Posted by Reginaldo Haslett-Marroquin on July 29, 2009
Latino communities in Southern Minnesot and around the country are full of experiences and knowledge that if appreciated can help our common interest. Just as many other cultures we come from places that still hold ancient traditions that have held with the passage of time.
I heard today of the Goldman Environmental Price, given to Jesús León Santos of Mexico. Read his story, if you listed to my own story on The Story, you will see that my story isn’t really just one, there are millions of us who can contribute greatly to the sustainability of this country’s food and agriculture system.
Here is a quote from his award that illustrates my point “It is time we recognize that traditional agricultural methods can make strong contributions to biodiversity conservation. We should encourage it and value it as a way to produce healthy foods that conserve and care for the environment.”
Posted by Reginaldo Haslett-Marroquin on July 27, 2009
Although a lot of what came out in The Story was about some of my encounters with racism and discrimination, all of those events happened before I moved to Northfield, there was a lot of positive facts that did not fit the main focus of the story, I have had many conversations with folks in Northfield, MN who also thought the events exposed had happened here, the answer is no, although I have had situations in Northfield as well they pale in comparison to other places I have been with my family. The farming community here is terrific and very supportive, I feel confident that if something worthy of community action would happen to me in this town, I will have all of the support I would need to deal with it fully.
I have written extensively on all of the support and amazing partnerships that I have been able to align in establishing Latino farmers in Southern Minnesota. These folks include established non-Latino farmers, and although we still have to visit many farms before we are able to find a viable option, this may not be something far from the norm. There is also the experience factor that now allows us to screen farmers much better before we walk into their farms or call them, we also now have a large network of hundreds of farmers who are good friends and want to work with us to accomplish our mission.
I first lived in Northfield for 2 months when I arrived from Guatemala in 1992, but moved to Minneapolis where Amy and I lived for 10 years. Then we went back to Guatemala in 2000 and moved to Belle Plaine when we came back. In August of 2006, we moved to our current place just North of Northfield where we bought a 1.9 acre parcel and our small Finca Mirasol Farm is based. Here we have established a free range poultry system that combines perennial cropping systems and permaculture infrastructure designed to sustain production for a long time from the same piece of land. From these experience the Rural Enterprise Center was born and the mission is to develop the support infrastructure, the systems and programs so that we can launch a network of Latino/Hispanic farmers in Southern MN and establish our presence, contribute our assets to this region’s agriculture and food industries, and prepare the ground for new generations to find it easier to enter this economic sector.
At the Rural Enterprise Center, we are currently working to deploy a large scale farming system based on the technology that we have developed at our small place and we are focused in engaging established farmers and existing support systems in the process of introducing Latino/Hispanic farmers into agriculture. Our job is to provide a path for families to brake barriers and reduce risks that are natural to engaging this sector of the economy, and that are exacerbated by the existing levels of racism and discrimination in our rural communities. Although racism is real and alive every where we work, it is something we are able to deal with through the support of thousands of people that now work with us to achieve our mission.
Posted by Reginaldo Haslett-Marroquin on
I recently recorded for "The Story", with host Janet Babin, sitting in for Dick Gordon at the MPR studios in St. Paul. They were interested in my personal story as an immigrant, a farmer and a community worker. The story will air tonight Monday 27th at 9 pm here is the whole schedule for those of you outside of the 91.1 FM listening area. You can always send comments directly to me at regi at ruralec dot com.
Posted by Reginaldo Haslett-Marroquin on July 23, 2009
We just had two days of perfectly timed downpours that restored the moisture on the top soil around our area. As you know, a healthy poultry system depends on regular rain just like other crops. One would think that because the chickens have plenty of water they will be fine without rain, WRONG. They are just like cows or other animals, you can put poultry in a building and feed and give them water, we all know that, it is the way much or all of the poultry meat in the market is raised, including organic but raised in confinement. But those of us who are in this for the long haul know that there is an abysmal difference between birds raised in cages or confinement and the new systems we have launched. Luckily it seems like thousands of people are making the switch to healthier poultry and learning that the real price of good food is not cheap.
In short, cage and confinement systems are no different than putting someone in jail with a thousand other prisoners, they will live, but miserably, unhealthy and all of their natural behavior would need to be suppressed artificially, and deceases that enter their area will get them all rapidly given their depressed immunological systems.
Some things to remember. First, we grow birds with plenty of space, not with "access the outside", but OUTSIDE, period. Second, the outside does not look monotonous either, some areas they clean up quickly and are left without much vegetation but there is always plenty of ground cover, mounds of stuff here and there, especially if it is composting material. Third, shade and protection from predators and the sun is key. Fear of predators and inability to detect them if the sun is bright affects their behavior heavily.
An optimal habitat for free range chickens is not a forest or an open pasture, but a combination of a lot of conditions. In our production system for Pollo de Campo, or as Thousand Hills Cattle Company decided to call it "Home on The Range", we observe everything, we take pictures or videos, write it down, discuss what we learned with the other farmers, and then, we incorporate what we learned into the system so that we continually improve the ability of the birds to use natural conditions to their maximum potential. This is where deep observation and learning comes handy. This process of learning and re-learning results in an efficient and sustainable utilization of natural resources to grow the birds, maximum "happiness" if you wish to give their state of mind a name, and a healthy environment where they can be just "chickens".
Things that most of us can observe in a healthy flock for example s
mall birds will follow bigger ones or their mothers around. What we observe is that the larger birds can dig deeper, but they also want the larger stuff. The little one on the other hand scratches the loosen dirt and get the smaller stuff that is just fine for them. After recent rains, many of the seeds that we had spread of different small grains swelled, so the birds go back and forth digging them back up, in the process they get more water and minerals into their system. This process also uncovers warms that are just below the surface. I once watched one of the little white birds jump close to three feet and grabbed a fly "on the fly".
The group in this picture found a high spot with full sun, moisture in the air makes them want to pluck their feathers, dry and dusty makes them want to take a dust bath. This small observation is now fully incorporated into the landscaping for our free range chickens. As we do this, we observe improved behavior (less fighting among them which equals less stress), the more we learn, the more we understand that this is a whole different science altogether and we are happy to share the final product with you.
Growing a healthy pasture takes water as well, rains are key as they also bring down atmospheric nitrogen, again, we could irrigate this patch, but it isn’t the same. This new pasture is growing under a thick cover of hay, a whole colony of warms, insects and microbes is having a good time in preparation of digging themselves into the ground when the birds come out looking for them as they are let loose on this paddock.
We have watched how much birds are attracted to all of the hazelnut we planted in this other paddock. If we had not put the chicken wire around, they would have eaten them down by now. I had learned some years ago that hazelnuts have evolved for thousands of years to attract wild birds to sit around them and fertilize their roots, this may explain that we find them in Minnesota’s oak savanna openings and other similar areas, they absorb most of their nutrients from the top 6 inches or so of soil but penetrate the soil down to 12 feet deep according to Phill Ruther at Badgersert Farm in SE MN. 
These plants are a miracle for sustainability purposes. According to Phil, they compete in production with soybeans, but need no tilling, cultivation, or irrigation. The depth and expanse of their roots also captures nutrients and bring them up, create soil porosity introducing air into areas where new biological colonies can then get established, and on and on we could go. They sequestrate carbon, release none, their stems can be used as bio-fuels, and on top of this, the oil of hazels have the same DNA as olive oil. Their root systems would literally hold a hill from washing away in a flood. I guess we will be able to compete in bio-mass production with the neighbors’ soybean field, while producing a healthy crop of over 9,000 birds per acre. Quite a deal for the consumer, the environment, the farmer, the community and the economy I would say. If you agree, don’t just sit there, go to Thousand Hills Cattle Company and ask them how you can get our chickens.
Posted by Reginaldo Haslett-Marroquin on July 22, 2009
I just saw a piece on MN Public Radio web-site about a farm that a good friend, Jack Hedin, runs down in the Rushford Valey in the Winona Area. This is a very interesting story as Jack talks a similar language to our on operation here in Northfield and has become a regular item for regional farmers meetings dealing with re-building the farmer and consumer accountable business support infrastructure, programs and systems that makes local and regional food systems a solid economic development alternative to conventional corporate infrastructure. It is also interesting to read the response from our UofM expert.
Posted by Reginaldo Haslett-Marroquin on July 20, 2009
Here is a link to a short piece and video by David Henke of the Nothfield News taken last week at our experimental and training farm operated by Jose Javier and Mercedez Solorzano. At this time, we are setting up the first formal production farm, although the experimental farm is just that, is has already produced enough products to sustain itself while contributing the technology and protocols to deploy the larger scale production systems.
Yesterday, we also hosted the Sustainable Farming Association’s Hiawatha Cannon River Chapter farm tour at the experimental farm site. We had a great evening and very engaged conversation about food systems and large scale deployment of small scale sustainable poultry production systems for Southern MN.
