A few years ago I ran into a blog that I liked quite a bit; natures harmony seemed like just the sort of thing that I liked to read. Animal-centered, with a plain style and dealing with some of the topics that I'm interested in reading. Animals for food, with a homesteading sort of bent.
Some of their content was particularly good. Their turkey slaughter video is one of the best that I'd seen to date, and I liked that they seemed to be interested in experimenting with their farm. It's interesting to me to see people try new things, and to succeed, and fail.
Every now and then Tim would wander over to my blog, and he'd comment on his blog about something I was doing, and I'd do the same; we have no connection and are farms are thousands of miles apart, but it was interesting to see his viewpoint -- which could be pretty extreme at times. It was annoying that Tim would start a controversial subject, and then ban everyone who disagreed with him, and it happened to me, too. I forget what I got banned about... I think he posted a topic asking whether chicken tractors were inhumane, and I responded that fences on cow pastures must be, too. That got me banned.
Over the last year or two they've chosen to go in a direction that hasn't been very interesting to me; they've been busy shrinking their farming business; reducing their production of pigs to personal use levels, and chickens, and giving away their equipment.
I had to laugh when they were talking about spending more time with each other and Tim chose the hardest type of farming, in my opinion -- dairy. It's a relentless, 365 day a year job that allows no vacations, no sick time and is not really a social activity. Maybe the cheese tastings will make up for it. Dunno.
At this point I'm not really sure what they're selling. Their webpage has items that I know are no longer for sale.
One thing that I'll give them credit for is calling an end to things. A lot of blogs and podcasts just stop recording; Tim and Liz have made a formal end to each of their endeavors; the blog, the podcast, and I suspect at some point they'll call an end to their farm, but I enjoyed them while they were here.
Natures harmony blog
Natures harmony podcast
Thank you, Tim and Liz.
I wonder how the people they convinced to be interns on their farm are doing now?
ReplyDeleteDid they learn that after a few years of "experience" you should find some interns, host a bunch of farm tours, run farm classes to teach people how to be "sustainable farmers", write a book, and then shut down most of the farm operations?
You would think that if you had managed to build "One of America's Most Sustainable Farms", all the bugs would have been worked out by the third year and would then have an efficient, productive, and profitable farm operation for years to come.
I agree with you, Rich. Here's what I said about Thundering hooves:
ReplyDelete""Sustainable"
Want to know what I consider to be a sustainable farm? Very simple: One that stays in business. It's fine and good to be for the environment, and all farmers I know care very much about their land, but you can't save the world unless you're a going concern. If you, dear reader, are interested in farming to improve the environment, please do consider this point carefully. Whatever good practices Thundering Hooves had been promoting are now moot. It makes great public relations, and newspapers love writing feel-good stories about it, but the bottom line is... well, the bottom line. Make a profit. Keep going.
By this measure, Thundering Hooves was not a sustainable farm. "
I think that natures harmony, as a supplier of animals for food, wasn't sustainable. Curious if they'll make a go of the cheese venture. maybe they can do a sustainable cheese farm.
Thundering hooves writeup:
http://ebeyfarm.blogspot.com/2011/04/thundering-hooves-postmortem.html