With the recent closing of the Smithfield’s pork processing plant in Sioux Falls, 20,000 pigs a day now have nowhere to go. The current system is not sustainable because when it breaks, as it has in this pandemic, there might be less meat to buy, and farmers have animals they may need to euthanize.
The art of farming requires that the farmer be willing to learn skills like getting a reluctant calf to nurse on his mom; extracting a cow whose horns are stuck in a hay feeder (ever do a Chinese nail puzzle?); or fixing a broken machine when you can't get parts. The farmer has to learn to adapt and improvise. It's part know-how and part attitude.
Have you looked back at the old days and thought how the decisions, big and small, that you made then are affecting your life now? The funeral you decided to skip? The lunchtime page-turner novel that you left half-finished at your office? The dental work that you put off?
Time is now defined as the "before" and "after" days. Remember when a trip to the supermarket was routine? You could pop into your car, walk through crowded supermarket aisles, breathe the same air as fellow shoppers, and checkout without fear? Friends, that was just a few weeks ago! Hopefully, the rate of new infections will soon go down. Eventually, life will return to normal, but will we ever want to go entirely back to "before"?
These are crazy times: schools closed; a toilet paper famine; staying home. It's sort of like a hurricane without the hurricane, or a snowstorm without the snow, except to add insult to injury we did get snow on Monday. A significant difference between a weather disaster and our current pandemic and is that a hurricane or snowstorm comes and goes in a day or two. The end of this is not even in sight. Sheltering in place on the farm with my cows is more of a pleasure than a requirement.
It's hard to imagine running out of food in three days, but I suppose it could happen. While the current crisis probably won't keep trucks off the road, what if field workers stay home or meat-cutting plants close? Would the trucks have anything to deliver? Happily, in New Hampshire, we can provide some locally raised meat that is not dependent on cross-country trucking.
