Wednesday’s Chicago Metro Farmers Markets
Weather.com Forecast: Cloudy with occasional showers, high 75
Accuweather Forecast: A few morning showers, thunderstorm possible p.m., high 77
Andersonville Farmers Market, 1500 W. Catalpa Ave., Chicago
3 p.m. to 7 p.m.
Green City Wednesday Market, 1817 N. Clark St., Chicago
7 a.m. to 1 p.m.
Palos Heights Farmers Market, 12217 S. Harlem Ave., Palos Heights
8 a.m. to 1 p.m.
Uptown Farmers Market, W. Wilson Ave. & Broadway, Chicago
2:30 p.m. to 7:00 p.m.
In This Issue
・USDA Seeks Your Comments Supporting Local Food by June 21
・Cedar Valley LGD Pups: More Than Adorable Goofs
USDA Comment Period: Your Chance to Support Local Food
President Joseph R. Biden Jr. on February 24 issued Executive Order 14017, titled America’s Supply Chains. The order — prompted by the national food supply bottlenecks and breakdowns in the early weeks of the COVID crisis last year — drew little attention.
But it could ultimately have a dramatic impact in boosting local food… as long as enough local food advocates utilize the USDA’s public comment period that runs through June 21.
According to the Federal Register posting by the USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service:
USDA will use public comments received through this notice to inform our thinking regarding how available authorities and funding related to food supply chain resilience can help to increase durability and resilience within the U.S. food supply. We are particularly interested in comments addressing local and regional food systems, creating new market opportunities (including for value-added agriculture and value-added products), facilitating fair and competitive markets (including traceability and supply chain transparency), advancing efforts to transform the food system, meeting the needs of the agricultural workforce, supporting and promoting consumers' nutrition security, particularly for low-income populations, and supporting the needs of socially disadvantaged and small to mid-sized producers and processors.
There is no guarantee of a generational shift toward a food system that is more local, sustainable, transparent, fair to workers, accessible to all and supporting the needs of small-to-mid-sized and socially disadvantaged producers and processors. But these are changes that many of you have sought for years, and the fact that this executive order has placed them on the table is breathtaking.
We will be commenting and recommend that you do too. Click the button below to go to Regulations.gov, enter Executive Order 14017 in the search box, and then hit Comment.
Cedar Valley LGD Pups: More Than Adorable Goofs
Last week we shared the story of the livestock guardian dogs (LDGs) on Gretta’s Goats’ farm in Pecatonica, Illinois. Coincidentally, our friends Beth and Jody Osmund of Cedar Valley Sustainable Farm (CVSF) in Ottawa, Illinois (about 85 miles southwest of Chicago) were adding two Great Pyrenees puppies of their own to their four-legged staff.
Jody & Beth began CVSF in 2003, leaving corporate jobs in Chicago to return to family farmland north of Ottawa on the banks of Indian Creek and practice community-supported agriculture. CSA is a partnership between the people that produce food and those who eat it, a mutually beneficial relationship.
What began as a vegetable CSA evolved into Chicagoland's first Meat CSA. The Osmunds bring sustainably raised, drug- and hormone-free beef, pork, chicken and eggs to families each month. All of the chickens are raised each summer on their farm; daily moves to fresh pasture keep the birds healthy and happy. Pigs and cows are raised here, and in cooperation with neighboring farms, on pasture and high-quality grain.
In addition to the work they do on their small farm, raising animals with care and respect, they advocate for a better food system. Jody and Beth are passionate about sustainable farming and teach other aspiring farmers about what they do. They also share their knowledge with colleagues as speakers at farming conferences.
Enjoy Beth’s story about their life with livestock guardian dogs.
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When I grew up on my dad’s farm, farm dogs were just lovable mutts that served as great companions but didn’t really “earn” their keep. When Jody and I moved to Cedar Valley Sustainable Farm 19 years ago, we had never heard of livestock guardian dogs.
This was okay since we started off growing vegetables and predators mostly left them alone — although I do have a story about an ill-fated sweet corn crop and a gang of marauding raccoons.
Cedar Valley Sustainable Farm is bordered on one side by Indian Creek and surrounded by many acres of woods and riparian habitat. We farm in the midst of amazing natural beauty and incomparable wildlife habitat. That means that if it can live in northern Illinois and likes to eat chicken, we have it living on our property. This is a real challenge to our commitment to raising chickens on pasture with the freedom to range.
When we scaled up our pastured meat chicken operation in 2006, this free-range resolve was dearly tested. What seemed to be dozens of raccoons each night were decimating our chickens.
Jody started pulling all-nighters in the field to try to deter the predators. This worked for a bit, but was far from sustainable. A pillar of farm sustainability is that the farmer can keep farming happily… and days with little or no sleep eroded this pillar.
Of course, predators killing dozens of chickens per night were obliterating our profitability, which is essential to sustainability too.
It turns out that mid-to-late May (when we move chickens to the field) coincides with the raccoon mothers weaning their litters of cubs. A raccoon litter averages 3-5 cubs and at weaning time they are as voracious as teenagers. Imagine being a harried mother with hungry kids in tow and stumbling upon a “FREE ALL NIGHT BUFFET” sign: heaven for raccoons… hellish nights for an exhausted farmer.
Nearing a breaking point, we decided to surround the mobile chicken pens with a perimeter electric fence. Success! (And some needed sleep for Jody.) Although raccoons have a healthy taste for chicken, they will not come back once they’ve felt the jolt of an electric fence. The chickens were safe… until the next group of raccoons came along. The summer dragged on with a temporary electric fence going up around the chickens at the first sign of raccoons; it added dozens of hours of labor, but the chicken season was saved.
Through the fall and winter planning time, Jody researched ways to protect chickens, improve profits, and preserve my sanity and his — a sleep-deprived farmer is not pleasant to be around. The more he learned, the more livestock guardian dogs (LGDs) seemed to be an ideal solution.
There were fits and starts in the search for dogs. A Great Pyrenees rescue organization absolutely refused the idea of rescue dogs going to work on a farm unless it had a solid 6-foot tall fence surrounding its perimeter, as Great Pyrenees are very smart, get bored easily, and tend to escape and roam. No amount of explaining that they would be working at the job they are bred to do would change their minds.
Our friend Vera Videnovich suggested we get in touch with her friend Andrew Tokarz, because he might have LGD pups available in the spring. Vera is a Serbian-American sheep farmer, fiber artist, zine editor, and market farmer extraordinaire who we met at the Logan Square Farmers Market. Andrew is a Polish immigrant whose passion for all things Poland includes traditional dance and music, dairy sheep, and Tatras, aka Polish Mountain Sheepdogs. CSA farmers meet the most interesting people!
Andrew did have pups available and we struck a barter and cash deal to bring two to the farm when they were ready to wean. We’ve had LGDs on the farm for the 14 years since. Sophie and Sasha, our first pair of Tatras, joined the team in 2007 and immediately made a huge difference to the safety of our chicken flock and an improvement to our sleep schedules.
Sweetie, our current Tatra, is Sophie’s daughter; her brother Harry died last summer. With chick season coming, Sweetie needed help, so we recently welcomed two new pups to the farm.
In mid-April two of our sons and I went down to northern Tennessee to pick up Panda and Polar Bear (they do look like fuzzy bears!). They are Great Pyrenees — finally some Pyrenees pups! Born in early February, they are now learning, thriving and GROWING into their new roles here on the farm. They are apprenticed to Sweetie, who is doing a great job teaching them the job (as long as they remember that she is the boss, they get along wonderfully).
Once they are grown and trained, we’re looking forward to Sweetie retiring to become a house dog. Sweetie definitely deserves a nice retirement after being on the job for the last 8 years!
We’ll see if the indoor dog and cats feel the same way.