Dear Sasa,

Good to hear from you. Thanks for news of family and blueberries.

I am certain that you must be shaken by recent destabilizing events--in Ukraine, Africa, Syria, Europe and most recently the USA.  God help us all!  Needless to say that we, like the majority of rational American citizens, are shocked and deeply concerned for the outcome of the national elections here--especially the results of the contest for president.  It is truly troubling.  I worry that our world, driven by fear, inequality, unrest, and anxiety, may be returning to the tribalism, extreme nationalism,"scapegoating", intolerance, and militarism that marked the politics of the 1930's.  

How could we elect a Trump?  We know him to be a racist, a misogynist, a liar, a narcissist, a bully, a con-man, and a megalomaniac--a man with NO real friendships--a man with NO governing experience--a man with serious personality disorders--a man unfit for ANY public office. While he obviously spoke to the deep frustrations and anger of a working class that has felt
​increasingly marginalized and excluded by the global changes taking place in the world, I don't want to believe that Donald Trump is a reflection of mainstream American values, belief, and ideals. How could so many be so foolish and so reckless as to express their protest in a way that now endangers not only their own future, but also the future of a very fragile world?

Our hope must be in the American tradition of "peaceful transition of power" and in our strong democratic institutions with constitutional "checks and balances" to hold those in power accountable.  Trump will be the new American president.  He will be given his opportunity to govern, but he will be watched very closely--and held accountable.

Our love to all of you,

Rick 

"Dad...Look up!"  Jon called to me over the clatter of the blueberry harvester.  It was past Labor Day, but the boys and I had returned to the fields one last time to gather in what we could of a bounty of late ripening berries.  As a "river" of blue fruit continued to flow into the lug I was tending at the back of the machine, I raised my head to see a perfect "vee" of Canadian Geese--flying low in the sky north to south above the creek--directly crossing the path of our tractor.  

Our harvest season is finally approaching its end.  Coming out of winter last spring we had reason to hope for the "good harvest" we needed to recover from the short yields of the prior year. With rededicated effort; dead, damaged, and excessive cane was pruned to balance the bushes.  Careful attention was given to nutrition, damaging pests, and weed control. Copious fruit buds had survived a relatively gentle winter and the bloom had been abundant. An unsettled early summer threatened hail and wind, however as roads were washed away and crops ruined in southern portions of the county, Bayfield fruit farmers were blessed mostly with welcome rains.   Eagles were frequently seen wheeling high in the sky above the farm. ​

The 2016 blueberry crop has turned out to be one of the most bountiful ever.  Picking began early allowing two extra weeks of "high season" summer visitation at the farm resulting in a record number of "pick-your-own" customers.  An excellent summer crew picked and packed a steady inventory of berries for our fresh and process seasonal wholesale markets.  As summer ends and harvest resources thin--berries, seasonal customers, and employees--our freezers will be full to support "bonus" out-of-season sales.  

Farmers are known to be optimists despite the fact that their risks are high, the work is long and hard, and often rewards can be disappointing for reasons beyond human control.  Perhaps it is because we live by the seasons--close to the cycles and creative powers of nature--always with an eye on the sky for the signs of hope and renewal.  

"Locally produced food" has become a tenent in the planning of groups and individuals who are concerned for restoring healthy and sustainable rural economies.  However, I believe there is a disconnect in our thinking regarding both the realities and the possibilities for the contribution agriculture can make to the local rural economy.  The reality is that very little economically viable agricultural enterprise remains in Ashland/Bayfield Counties, i.e  enterprise with the capacity to provide even a median income to the farmer.  The possibility of renewed viable local agricultural enterprise  is often "self-limited" in our planning efforts by small thinking, misconceptions, and unrealistic expectations arising from the present state of our disconnection from farm experience.

The industrialization of American agriculture is now nearly complete.  Many rural communities have been severely impacted as a result of this fact.  Farmers now represent less than 1% of the national population. 75% of national food production is produced by only 9% of American farmers. Of the 91% of farms categorized by the USDA as "small farms",  60% report sales of less than $10,000 annually at a net income loss of $4,500 per farm.  The wealth of American agriculture, which was once broadly distributed among many producers on farms averaging less than 300 acres each, is now concentrated in the hands of a very few, very big, often absentee farm operators.  The threat of the CAFO is not just to the quality of a sacred body of water, it also degrades the economic health of rural agricultural communities by displacing smaller farmers, depleting rural populations, and weakening the local institutions and infrastructure that support family farms.

That is not to say that middle sized  resident owner-operated family farms can not be viable. Bigger is not necessarily better.  Most of the economic efficiency gain realized by increasing economy of scale is captured by the moderate sized family farm--and if resource consumption is the standard over cost of production, it has been demonstrated that industrial farm consumption of resources per unit of production rises as the industrial farm "factory" grows ever larger.   But family farms in significant numbers will not be restored to a rural economy of 30,000 residents through any "buy local" program--as much as I will support it.  At 245 pounds of dairy product, the current national per capita consumption of milk, three modest family farms milking 100 cows each could supply the two-county annual need of 7,350,000#.  My point is that farms need to be able to "export" to more densely populated urban communities if our farms and rural communities are to be viable and our cities are to survive.

We have the available land and natural resources to produce--to bring wealth from "outside" into our local economy.  Agriculture was once the economic backbone of the Bayfield County economy.  Over time it could become a major contributor again.  What will be required first and foremost will be people with the desire and the will to stay put--to commit to this place.  Farming is a long term development proposition and a life-long vocation.  To save what production we already have, we need to enable beginning farmers to become economically viable, and enable retiring farmers to transition their operations to the next generation.  Beginning at home, we need to stop denigrating this place where we live by convincing our children that their future opportunities for vocation and fulfillment will be better found elsewhere.  We need to return or strengthen Agriculture programing in our public schools and technical college to include agricultural entrepreneurialism. The existing family farms that have survived the assault of industrialization, and more recent farms in our community that have established and proven themselves, provide the best models for sustainability.  We need to support cooperative efforts as the best means for growing farms.  Our concept of "local food production for a local population" must be stretched to allow local farmers to seek additional markets beyond our county lines.  As much as farming should be a lifestyle, it must also be a business if farmers, their families, and their rural communities are to survive and prosper.

It was a short blueberry crop last year (2015) at our farm and across much of the upper Midwest. It caught us and many others by suprise.  We were not expecting a repeat of the very heavy 2014 crop, but we also did not expect that it would be only 33% of our 10 year annual per acre average! People have asked us repeatedly, "Why?--what happened?"  The short "simple" answer to that question is almost certainly weather related "winter injury."  Hearing that explanation, most will assume that the problem must have been a period of excessively cold temperature that might have occurred during the preceding winter.  The fact is that winter injury can result from a complex of factors--some known and others less studied.

"Winter injury"  (cold injury) is generally understood to result from four causal affects:  
1.)  Ambient cold temperatures that exceed the known hardiness limits for particular temperate  zone perennial plant varieties (approximately -25F for most of the blueberry varieties we grow).
2.)  Desiccation due to dry soils, cold dry air, and excessive wind exposure.
3.)  Widely fluctuating temperatures following a sufficient dormant chill that can cause perennial          plants to lose hardiness, e.g sub-zero temps following a prolonged midwinter thaw.
4.)  Late freezes after spring bud break or during blossom. 

Other than the bloom itself, fruit buds are the plant parts most susceptible to cold injury--especially those buds wintering above the snow line.  The tips of canes, the last green growth of the season, are also susceptible to die-back especially when winter comes early or suddenly. Older fruiting canes can also be killed by cold injury--especially following an "open" winter.  In the absence of protective snow cover or deep mulch, frost in the ground can cause damage to roots which are needed to support more demanding older canes.  The effects of winter injury do not always reveal themselves immediately following the break of dormancy in the Spring.  Often the die-back or collapse happens well after bud break, flowering, or even fruit set.

All of this discussion however, does not seem to fully explain what we experienced with the 2015 blueberry crop failure.  By my record and recollection, the four causal affects of winter injury described above were not observed in our fields--at least not to any extreme.  There were no ambient temperatures that even approached -25F.  We tested good soil moisture in the Fall and maintained irrigation schedules to leaf-fall.  Snow cover seemed adequate through the colder periods of the winter and we did not experience any frost during the bloom period.  Our raspberry field exhibited NO winter injury and fruited well.  Tips of blueberry canes exposed above the snowline of some of our more tender varieties, e.g. "Nelson" and "Duke", fruited and did not show any die-back.  Blueberry blocks that had been more recently pruned (within the last three years) fruited best.  It was older fruiting canes in more neglected blocks that were most severely affected.  

​Winter 2014-15 undoutedly played its part, but I believe the conditions resulting in the losses experienced in 2015 began with the winter of 2013-14--a winter of excessively heavy snowfall.  By February of that winter the snow pack measured nearly four feet deep in our fields.  Any cane standing less than vertical became trapped in this mass of snow and was bowed to the ground.  An extremely heavy fruit load in 2014 did not allow stiffer older bowed fruiting canes to "bounce back". Although harvest was heavy in 2014, it was difficult to access.   Following harvest, older canes in this bowed condition began to die.   By spring 2015, these older canes were dead in huge numbers. Those misshapen canes that did survive began to sprout "water shoots" from the tops of their arched shape--new growth that would not fruit that year, but whose leaves formed a canopy of shade over those canes that might have fruited--or that did fruit and couldn't be accessed.

We know that tropism has a large affect on the production of fruit trees.  Obtaining consistency in apple production is in part the art of pruning and limb training to balance the vegetative vertical tropism and the fruiting horizontal tropism.  What do we know of the effects of tropism on blueberry fruiting?  Could it be that these canes that had been deformed by a heavy snow load were now performing abnormally because the effects of tropism?

My strongest suspicion, though I am not a scientist, is that a 1-2 inch diameter hardwood cane can not be doubled over in a bow without some internal cane damage taking place--some slippage between the bark and the cambium layers, or the cambium and the heartwood--or even between the growth rings.  Could this have been the beginning of demise?

When I was younger, I had ready answers for those who asked concerning the events affecting our crops.  Now with experience, while I may be more knowledgeable, I am less sure. The longer I continue to farm, the more I come to respect the complexity and the mystery of "Mother Nature." 

​Abraham Lincoln proclaimed "Thanksgiving" as an American national holiday in 1863, during the darkest days of the American Civil War, as "a day to reflect, to celebrate, and to offer Thanks for the blessings of the recent harvest and the events of the past year."  Now, as then, we live in troubled times--in ways corporate and in other ways individual.  Despite challenges, uncertainty, fear, violence, sorrow, and loss there is still beauty and hope to be found in the world. Life is a gift to be lived and shared every day.  We need to stay focused on our reasons to celebrate.

Iurii grew up in the Soviet Republic of Moldova on the "Right Bank" of the Nistru River in what is today the autonomous break-away province of "Transnistria"--another Donetsk, Crimea, Abkazia, Ossetia--where Putin plays his dangerous "chess game" to reclaim a lost Russian empire.  As a young man he joined the Red Army where he learned to box and was recruited as a Soviet "amateur" national athlete.  When he left the army he became a professional prize fighter and experienced some modest success.  He invested his prize money in a bowling alley--the first to be built in Chisinau, Moldova's capital city of 800,000 people.  Success with one bowling alley led to a "franchise" of others, but Iurii was unfulfilled by boxing and bowling.  He yearned for something more substantial and a tie to the land.

Hearing of the opportunity for blueberry production in Europe, a recent innovation, he traveled to Poland to investigate.  There he toured farms and talked with Polish blueberry producers. Blueberries quickly became his new passion.  His self-study continued as he resolved that he would become his nation's first blueberry producer.  The bowling alleys were sold and his assets reinvested when he found an appropriate site of available farm land near Chisinau.  Never having been a farmer, he knew he would need a sound business plan and technical support if he was going to succeed in his new venture.  There is no competent agricultural extension service in Moldova.  He turned to USAID's Moldovan Agricultural Competitiveness and Enterprise Development Project (ACED) based in Chisinau--and then my phone rang.

What a joy it has been working with this humble but highly motivated man these past two years. When I first met him he was already at work on his land spreading elemental sulfur to lower the pH of the soil to within the acidic range necessary for blueberry production.  By fall of 2014 he was ready to plant 24,000 potted plants of three improved varieties purchased from a Polish nursery.

I have just returned from Moldova and can report that since my last visit, a well has been drilled and a reservoir for irrigation water established.  The plants are in the ground under trickle irrigation and mulch.  The bushes have established on 25 acres and are growing lush, green and healthy.  Iurii had stripped the blossom and green fruits, as I had recommended, sacrificing an immediate harvest in favor of vigorous bush growth.  If he can hold out, his first crop will be harvested in 2017.  I have every reason to believe he will succeed. Already he "gives back", willingly sharing what he is learning with other interested Moldovan farmers--25 of whom visited his farm on a study tour ACED conducted as a part of my recent assignment.

At a recent meeting of the Bayfield County Economic Development Corporation (BCEDC) board of directors, on which I am currently serving a three year appointment, there was discussion regarding how BCEDC might endorse or otherwise support the proposed Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation (CAFO) to be built by an Iowa company in the Township of Eileen near Fish Creek.  It seemed to me, from the comments made, that a number of board members favor this project which has provoked considerable controversy in our community.  When comment turned to ridicule of opposition as "hog wash" (wink, wink--titter, titter), I rose to ask the group what they thought would be the economic benefit of this development to Bayfield County?  Was this development compatible with existing enterprise and patterns for rural settlement?  Will BCEDC support risk of clean air, clean water, health and quality of life to accommodate non-resident industrial agribusiness in our county?  Is BCEDC prepared to accept a share of responsibility for the negative impacts that a 26,350 pig production factory might impose on our citizens?  An offended board member told me that my questions and comments were "inflammatory"!

I agreed to serve on the BCEDC board of directors to represent the interests and opportunities for agriculture in Bayfield County, but I don't share the "bigger is better" attitude that seems to permeate conventional "economic development" thinking.  Although an economy of scale and efficiency is important, farms don't have to be "BIG" to be economically viable.  In fact I believe family farms, resident owner-operated farms, driven by agrarian values, with gate sales of $100,000 to $500,000, offer the greatest benefit to a strong rural economy.  Family farms put people on the land, children in local schools, shoppers on Main Street, residents on the local tax rolls, and healthy food on the table. Family farms can compete in regional food systems--some Bayfield County farm families have been succeeding at this for generations.  With abundant affordable fertile land, clean water, a conducive climate for appropriate crops, and a growing regional market for "locally" produced food, the future can be bright for a new generation of farmers in Bayfield County.

When then Secretary of Agriculture, Earl Butz, preached "Get Big, or Get OUT!" in the 1970's, bankers and farmers bought in.  Then in the 1980's the economy faltered, the farmland price bubble broke, interest rates soared, food prices fell, heavily leveraged farmers who had borrowed to expand couldn't pay their loans.   300,000 family farms were lost.   More banks failed in 1985 than during any year of the 1930's.  Main Street business of many a Midwestern town died; most never to recover.  Industrial agriculture has nothing to offer Bayfield County except increased risks to be managed, and potential ruin when management fails.  I won't be part of any "welcome party" for a CAFO pig factory in Bayfield County--Nope, not me!

On October 10, 2014, as part of Luther College homecoming festivities in Decorah, Iowa, Rick was honored to receive the highest honor his alma mater annually bestows on members of its alumni: The Distinguished Service Award (DSA).   One of three recipients at this year's Alumni Dinner and Celebration of Distinguished Service, Rick was recognized for his "contributions to agriculture, to community, and to international development and understanding"  The award was presented by recently inaugurated Luther College President, Dr. Paula J. Carlson.

Farming:  It's an appealing vocational attraction for many people seeking an independent rural lifestyle.  Many are called - students right out of school, people returning to their "roots", those wanting a lifestyle change, early retirees from the military or other vocations.  Many skills are required to start a successful farm - passion, clear goals, production knowledge, financial and marketing know-how, and more! 

Land Stewardship Project’s Farm Beginnings works to get more successful farmers on the land and organized for an enterprise in which family farmers can succeed and flourish.  

The Farm Beginnings course is a 12 month training that helps beginning farmers clarify their goals and strengths, establish a strong farm plan, and start building their operation.  The course uses a mix of farmer-led classroom sessions (9 total), optional on-farm field sessions, and an extensive farmer support network.

Farm Beginnings is offered in Ashland, WI at the Great Lakes Visitors Center, as well as Watertown, MN and La Crosse, WI.   Exact dates, times and locations of a 2014 Farm Beginnings course in your region, as well as the application, are available at http://landstewardshipproject.org/morefarmers/farmbeginningsclass
For additional information, contact Cree Bradley at 218.834.0846 or [email protected].