'The Silence of the Lambs' personified

I found the film Wolf Creek so scary I couldn’t watch it after dark [1]. And I haven’t dared to try The Texas Chainsaw Massacre let alone The Silence of the Lambs. In other words, horror movies aren’t for me. And I’m not for them. So I avoid horror films. Like the proverbial plague. But sometimes one slips in under my radar. A cinematic wolf in sheep’s clothing. An example is the 2008 doco Food, Inc. [2, 3, 4, 5, 6]. Last Tuesday night Sweetheart Vivienne and I watched it. Its name’s benign enough – though perhaps the Inc’s a giveaway in this era of corporate excess. But its content puts it fairly and squarely in the horror movie genre. To me it’s a visual depiction of Michael Pollan’s 2006 book The Omnivore’s Dilemma [7]. Indeed Pollan’s in the film. As an articulate good guy, along with Joel Salatin [8]. But the bad guys are legion. And they’re all corporate – corporate bullies. Faceless and soulless agribusinesses. Out to screw the farmers on one side and the consumers on the other. And succeeding in screwing everyone including, I dare say, themselves – though they’re too stupid to know it. And how do we know the movie makers aren’t biased against them? Because all the bad guys declined to be interviewed. Oh, and the biggest bully? Why M**santo, of course. Easily. In summary, if you eat food you must watch, i.e. endure, Food, Inc. Its website says ‘You’ll never look at dinner the same way’ [9]. Oh yeah.

The shape of things to come?

Vis-à-vis the farm part of Farmdoc, a recurring theme in this blog is hay. In the nine years my sharefarmer Sharon and I’ve been jointly farming our adjoining properties, we’ve used square hay bales [1]. (They’re actually rectangular but called square.) This is because they’re smaller and lighter than round bales – the hay in a round bale’s roughly the same as in 15 square bales – so we can handle them manually. (Lifting round bales needs machinery – which Joel Salatin derides as ‘heavy metal’ [2] – which we don’t have and don’t want.) As neither Sharon nor I is getting younger (and stronger), we’re seeking ways to make our farming easier. So we decided we’d experiment this year. Last Saturday we bought a round bale (pictured) (for A$50) which we rolled off Sharon’s ute into one of our paddocks where we have 36 sheep and 29 goats. Instead of feeding square bale hay to them daily, the round bale’s now available to them, buffet-like, 24/7. How quickly they’ll eat it, and whether it’ll be degraded by the weather or them climbing and then excreting on it, remains to be seen. But if you don’t ask the question you won’t know the answer. This aspect of farming’s fun. It intrigues me. Stay tuned.

Of men and their heroes

On this last day of autumn 2010, I write of heroes. I’ve written several previous Farmdocs’ Blog posts about heroes. (To access them, write ‘hero’ in the Google search box near the top of the left sidebar.) Whilst my heroes list changes ever changes (mostly by lengthening; but that’s another story), I’m fascinated by my children’s heroes – which tell me about my children and, vicariously, about myself:

What a marvellous story darling Kate told on her Foxs Lane blog two days ago [1]. Dreams do come true. It’s inspirational and poignant that one of darling Brendon’s is doing just that. To meet his hero Joel Salatin is one thing. To meet him on Brendon and Kate’s farm is another. And for Joel to be so complimentary – in pouring rain traipsing through mud – is close to if not the ultimate. Well done, Brenno. You’re a star – and a hero of mine. Not that you need it – at all – but my seal of approval’s on Joel as one of yours.

Staying with heroes, today’s the 80th birthday of one of mine: Clint Eastwood [2, 3]. Why’s Clint my hero? One – he’s tall and handsome, of course. Two – he usually plays iconoclasts or other non-mainstream nose-thumbers. Three – he’s now so powerful he can, and does, thumb his nose at Hollywood’s quirks. And four – his film parts are invariably age-appropriate. For a far more esoteric and eloquent homage to Clint, read David Denby’s New Yorker piece here [4]. Happy 80th, Clint.