is home to a viable cougar population.


The Conservancy’s Dennis Fijakowski acknowledges that the union
between government biologists and citizen scientists may not always be
an easy one, but he says the involvement of residents in the protection of
their state’s wildlife can only be a good thing.


“Because all anyone of us wants is that we pass on a wild legacy to our
children and grandchildren… and we’re not going to if we don’t get our
acts together.”


Many organizations offer citizens the opportunity to get involved in data
collection, including the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.


For the GLRC, I’m Celeste Headlee.

Related Links