For the Beauty of the Earth: Earth Day 2019

A neighbor burned off a pasture last Friday night. It was Good Friday. Though I'd hoped to be able to go to the community worship service, the supper schedule during this busy corn planting time didn't work out, and I needed to stay closer to home. 

When Randy quit for the night, we drove south to check out the burn. It was a calm, quiet night, and even half a mile away, we could hear the crackle of flames as they burned through the dry, brittle grasses left behind after winter.

Photo from our 2012 burn, showing the charred ground left behind.

Though you couldn't see the scorched earth until the next day, it looked charred and lifeless in the light of day.

I couldn't help thinking of the first Good Friday, as Christ hung on the cross, when things looked bleak and without hope. But there's a reason that farmers and ranchers complete controlled burns on pasture lands. The burned vegetation will give away to new green growth in a few weeks' time. The native grasses will return to increased vigor and life.

New growth after a burn we did in 2012.

Earth Day fell the day after Easter this year. And as we hauled a group of cows and calves to the Ninnescah pasture Monday morning, I kept thinking about the timing.

Ninnescah Pasture - April 22, 2019 - Earth Day

Eastertide is a season to rejoice, and discern what Christ’s Resurrection means for believers today. Amid that celebration this year is Earth Day, the anniversary of the birth of the modern environmental movement in the U.S. It's been observed each year on April 22 since 1970, and it just happened to coincide with Easter this calendar year.

 

The first job description God gave to humans was to till and keep the garden (Genesis 2:15). Later, God commanded them to care for the animals He'd created. American farmers and ranchers do that every day - not just on Earth Day.

As we worked, I kept thinking of the words to a favorite hymn: For the Beauty of the Earth. And I mentally thought of the thousands of snapshots I have taken that illustrate the beauty of this Earth, most taken near this little slice of creation on the Stafford/Reno County line. Here are just a few of them:

For the beauty of the earth

For the glory of the skies

For the love which from our birth

 Over and around us lies

Lord of all, to thee we raise

This our hymn of grateful praise.

 For the beauty of each hour

Of the day 

 

and of the night

Hill and vale

and tree and flower

Sun and moon

and stars of light.

Lord of all, to thee we raise

This our hymn of grateful praise.

So the work to care for God's creation will continue on this day after Earth Day, too. Our families have been doing that for five generations.

Farmers: The First Environmentalists

For 45 years, environmentalists have celebrated Earth Day. It's today - April 22 - by the way. Here on the County Line, we will celebrate Earth Day just like we do pretty much every other day on this wonderful planet. We'll be caring for the earth and the creatures it shelters.

Cow-calf pairs arrive at the Ninnescah Pasture

Farmers are the world's first environmentalists. They've been the caretakers from the time God gave man authority over the plants and animals of the earth. However, some of the loudest voices from the environmental community will tell you that modern agriculture is killing the planet. They denounce herbicides and pesticides and fungicides. They think meat production is creating too big a carbon footprint. They want a return to overall-clad farmers hitching up their teams of horses or oxen to work the ground to produce solely organic products. (By the way, I have nothing against farmers in overalls. Overalls were the "uniform" of choice for my Grandpa Neelly who lived to be 100 and would have taken his cow herd to the rest home, if they would have let him. I also have nothing against organic foods or farmers. There is a place for every kind of farmer - from conventional to organic.)

This morning, Randy is taking maps to the Kanza Co-op so our wheat fields can be sprayed with fungicide. While this week's rain gave our ailing 2016 wheat crop a much-needed boost, it also prompted disease formation.

Let me tell you: It's not an inexpensive venture to treat a wheat crop with fungicide. When we consider the cost of all the inputs compared to the price we'll get at the elevator, there's a thin margin. And we also have to go on faith that the crop will make it to harvest with enough well-timed rain, avoiding any accompanying hailstorms or other of the myriad of scenarios that could impact it negatively. We definitely aren't doing it "just because" there is such a product available today. We are doing it to be good managers of our crop.

At a wheat profitability conference back in 2010, I heard Dr. Jay Lehr of the Heartland Institute speak. (Click here for the entire blog post.) He said, in part:

"Set aside time in your life to promote agriculture to those who don't understand it. The greatest problem with agriculture today isn't the volatility of the price of inputs. It's not the volatility of prices. It's the negative attitude toward farming. Environmental zealots want to convince the public that you are spoiling the land.

"You need to become an agriculture activist. ... We need to let people know that if we don't use herbicides and insecticides, people across the globe will starve.

"Let people know that despite "news" to the contrary, the family farm is not dead. There are 2 million farms in the U.S. Only 1 percent are owned by absentee organizations.

"We need to tell people that we are the best land conservationists. We produce three times more food than we did 40 years ago with greater yields on less land.

"We need to let people know that every day is Earth Day on the farm, not just April 22."

Who better to appreciate the earth and its resources than the nation's farmers and ranchers? We recently took some pairs to the Ninnescah Pasture for an early start to their summer "vacation" there. It was a beautiful, overcast day. The wild mustard made a pretty backdrop for some "family photos."

We first hauled the babies to the pasture, then we went back for their mamas. Each time we drove through the gate under the branches of a towering old cottonwood, I was struck by the beauty of the landscape at this pasture, a place that Randy has been renting to use for cow-calf pairs for nearly 40 years.

It's a great privilege to run cattle at this beautiful place. It's in the best interest of our family, our farming operation, the land owners and the creatures we care for to appreciate the earth and everything in it.

It's our job.

 

It's our calling and passion.

We don't take it for granted. From sunrise to sunset and beyond, we celebrate the small moments that can too easily be overlooked. That's what it means to be a farmer on Earth Day and the other 364 days of the year.

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I was honored this week to be included on In the Furrow's "Big List of Farmer Blogs." Click on the link to check out the other farm bloggers on the list, which were chosen for doing "a great job of spreading positive messages about all the wonderful things farmers are doing to feed the world." Thanks for making my day, In the Furrow!