The wind took the hive

Last Friday the wind came hard in the late afternoon and knocked one of our large hives off its post. We did not know until a small swarm came after the crew. Fridays are already a rush. Harvest, clean, pack for Saturday market. A couple of workers walked up to the barn with stings. I was helping a customer. Both of us got hit. This was not our usual honeybee day. The wind made the swarm hard to see. Five of us took a sting before we understood we had a real problem.

A couple years back I bought a hive out of Germany. Not a Langstroth box. A log hive, built of hemp, long and tall, set on a post. It lived up front by the greenhouse, under a big tree. Sunday mornings I liked to sit in that shade with coffee and a book. Never a problem. We have met wild hives before. We have requeened more than once. When we found this one broken off the post, the colony was past agitated. Hollywood would have liked the scene. We finished what market harvest we could, sent the crew home, and waited for dark. Smokers out. Two of us to lift it. That hive held thirty to forty thousand bees, and it weighed like it.

The hemp mount on the bottom was broken. Not a repair. The weight of the colony and the wind did the work. So the job changed. Move the bees into a standard box and try to save them. Saturday the market crew reported at 4:30. I called off the farmstand. Eighteen years, and that was a first. Markets keep this place alive, so closing one is not a small money decision. We loaded the truck for the Heritage District market in downtown Gilbert and sent the stand crew home. By midmorning I knew it was the right call. Those bees were still in the air all day. A customer at the stand would have walked into it.

We got the colony rehomed. The winged crew is calmer and back at work. That is the relief. This life is the one we chose. Work with what is alive. Learn the trades between the things that share the ground. That is stewardship. The bees matter here. We keep them. They keep the blooms. Call it a win-win if you need a short name for it.

We closed the stand so the bees could keep the farm.

This Week on the Land

Wind, stings, and a box that holds

WHAT GREW:
The colony made it into a standard box. Thirty to forty thousand bees, rehomed, and settling. The blooms still have a crew.

WHAT FAILED:
The hemp log hive is done. The mount broke under the weight and the wind. A Sunday coffee spot under that tree is quieter now.

WHAT I NOTICED:
Five stings, one closed farmstand, and a market in Gilbert that still ran. The wind does not care that Friday is pack day.

Moon and Soil

Light building toward the hunt

First quarter was Sunday the 18th. We are on a waxing gibbous, climbing toward the Hunter’s Moon on Monday, October 26. Leaf and fruit energy is up. Good week to keep sowing what the noon will allow, and to watch anything tall that the wind can take. A hive on a post is a lesson. So is a tray left in the open. Pre-water the furrow. Leave the shade cloth where the plug still needs it. The Almanac can name the day. The hand on the soil still has the veto.

NOW — Waxing gibbous:
Light building. Sow and watch.

MON 10/26 — Hunter’s Moon:
Gather what is ready.

HIVE — Rehomed:
Colony in a standard box.

SAT 11/7 — Foundation dinner:
Farm to fork. Tickets open.

One Practice

Check what the wind can take

Walk the place before the next blow. Posts, shade frames, hive stands, anything tall that a gust can lever. Put a hand on it. If it rocks, fix it or take it down. Twenty minutes. The bees already taught the cost of skipping that walk.

Basket and Coming Days

What is in motion

In the basket: what we got packed before the swarm, and what Gilbert took on Saturday. Herbs, eggs, greens, the fall sowings that are up. The farmstand is open again. The bees are in a box, not in the air over the tables.

On the work list: keep an eye on the rehomed colony, stake anything the wind can reach, move plugs the noon will allow, and keep the Saturday class going during market. Old-way food prep. Bring a jar.

November 7 is still the Rogue Rhino Foundation farm-to-fork dinner. Tickets and the details are at roguerhino.org. A full room helps the work that keeps a place like this standing when the wind takes a hive.

If you cannot get to us, stand with the neighbors who grow what they sell. Sovereign Acres in Apache Junction. Kinsey Kountry Farm in Gilbert. Sphinx Date Company in Scottsdale. Honeybrook Farms in Gilbert.

One Line, Then Mine

From the old teachers

“The bee colony is not a collection of insects. It is one being, and it answers as one.”

— Rudolf Steiner, as I hear him when the hive speaks all at once

My translation this week: five of us got the message at the same time. The colony was one animal that day. We treated it that way, moved it whole, and left the stand closed until it settled.

Sign-Off

Write me if you took a sting for the farm this week, or if you have a hive story of your own. We chose this life. The wind does not ask if Friday is busy. The bees do not ask if the market is open. We answer both, and we keep the colony.

Eat something that still remembers the sun.

— Farmer Mark

Passion First, Then the Bill

The hunt for money is real. A small farm is always looking for the next honest dollar. Lately that hunt has been for the Rogue Rhino Foundation. We have a fundraiser on November 7, a farm-to-fork dinner. Last year that night raised about $37,000. This year the room looks smaller. I have asked a few good speakers in our field to help the tickets move. I have called last year’s sponsors. The phone is quiet.

In the same weeks I have been on the line with outside companies and the state over things that should not take a morning. It amazes me how hard the system has made it to grow food and sell it to a neighbor. I understand why the next generation wants nothing to do with this work. My own farm is the example. I have no one to hand it to. I was not blessed with children. None of my family wants the farm life, or the desert. Loving the land is a forgotten idea, same as manual labor. We live in convenience and a screen, and the university is still teaching the chemical way. Big Ag says it will feed the world. From this row, that is not true. For the first time in generations we are the unhealthiest people, and I believe the root is that corporate food system. Food safety is one of the bigger scams in it. That is another letter.

People ask if a small farm can still make a livable life. I will always say yes. Then I say but. It depends on what you call livable. Eighteen years in, the curve is steep and it is expensive. Learning the soil is one job. Learning how to sell what the soil made is the harder one, and that is the food system we are stuck inside. We have to get county, state, and federal government out of our food, or at least cut its weight way down. How we do that, I have no answer. All I can do is the work inside a trade that regulates us hard and is slowly poisoning the land and the people on it.

This is work of passion, not profit.

This Week on the Land

The Heat Broke. The Paperwork Did Not.

WHAT GREW:
Nights are finally in the fifties. Days near eighty. The plugs we held through Indian summer can meet the soil without cooking at noon.

WHAT FAILED:
Sponsor calls from last year’s dinner are coming back thin. A quiet phone is its own kind of crop failure. We plant anyway.

WHAT I NOTICED:
The soil is workable in the open row again. The forms and the state calls are not. One of those I can fix with a shovel.

Moon and Soil

Light Coming Back

New moon was Saturday the 10th. We are on a waxing crescent, building toward first quarter on Sunday, October 18, and the Hunter’s Moon on the 26th. This is a sowing week if the plug can stand the remaining noon. Leaf energy is rising. Brassicas, greens, and the roots that still want a damp furrow can go in. Pre-water. Shade cloth stays handy. The Almanac can suggest. The hand on the soil still has the veto.

NOW — Waxing crescent:
Light returns. Sow with it.

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 18 — First quarter:
Leaf and fruit energy builds.

MONDAY, OCTOBER 26 — Hunter’s Moon:
Gather what is ready.

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 7 — Foundation dinner:
Farm to fork. Tickets open.

One Practice

Buy the Ticket, or Send the Note

If the greenback boogie is the week’s lesson, the practice is simple. Go to roguerhino.org. Read the November 7 farm-to-fork dinner. Buy a seat, or send it to one person who still eats with intention. If a ticket is not the thing, write one sponsor you know and tell them a small farm asked. Twenty minutes. That is the whole job.

Basket and Coming Days

What Is in Motion

In the basket: the turn is on. Herbs, eggs, greens that made the heat, and the first of the fall sowings going into ground that can finally hold them. Do not expect a mountain of heads yet. Those are still weeks out. Patience is still the share.

On the work list: move the plugs the noon will allow, keep the shade close, knock the bugs off the new growth, and keep calling on the dinner. Saturday class is on during market. Old-way food prep. Bring a jar.

November 7 is the Rogue Rhino Foundation fundraiser, a farm-to-fork dinner. Speakers from the field. Last year we raised about $37,000 for the work. This year needs you in the room. Tickets and the details are at roguerhino.org.

If you cannot get to us, stand with the neighbors who grow what they sell. Sovereign Acres in Apache Junction. Kinsey Kountry Farm in Gilbert. Sphinx Date Company in Scottsdale. Honeybrook Farms in Gilbert.

One Line, Then Mine

From the Old Teachers

“Looking at plants and animals in all their functions, rather than treating any area as a single-product system.”

— Bill Mollison, on what a farm actually is

My translation this week: the greenback is one yield. It is not the only one. Food, a taught hand, a dinner that keeps the foundation alive — those count. A single-product farm is how Big Ag thinks. We are not that.

Sign-Off

Write me if you are coming on the 7th, or if a sponsor should hear from me. I would rather fill the room with people who know what a row costs than chase a quiet phone another week. The work is passion. The bills are still bills. Both of those can be true.

Eat something that still remembers the sun.

— Farmer Mark

Ten Thousand Plugs, and a Hot Noon

This last blast of heat off the desert floor is challenging us. The bugs are fat and happy on the summer plant decay, and now they are jumping onto the new growth. We are in the turn from summer to fall. The soil wants to be planted. The air has not agreed yet.

We have more than 10,000 plugs waiting. Baby plants. They are temperature sensitive. Plant too early and the midday heat burns them off. Plant too late and we miss the daylight window, and worse, we miss the market window. Eighteen years in this valley taught me the rule. Summer into fall is always about the heat. Winter into spring is always about the freeze. The calendar does not care which one is inconveniencing you.

If we wait on this fall plant, we will not have a bulk of food for another 45 to 60 days. I am asking for your patience. You are already seeing broccoli and cauliflower at the farmers market. We have not planted yet. A lot of what you are looking at is not from a farm that grew it. It is produce from out of state, or out of the country, resold under a local name. First out always gets the higher price per pound. When our crop comes in, we will have to meet the market lower.

From where I stand, that race has not one concern for nutrition, nutrient density, or what it takes to grow clean food. Appearance. Size that fits a case. That is corporate food wearing a market apron. This is where Brix comes in. In a food system that made sense, the farmer would be paid for what is in the plant, not for how pretty it sits in a carton.

We will not burn the plugs to win the first week of market.

This Week on the Land

Heat, Bugs, and a Bench Full of Babies

WHAT GREW:
The transition growth is up. Tender. Exactly what a fat bug wants after a summer of decay. Shade cloth is earning its keep.

WHAT FAILED:
A few plugs we pushed early showed the burn by midafternoon. The leaf cooked before the root ever took. That is the lesson, not a surprise.

WHAT I NOTICED:
The soil in the shade is finally workable. The open row at 1 p.m. is still a griddle. The hesitation is not fear. It is eighteen years of watching.

Moon and Soil

Thin Moon, Hot Soil

Last quarter was Saturday. We are on a waning crescent, headed for the new moon on Saturday, October 10. A new moon is a good intention day. It is not a permission slip to plant 10,000 heat-sensitive plugs into a noon that still lies. Root crops that can take the warmth can go into a pre-wet furrow. The brassica babies stay on the bench, under shade, until the nights give us a real drop.

NOW — Waning crescent:
Finish. Do not force the plugs.

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 10 — New moon:
Set the intention. Watch the noon.

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 17 — First quarter:
Leaf energy builds. If nights drop.

BEDS — Indian summer:
Shade on. Water before seed.

The Almanac can suggest a planting day. The soil temperature on the back of the hand has the veto. If the plug leaf wilts before the root has a reason to stay, you did not gain a week. You lost the plant.

One Practice

Give the Plug a Noon Test

If you are holding baby plants this week, do not guess. Set one tray in the place you mean to plant, at the hour the heat peaks. Shade cloth on half of it. Come back at 3. The half that is still standing is your answer. Twenty minutes of watching beats a Saturday of replanting.

If you do not have plugs, you still have a job. Ask the stand where the broccoli was grown. If they cannot say the field, you are not buying from a farmer. You are buying a label.

Basket and Coming Days

What Is in Motion

In the basket: what survived the turn. Herbs, eggs, greens that made it, a few last summer fruits if the plants still have the nerve. Do not expect a pile of fall heads. Those are 45 to 60 days out if we plant when the plugs can live.

On the work list: hold the sensitive plugs under shade, water the benches before the heat, knock the bugs off the new growth, and keep the furrows ready so we can move the day the noon breaks.

Saturday morning class is on during market. Old-way food prep. Bring a jar and a question.

If you cannot get to us, stand with the neighbors who grow what they sell. Sovereign Acres in Apache Junction. Kinsey Kountry Farm in Gilbert. Sphinx Date Company in Scottsdale. Honeybrook Farms in Gilbert. A dollar at a gate that grew the food is the whole argument.

One Line, Then Mine

From the Old Teachers

“The plant is the bridge. Quality is the point of the bridge, not the size of the load.”

— Rudolf Steiner, as I hear him when we talk about food that feeds a person and not a carton

My translation this week: Brix tells me what the plant actually made. A pretty head from somewhere else tells me it fit the box. We are waiting on the first one.

Sign-Off

Write me if you see local names on food that was not grown here. I would rather you wait six weeks for a head we stood in the heat for than buy a carton that only borrowed the valley’s name. The market window is real. So is the burn. We are choosing the plant.

Thank you for the patience. It is not a small thing. It is how a small farm stays a farm.

Eat something that still remembers the sun.

— Farmer Mark

As a farmer and a small-business owner, time off is rare. I take one planned trip a year. This one I ran back to my roots on the Oregon coast. Ten days. The ocean still has that power to dissolve a worry I cannot seem to set down here. It is a place of memory making, and of remembering the good times we have already had.

Family. Friends. Seafood that still knew which tide it came from. Bonfires. Wildlife that does not ask permission. The smell of salt on a wool sleeve. I watched the kids sprout like weeds since last September, and the older folks get older in the same week. I used to run that sand, build forts, jump in water cold enough to stop a sentence. Clamming. Crabbing. Fishing. This year I found a good log, sat down, and watched.

Have you ever noticed the beach changes the way sound sits in your ear? The roar is steady. The birds mean it. A dog yells. A kid yells. None of it is noise the way a road is noise. I ate oysters, crabs, and clams in every size they brought to the table. I also walked the local farmers market for mushrooms and fruit. A farmer on vacation is still a farmer. He just buys from somebody else for once.

I came home thankful, and recharged for the fall and winter work. Time flies on the back nine. I am amazed by it, and I do not trust it. This profession will spend the body if you only feed the list. Slow the mind. Work the body. Take care of the soul the way you take care of the soil. The row was still here when I got back. It will not always wait as kindly as it did this week.

The row will wait a week. The soul will not.

This Week on the Land

What I found when I opened the gate

WHAT GREW:
The beds did not ask if I was having a nice time. Greens that survived September are tired and still standing. A few volunteers came up in the paths like they owned the place.

WHAT FAILED:
One corner crusted where the timer did its job and the soil still drank too fast. Ten days is long enough for a dry edge to tell on you. I do not blame the help. I blame the desert.

WHAT I NOTICED:
The light is lower. Morning holds on the soil a little longer. I cracked the compost and it smelled alive, not cooked. Second spring is not a slogan this week. It is a temperature on the back of the hand.

— Farmer Mark

Last week the monsoon remembered us. Not a polite sprinkle. A late, heavy-handed visit.

Tuesday night into Wednesday, the East Valley and the north side took one and a half to four inches. Roads went under. Somebody tried to drive a wash and had to be pulled out. At the airport, the high fell to ninety-five, then ninety. For a Phoenix September, that is the sky taking a breath.

Then the humidity sat on us like a wet wool blanket, and just as quickly the dry air marched back in. Dew points dropped into the twenties. Heat climbed toward a hundred again.

That is this desert’s joke. She will soak you, steam you, and toast you in the same week, and still expect you to plant.

On September 22, the equinox. Day and night shake hands and let go. Up north they call it fall. Here we call it the second spring — the real one.

The soil is finally holding water instead of turning it into steam. Schauberger used to say water wants to stay cool and alive. After a storm like that, the swales are speaking. Walk them. See where the sky chose to sit. Help it next time.

I am planting the fall and winter garden now. Not in a panic. In the window.

Broccoli, cabbage, and cauliflower still go in trays under shade. Carrot, beet, radish, chard, kale, and lettuce can meet the soil if I can keep the seedbed damp.

The harvest moon is September 26. Gather what the heat left us. Sow what the cool will feed us.

The sky already wrote the instructions. We only have to read the soil.

— Farmer Mark

Building community comes in many ways. Several years ago, a nonprofit named The Land at Home Project asked if I had ever considered having veterans work on my property.

I had hosted a couple of groups before. They came through, helped for a week or so, and moved on. It was a labor force, and I enjoyed it. This was different. This was training through work.

I loved the concept. I have been farming for eighteen years here in the desert, and the best way to help anyone learn is to work the farm. This is nothing you will learn at a university or on YouTube.

The lesson that starts with everyone, in their minds and their hearts, is the manual labor. Then add the weather. Farm work is not for the faint. It is a discipline.

Who better to grasp that concept than military veterans? These people have been serving our country for years. That is a way of life. When they leave that life, the question hanging in the air is simple: What’s next?

I work with The Land at Home Project as a host in their Veterans in Agriculture program. Through this program, I have hosted veterans from many different backgrounds who want to begin their own farms.

They learn the essentials of agricultural production, and they get their hands in the soil at host farms like mine. That is how you understand the principles. That is how you start to see how you will manage your own place.

I am successful as a farm-to-market farmer, a farm-to-plate farmer, and a vendor to large, multi-site supermarkets. That is not a résumé line. That is what I can show a veteran standing in the row with me.

This program gives beginning farmers and ranchers a head start. They leave with mentors, community, and a much clearer vision of how to start than I had eighteen years ago.

Together, we have already created many incredible success stories of beginning veteran farmers.

Together, we can all make a difference. Let’s do this from the ground up.

To heal our bodies, we must first heal the soil.

Small-scale farming is a really big deal.

— Farmer Mark

Farmers live in the future. We are always planning. The job of predicting when our food becomes ripe enough for consumption is a test of nerves. Many failures come from planting too soon or too late.

The Summer/Fall/Winter transition is one of the trickiest for us desert-floor farmers. Our land is sunburned from the relentless heat of the past 90 days. Our crops have been on a critical “stress” cycle. Our people are exhausted, as are our animals.

This is the cycle of life and the cycle of our planet.

Here at Rogue Rhino, we operate through the summer. We have members who need to be fed real, nutrient-dense food. Just because the weather is against us doesn’t stop us from doing what we do. We are true stewards of the land.

As regenerative farmers, we put our sheep to work in the fields that are ready for transition. We must be very watchful that the summer heat does not weaken our animals, providing them with windproof shade and clean water.

Once the sheep have finished, we move them. We pull and repair the irrigation, apply minerals and compost, rake, and prepare the garden for new plantings.

We will be purchasing around 10,000 new organic plugs for hand planting this season.

These plugs are grown in a nursery and are around a month old. The plugs are very delicate, and they take a trained hand and heart to be planted correctly.

“We plant with intention.”

Once planted, the plants will stress, and we watch them closely. If we plant too early and another big heat wave hits, it could kill the new plants. If we plant too late, the ground won’t be warm enough and the daylight will not be long enough for the baby plants to take root.

When you work outside for a living, you learn the seasonal cycles. It’s never the same, but you get a feeling when the evenings get a little chillier and the storms become more violent.

Change is close.

We follow the moon. The desert is communicating with you. The big winds in the afternoon are all part of the transition process of the desert floor.

To be a successful grower on the desert floor, turn off your cell phones and spend time outside.

Planning is key. Execution is critical for success.

— Farmer Mark

The desert heat is slowly fading. The seasons are changing and, more importantly, so are our daylight hours. Most people don’t notice that gradual change, but your trees and plants do.

Stay connected to what is happening outside—not on your phone or computer. It’s a wonderful way to live, and we live in a magical place: the Desert Southwest.

We’ve had some good rain lately, and our farm crew is busy crossing over the gardens and preparing for the Fall/Winter planting. Thousands of seeds will go into the ground, planted with intention and by hand, with thousands of plugs on the way.

When planting, remember that the seeds you’re holding are nothing short of a miracle. They need to feel your vibration before they hit the soil.

Small farmers are always planning and searching for that next revenue stream. We look back at our notes from this time last year, remembering what worked and what didn’t, and use those lessons to decide what comes next.

For us, Soil is Life.

Right now, we’re trimming back plants burned by the summer heat, cutting branches and building compost for our spring transition. It’s all forward thinking. This relationship with nature is a lifestyle.

There’s something special about sitting in the stillness of your garden and simply observing the beauty of a diverse ecosystem—all of it living together in a symbiotic relationship.

During these transition periods, we also add minerals to our soils to help increase the nutrient density of our plants and trees. Those nutrients ultimately end up in the food they produce.

And that, my friends, is one of the things that makes our farm different from most:

We care about what we feed you.

When you eat nutrient-dense food, you’re giving your body the building blocks it needs to operate and stay healthy.

Remember High School Chemistry?

Do you remember the Periodic Table of Elements?

I hated having to memorize that table in high school. It made no sense to me. I could never make the connection between all those elements and the real world.

That changed when I started farming 18 years ago.

As I began reading about “old school” methods of farming, I kept seeing references to those same elements. Suddenly, the table I hated memorizing started to make sense.

The connection was right there in the soil.

I’ve since created a mini periodic table specifically for plants and trees. It’s very basic, but it helps explain the elements involved in growing healthy plants and producing nutrient-dense food.

More importantly, it’s the kind of tool I want to use to teach young people who have an interest in growing—helping them make the connection I couldn’t make when I was sitting in a chemistry classroom.

Because once you understand what’s happening beneath your feet, you start looking at everything growing above it a little differently.

— Farmer Mark

I have been working on this idea for some time now. How can I bring children closer to what farm life is all about? Can I plant a seed in someone’s mind that will grow into a future farmer or rancher? I have seen a few other farms jumping on this idea also; maybe together we can make a difference. Today’s public education system has failed in so many ways that I think the parents who can afford to homeschool have a huge advantage.

The creation of Rogue Rhino Academy is official. I am now working on creating our curriculum.

Tentative Start Date: Tuesday, October 6, 2026
Class starts at 9 a.m. and runs until 11 a.m.
Fall classes will run on seven consecutive Tuesdays.

Topics covered:

From Egg to Chick: Children will pull and incubate fertilized chicken eggs and follow the hatching process.

Aquaponics: Children will learn, plant, and maintain a symbiotic ecosystem where the fish fertilize the water for the plants and the plants filter the water for the fish. This is a recirculating system.

Adventure in Growing Mushrooms: Children will learn how to grow their own mushrooms from Petri dish to fruit.

Composting Adventures: Children will learn about turning kitchen scraps into soil and brewing Plant Power Tea.

Intro to Beekeeping: A basic hands-on course on a living beehive. Maintenance and spinning honey from a comb.

Raised Garden Beds: Students will build, plumb, and plant a raised garden bed and grow vegetables.

We plan to intermingle all these topics during the seven-week course, much like a real farm would operate. We will have work parties (cleaning chicken coops, weeding gardens, trimming trees) and snacks during each class.

This will be our first attempt at teaching on the farm, so this will be a learning process for all of us. We hope to build a successful academy both at the farm and online. The Academy is a nonprofit organization; the monies earned will be turned into garden boxes for the unfortunate in Mesa, Arizona, and local food banks.

— Farmer Mark

In the news today is a prime example of why you should be shopping for your food from a local farmer or rancher. And I am not talking about the resellers who claim they are buying their food from local farmers so they can resell it back to you as a prepared meal.

Educate yourself. Source for yourself. Know where every item comes from.

This week, approximately 1.5 million dozen eggs — more than 19 million individual eggs — have been recalled because of potential Salmonella contamination. So far, 98 people have reportedly become sick, with some requiring hospitalization.

One aspect that COVID brought into the public conversation was the concept of comorbidity — the reality that other health conditions can sometimes affect how severely an illness impacts an individual. Statistically, when you divide the number of reported illnesses by more than 19 million eggs, the chances of becoming sick may appear very small.

But that isn't really the issue here, in my opinion.

How did we allow one or two giant corporations to control this much of our chicken-egg production and distribution?

How did we let that happen?

A second observation that caught my attention this week concerns cattle and large feedlot operations. One report described an audit involving 20,481 cattle finished for slaughter, with 6,078 reportedly observed lactating.

That raises some serious questions.

Growth-promoting hormone implants are commonly used in conventional feedlot cattle. These implants are typically placed beneath the skin behind the animal's ear and can contain naturally occurring hormones such as progesterone, testosterone, and estradiol, as well as synthetic compounds such as trenbolone acetate, zeranol, and melengestrol acetate. They are used to promote growth and improve feed efficiency.

But I can't help asking: What are these practices doing beyond simply making an animal grow faster?

When I read reports suggesting unusual physiological changes in feedlot cattle, including lactation, it makes me question what we are doing to these animals in the pursuit of greater production and efficiency.

And then comes the question that inevitably follows:

What, if anything, does that mean for us when we consume the meat?

Can we definitively correlate agricultural hormone use with hormonal changes in people? I am not claiming here that we can. But I do believe consumers have every right to ask questions about how their food is produced and what is being used to produce it.

Look around at today's society and the conversations surrounding hormonal health. Is it unreasonable to wonder whether our increasingly manipulated food supply could play some role? Maybe it does. Maybe it doesn't. But I think asking the question is entirely reasonable.

And if problems with conventionally produced meat eventually become a larger part of the public conversation, will we someday be told that laboratory-grown meat is the healthier alternative?

I know. I'll take off my tin-foil hat.

Perhaps the motivation behind chemically altering our meat supply really is much simpler: efficiency, greed, and profit.

But that brings me right back to where I started.

Please find your local farmer and rancher.

Find someone who can tell you where your eggs came from. Find someone who can tell you how their chickens were raised. Find a rancher who can tell you whether growth-promoting hormones were used and how the animals were fed and finished.

Buying locally does not magically eliminate every possibility of foodborne illness or guarantee that nothing will ever go wrong. But it gives you something our increasingly consolidated food system often does not:

A direct connection to the person who produced your food.

Yes, locally produced food will often cost you more.

But please consider the alternative.

— Farmer Mark

To tie into one of my previous editorials, “Cheap Food,” I have just read that a USDA study on consumer dollars spent on food shows that only about 5 cents out of every $1.00 makes it down to the farmer.

If you’re a small farmer, you must make the connection “direct to consumer” to capture as much revenue as possible. Since COVID, selling to restaurants has become even less profitable. Chef-run restaurants operate on such thin profit margins—with state minimum-wage requirements, long hours, medical insurance costs, and a dwindling workforce—that it’s easy to see why they can’t afford local farmers’ produce.

Don’t forget the absurd food-safety regulations that apply when purchasing from a local farmer. The system is truly broken.

Your relationship with your local farmer is critical.

However you can make it work, every dollar you spend directly with your local farmer or rancher helps keep them in business—whether by purchasing online at their individual farm stands or elsewhere.

Be watchful at the farmers markets, as I have mentioned before: make sure you know the source of what you are buying. Make an informed decision and do not take for granted that just because something is sold at a farmers market, the seller grew that food.

— Farmer Mark

Every year the temptation returns: push the timing just a little further, squeeze one more meat-bird harvest before the Arizona summer closes the window. This year I gave in. We ordered late. The heat exacted its price.

Yesterday we processed 45 birds for direct sales. Six of us worked four hours through prep, harvest, and cleanup. The chamber vacuum machine failed us—our birds had simply grown too large for it—so we fell back on the reliable shrink-bag method, the approach I still recommend to any new farmer or homesteader. Equipment failures piled up around us: a broken ice machine waiting on a circuit board, refrigeration trucks down, dead batteries. Another Arizona summer.

Yet the birds themselves were beautiful and heavy. They will sell quickly. We need the revenue.

What matters more than the logistics is the choice that produced those birds. We raise Red Rangers, a heritage broiler. They are active, aggressive, and slow to mature. Roosters behave like roosters. Feed conversion is less efficient, time to harvest is longer, and costs are higher. We accept that. We feed them one of the most expensive organic rations available—Scratch and Peck 18 percent protein—supplemented with vegetable scraps from our microgreen and vegetable production. Quality over quantity is not a slogan here; it is the operating rule.

Contrast that with the industry default, the Cornish Cross. Bred for extreme growth and feed efficiency, these birds become almost motionless at an early age. They sit and eat. Many sit in their own waste unless moved daily. That is not animal husbandry. It is the genetic manipulation of a species for maximum return. I will not raise them. The preference is personal, but the principle is not.

If you eat meat for nutrition, you should know who raised the animal, what it ate, how it lived, and the state of its health.

Anything less is guesswork. Visit the farms that supply you. Look for actual coops and living birds. If a seller offers eggs but has no chickens, you are buying someone else’s product under a different name. The same test applies to meat. Reselling under a farm label is common in Arizona and, remarkably, legal. Labels on cartons and packages tell only part of the story; the rest must be verified in person.

Farming is not a game of volume alone. It is a series of deliberate choices about genetics, feed, housing, and labor. We house birds outdoors under shade cloth and wire, protected at night by guardian dogs. We accept slower growth and higher costs because the alternative produces an animal we would not want to eat. That standard should not be rare.

The birds we harvested yesterday met it. That is the only measure that ultimately matters.

— Your Farmer, Mark

I’ve been receiving many requests from the public for volunteers. Many of you have watched our YouTube videos on Rogue Rhino Gardens and want to come learn what we’re doing here. First, please let me say thank you.

Unfortunately, we have had some difficult experiences with volunteers in the past. The old saying is true: “One bad apple…”

Several seasons ago a young male volunteer climbed a ladder he was never asked or allowed to use, fell, and injured his leg. He went to the hospital and was found to have a broken bone.

Weeks later I received the hospital bill from his parents. When I asked why they were sending it to me, I said, “Your son was a volunteer, and he did not have permission to climb or work on a ladder.” They told me to just make a claim with my insurance company.

I told them no. Insurance companies already charge farmers extremely high rates no matter how carefully we operate. Yes, some of the larger “show farms” do allow volunteers and simply pay those higher premiums. We choose not to.

Anyone who thinks they can learn how to grow food in the desert in a short period of time by volunteering is far more optimistic than I am. I’ve been doing this for eighteen years and I’m still learning every single day.

Cyclospora is in the news again. This parasite is not new, not lab-created, not genetically engineered, and not deliberately released. It is a naturally occurring, water-borne organism that has been with us for a very long time.

Most outbreaks are tied to raw produce—lettuce leads the list, followed by berries, peas, Thai basil, herbs, and cilantro. When U.S. production is out of season, we import these foods to meet year-round demand. The contamination almost always happens the same way: the produce is washed in water that carries the parasite. Standard food-safety rules require a chlorine rinse, yet Cyclospora shrugs it off.

These outbreaks are neither rare nor surprising. In my view they are the predictable result of a food system built on cheapness. As a society we no longer eat with the seasons; we eat what advertising tells us to eat, whenever we want it. For decades government policy has subsidized farmers to grow certain crops at a loss and paid them not to grow others. Farmers have almost no control over next year’s price for a bushel or a pound. The only time a farmer truly sets the price is when he or she sells direct to the consumer. Corporations set the rest of the prices—and that is why thousands of farms disappear every year.

Cheap food carries enormous hidden costs: declining public health, heavier reliance on pharmaceuticals, soaring Medicaid and Medicare bills, and long-term care expenses—all ultimately paid by the same consumers. SNAP and food-stamp dollars should be restricted to nutrient-dense real food, not soda and snack foods. Imagine shifting the money we already spend on the true cost of cheap food into nutrient-dense production instead. Our collective health and immune resilience would improve dramatically. The human body is an extraordinary machine; “garbage in, garbage out” is simply the full price tag of the current system.

A strong, healthy population would barely notice pathogens like Cyclospora. If you want to lower your personal risk and raise your own vitality, the path is straightforward: buy from local farmers, learn to eat with the seasons, stop relying on imported produce, and walk away from fast-food restaurants.

For those who have followed my farming journey these past eighteen years in the Phoenix area, you already know my obsession with nutrient density. It begins in the soil. We feed the soil; the plants take care of themselves. When I became a full-time farmer my social life largely vanished—two simple reasons: the work and the hours. I still love to read. Reading fuels imagination and wonder in a way nothing else can. I still remember the jolt of watching the first movie made from a book I had already lived inside my own head; the filmmaker’s vision and mine were worlds apart.

The old-school agricultural writers remain some of the most valuable teachers I know. In today’s world every time-tested method seems to get a shiny new name. “Organic,” once a plain description of how my grandparents grew food without synthetic pesticides, herbicides, or fungicides, is now a patented, multi-billion-dollar brand complete with its own list of approved sprays. When that kind of money enters the picture, common sense often exits.

I once found a home in the idea of regenerative farming, but it too is rapidly becoming another regulated certification. Allan Savory, the true originator of the thinking many now call regenerative, used a better term: Holistic Management. That is the word I stand behind. It means seeing the farm as a complete living ecosystem—diversity, soil health, and the intricate, symbiotic relationships between plants, animals, microbes, water, and even the wider cosmos. Falling in love with your land, whether it is a backyard or a thousand acres, and learning to work with those relationships rather than against them, is one of the deepest satisfactions I know.