Long day

[altivo]

It seemed about two days long. Too much going on, too much needing to be done. A load of hay arrived at home while I was at work, now that needs to be unloaded so our hay supplier can have his wagon back. Summer Reading program started at the library, which means we had a zoo of kids (rather like a barrel of monkeys only louder and more demanding) though thankfully I didn't have to deal with much of that directly.

Our hay price has gone up 30% since last year. He says it's because of the cost of fuel, with which I can't argue. That's affecting everything. Further increases are expected, because of the superstitious belief among farmers in the area that demand for ethanol production is going to run the price of corn up to astronomical levels. Jeff says that some even plowed up fields full of winter wheat in order to plant more corn this spring. That's just incredibly stupid.

Even if there were suddenly instantaneous ethanol production plants all over the place (which there aren't) there still has to be a market for the ethanol. There are almost no vehicles around that run on E85 and the standard blends at the pump only contain 10% or so. That isn't going to generate any instant demand for huge quantities of the stuff. This behavior is sheer speculation, and is going to lead to a lot of problems come fall.

The big thing in all this though is the simple fact that most people have not had any increase in their income to deal with the tremendous surge in energy prices. Something has to give, and soon. Recession, depression, deflation, something is going to happen and it's not going to be easy or fun. I guarantee one thing: the only people who will benefit are those who are already wealthy, probably from oil. The rest of us will be left to "eat cake".

In other areas, the OpenVMS CD arrived in today's mail. I managed to get the base VMS installed and registered, but now have to read reams of documentation since I only ever did two VMS configurations in the past and that was 20 years ago and 3 major versions back. ;p

Oh, and we thought the foxes had vacated, but Gary saw the kit just at dusk as he was closing up the barns. They have burrowed under one corner of the arena.

Comments

[cabcat.livejournal.com]

Remember what happened to ol Marie Antoinette, she got the ol chop big time.
(Although its now said she never made that statement)

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Oh yes, I remember Marie getting the short haircut all right. You didn't realize I was that old, did you?

The thing about that is that Louis XVI and his consort weren't the ones responsible for the problem. They were just stupid. Figureheads. Like Bush is, in fact. And though some of the real guilty folks did eventually meet the chopper as well, the overall result was a terrible disaster. Many innocent people died horribly. It took France two centuries to recover (if it ever really has.) On the whole I don't consider that sort of thing to be progress.

[cabcat.livejournal.com]

Well we could do with less stupid figureheads, but I see your point.

You were around at the time of the big Chop? o.O

[altivo.livejournal.com]

The big pork chop? Oh yeeeees, I remember...

Only if you count successive reincarnations. But people keep telling me I'm older than dirt, so who knows?

[cabcat.livejournal.com]

I don't see how that's possible o.O

[kakoukorakos.livejournal.com]

Corn is an unbelievably stupid source for ethanol. What is wrong with Americans, would we rather waste energy and land processing ludicrously inefficient starches to make alcohol than import low-cost sugar, such that all our other crops become horrifically expensive? If US agriculture doesn't get smart, its stupidity (and that of the government) is not only going to keep us well behind the rest of the world in terms of using renewable resources to power our vehicles, but we're going to enjoy less of our rather nice situation of plentiful, inexpensive food. I'm a bit miffed at the corn & sugar farmers and their lobbies to "protect" Americans from the cheap sugar from Brazil and other South/Central American countries that could provide us with ethanol, reduce our dependence on middle-eastern oil (hopefully that would be the first source to be abandoned as alternatives are found), and increase our level of cooperation on a global scale where we could encourage other countries to produce crops they're well-suited to, while using our own agricultural resources to grow those crops which are best suited to the purposes we produce them for.

I have my doubts that hay prices are going to go up a huge amount here, if they do it'll be primarily weather-related as it always seems to be (there's either a crazy surplus of alfalfa, or a severe shortage). It's not fuel-related, it's supply related. I'd say the farmer isn't being completely honest with you, fuel costs may have gone up 30%, but as far as a bale of hay goes, the entire cost of that fuel is maybe 10% of the cost of the bale. If the farmer is giving you such a good deal that you're basically paying for the cost of his fuel for the hay he puts up, you probably should look for a new supplier.

But honestly, I don't need an explanation for hay prices. I deal with farmers who are honest and don't engage in shenanigans. Many I've purchased from in the past have bales that are so loose and light that they almost fall apart (as they're trying to increase the bale count by cutting down on the hay in each bale), the folks I've bought from for the past 10+ years if they have any available crank the bales so tight that the twine often breaks if you drop a bale (they probably average around 125#). And their prices are very close to the prevailing market rate for light shenanigan-bales that everyone else puts up. I don't ask for explanations for the prices, and I wouldn't take my business anywhere else unless I really couldn't afford what they were asking...but it's always been the case that I can't afford to NOT by hay from them, because it's rare to find farmers who are as dedicated to quality as they are, and there's nothing as bad as winding up with a bunch of poor quality hay in loose bales because they had a bad year and didn't have enough to sell me all I needed (couple years ago they lost almost all cuttings of alfalfa to weather such that it was only suitable for feeding to their cattle, and what did turn out well was just enough to feed their own horses and the ones they board so they just didn't sell much). I feel the hurt when I have to find other sources.

One thing's for certain, I don't know how farmers manage. I worry constantly that it's just not worth it for my suppliers, they have so much land that would be extremely valuable to developers near Boulder, there's a lot of work involved, some years are especially hard when the weather won't cooperate, and even in good years, do they really make enough money to make up for those bad years?

[altivo.livejournal.com]

I have confidence that our supplier is honest enough. He has been giving us a price per bale that is well below the local going average, since we've been buying up to a thousand bales a year from him for a long time now. I suspect the present increase just indicates a similar increase on the part of other suppliers in the area. His bales are tight and solid, he delivers direct to us and lets us keep his wagons while we unload (other people seem astonished at this, I always thought it was pretty normal) and he hasn't ever miscounted bales or given us a lot of wet ones. Once or twice when the hay was rained on while awaiting baling or even in the wagon awaiting delivery, he refused to sell it to us at all. He kept those lots for his own cows instead, knowing that horses won't tolerate moldy hay while cows and sheep don't much care.

This spring we ran short before there was any local hay available. Jeff had sold us the last of his supply in the fall. Gary called around and found someone nearby who could bring us a hundred bales at $3 each, which is more than we paid Jeff normally but we needed it now. The hay was good quality, the delivery was fine, but as you say, the bales were so loose they barely hung together. These weighed perhaps 30 lbs. each, where Jeff's weigh 50 to 60 (we have scales to weigh the hay out for the horses, so we've checked bale weights frequently.)

The load Jeff brought yesterday was 160 bales, now at $3 each. Based on weight alone, he's still charging only half what the other guy got. So I can't complain much. Nonetheless, the things he told us about what farmers are doing in order to plant more corn this year are very disturbing. It's sheer idiocy. Corn is a soil destructive crop, too. If not rotated with other crops such as beans, it will suck all the life right out of your soil. They will be buying huge quantities of oil-derived fertilizers and liquid ammonia in order to "revitalize" their fields if this keeps up. So the oil gets dumped on the cornfields anyway. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

[kakoukorakos.livejournal.com]

A lot of farmers just don't seem to care anymore. They don't care about quality, they don't care about taking care of their land so it'll produce well into the future. It wouldn't take too severe of a drought to turn some areas into dust bowls again.