A Real Operator

*photo credit to Lydia

Today, MGC became a real operator by signing paperwork at the U.S. Department of Agriculture office at the county seat. I signed on the line that clearly said Operator, so it must be true. You may be interested in knowing that your tax $$ will be going to make sure that MCG's '09 wheat crop is more lucrative than an uninsured, drought-stricken, and frost-bitten 20 bushel/acre crop otherwise would be.

Some federal offices are comforting and sustaining. Post offices, for example, smell familiar and have employees who seem genuinely interested in helping me process my mail. The Ag Department, however, makes me feel like I've walked into the wrong seminar room. Like my poor professor who walked in ready to talk about Middlemarch when the rest of us were primed for Mill on the Floss. 

Things I have learned from the Department of Agriculture: 

1)If you want $$ from a government program, buying local is counterproductive. Our lovegrass project was complicated by buying seed from a neighbor rather than from a dealer who would have all the handy paperwork. For the USDA, locavores kind of suck.

2)It's really just easier to do it the way the the feds do it. Case in point: Our soil test indicated that our lovegrass needed 32 pounds of nitrogen/acre to meet the standards for a program that establishes grasses in erodible land. So, like a wierdo urban cranky girl who doesn't put Sevin dust in my tomatoes, I asked about alternatives to commercial, petroleum-based fertilizer. The answer: it costs more to apply feedlot manure, and the feds are not going to cover it. Oh, and we used to have a program to fertilize with chicken poop from eastern Oklahoma. We know that all the crap from factory chicken farms is screwing up the watershed over there. But the program expired, so never mind.

MCG was doing her own translation from the original government-speak, so the nuances may have been lost on her. Also, she is distracted by the voice of her deceased step-mother-in-law, the opinionated organic gardener. From Organic Gardener Heaven, she is communicating that commercial fertilizer is a great deal for Monsanto, but not so good for her grandchildren's health. Clearly, MCG is out of her league and should go back to picking tomato worms off her Jersey Girls.

--MCG