7 minute read
Simple Times
SIMPLE TIMES THE CO-OP PANTRY
BY SUZY McCRAY
Technology Improving Big and Small Farms
I have never physically met my editors at this magazine and met previous editor Jim only twice, even though I have written for this magazine since 2007!
When I first started reporting for newspapers in 1980, I wrote my articles on a manual typewriter and then hand-delivered or mailed them to my editors through the U.S. Postal Service!
Photos were made with a 35 mm camera with then-black-and-white film developed in-house at the newspapers in a darkroom filled with smelly chemicals and clanging pans.
I can remember how excited we were to get our first fax machines giving us “instant” access to our editors and those in other cities! When I started plinking out my articles on a “word processor,” we again rejoiced!
A more technically adept co-reporter began sending his articles to the Gadsden Times with an old Radio Shack laptop and modem he rigged up to send information over phone lines in the early 1990s, but it was a couple of years later before technology allowed us all to just send articles, as well as digital photos, over the internet!
Technology has changed so quickly through the years most of us sometimes yearn for those simple times of years gone by. But even on our simple farm we can see ways in which technology enjoyed by the bigger farmers trickles down to us in ways so
that even some of us with just backyard gardens or a few goats and chickens can benefit from their actions.
Jeff Maze, who along with his father Dennis, own and run Maze Farms southwest of Snead, with eight chicken houses totaling more than 100,000 square feet, explains that one primary thing technology gives them is “peace of mind.”
Even those of us who only raise 25 or 50 baby chicks each spring realize how crucial temperature is to those tiny birds. Since Jeff and his crews had just placed 180,000 chicks in the houses when we interviewed for this article, crucial temperatures throughout each house were vital.
“There are six sensors in each house,” Jeff explained, “with the computer monitoring temperatures in each of those areas in each house. Dad would say with setting manual thermostats I couldn’t hire a helper to stand in each house in each area 24 hours a day to do what these sensors and computers do. We’ve come a long way!
“It’s amazing how constant the temperature stays throughout a 500-foot building! There are alarms that go off if it does get too warm or too cool and that gives you peace of mind.”
Another program, made in Israel, monitors feed bins and will shut down and notify the Mazes if a feed bin is empty or there are other problems. Jeff noted, “I can monitor all eight houses on my phone. It’s amazing the technology that has trickled down to us farmers.”
Lance Miller and his Uncle Jimmy raise 900 acres of cotton and peanuts in an area of Blount County known as “old Snead.”
While farmers have been using tractors and other equipment with GPS positioning for several years now, even that has grown remarkably higher in technology. While in the beginning there was a 3-foot margin of error for spreading chicken litter and other fertilizers, that window has lessened to a margin of error as little as 18 inches!
And Lance explained, especially with peanuts, “once you plant that field, you can go back year after year using that same information.”
With the approximate 100 acres of peanuts planted, going back in the fall and utilizing the same programs to dig for the peanuts is extremely helpful and lets farmers get the maximum from what they’ve planted. “Of course, we still count rows, in cotton and peanuts, but with peanuts it’s kind of like looking for rows in a hay field once they’re up!”
Other programs help with precise planting. One will put 100 pounds of pressure to make sure the seeds are planted accurately. If the ground is too wet, it will back off some. If the ground is too hard, it can apply up to 400 pounds of pressure!
Lance explained he can control or monitor everything from an iPad in his tractor or other equipment. “You can even view the entire field that you’ve just planted and how it was done,” he said.
Lance has partnered with his Uncle Jimmy since 2006. He feels it was probably easier for him to learn the newest in technology quicker just because of how younger people have grown up around computers and constantly changing technology, but even many of the longest-farming folks can see the advantages of providing more crops with higher percentages.
You may be reading this thinking this has nothing to do with your backyard garden, or the few vegetables you plant amongst your flower beds. But even those of us striving to live simpler lives can reap some benefits from this knowledge.
Your local Extension service has not let COVID restrictions slow them down because they’ve been hosting all sorts of educational meetings on the internet and/or Zoom meetings on everything from beginning beekeeping to timber markets to wild game pressure cooking!
Before we had a chance to buy a book to hold in our hands this spring, we were able to print out planting charts for our area from almanacs and from the Extension service.
Instead of listening to the market reports and the weather on local radio each morning like our ancestors did, we grab our cell phones each morning and check them out online.
While I am foraging in our wooded areas for herbs for the herbal and medicinal dried teas I make, if I come upon an unusual plant, I can take a photo of it,
download it to a free app on my phone, and almost instantly have other photos, complete identification and uses (and non-uses!) for that plant!
Livestock has also benefited in many ways. So many folks in the past had to have a vet come out and take fecal samples to determine the parasite count or other problems with their goats. This year I’ve seen an increasing number of my “goat buddies” who have set up minilabs in their barns complete with microscopes to do their own fecal. Of course, a vet is still the best bottom-line bet, BUT if you’re in a rural area with a sick goat and need to treat before a vet can get to you or you can get that animal transported to a vet, this seems like a viable option.
And oh, my goodness, don’t forget the YouTube channels! Of course, you don’t want to diagnose a sick animal based on what you learn on the internet or by watching YouTube programs BUT you can learn a great deal of things that ARE beneficial.
Instead of watching brain-dulling sitcoms, my husband and I often watch YouTube videos on our big screen TV. We’ve learned how to propagate elderberry bushes, how to root forsythia (yellow bell) bushes, unique ways to stake climbing plants in the garden, how to properly trim grape vines and fruit trees, and even the pros and cons of regular canning lids versus the newer reusable versions!
Of course, we still refer to our canning books from the Extension service, and our wealth of other homesteading books and magazines collected over the past 40 years, but a fresh perspective and some people actually demonstrating the chore in front of us sure does help!
When I first started with goats back in the early 1990s, I even watched enough births on YouTube so that when I had to go in and assist a young pygmy mama having trouble with twins I didn’t panic (until it was over and all was well!).
I love living a simpler life without regular TV and with a slower pace of living, but I also don’t think (especially at our age) that we want to go back to gardening with Old Pete the Mule pulling the plow (like he did for my dad, grandparents and uncle), or with no forecast of the weather except what we saw the night before in the sky.
Like everything else, technology is good if you use it WISELY, to best use the natural and learned resources that God has blessed us with!
“So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom.” Psalm 90:12 ESV
