By John Mattingly

We don’t choose our family – not in the same way we find best friends.

There are some who believe we do choose our family by way of interbreeding during past lives, or by subtle shifts in the fifth membrane of the universe, or through a vibrational command of DNA polymerase.

But, based on a preponderance of personal evidence, I conclude that I did not choose my family. It was a random outcome that I was born. And though speculations to the contrary have modest appeal from time to time, I’m sticking with the conclusion that my family is a chance assembly of folks, some of whom I would love or be friends with even if I had met them as strangers, and some of whom I have to wonder if we actually share a genetic history of any consequence. Read the rest of this article

By John Mattingly
1. No more back talk on taxes. Taxes have been low for so long, there’s really only one direction they can go from here, like it or not.

The proposed increases are not that large, yet they make a big difference over time to the growing national debt. But to hear the anti-tax-increase folks bellow, you’d think they were being asked to sacrifice their oldest child on a stone altar. Increasing the top marginal rate from 35% to 39% and capital gains from 15% to 20%, together with elevating Social Security and Medicare ceilings to a cool million and the matched rate by .5%, will not sink the ship of state. Read the rest of this article

By John Mattingly
In 1965, on the last day of my matriculation year of high school in Australia, our history teacher, a bravely bearded Mr. Chambers, suggested to our class that one of the more interesting – perhaps even more important – things we could do in the next couple of decades was try to figure out our place in the “wide river of history.”

The suggestion didn’t strike me, or most of my mates, as something we had to worry about just then, as most of us were more concerned about the “wide river” of matriculation exams we had to take in a few days. In those days, Australia had only three universities, which meant only a small percentage of high school students qualified for higher learning. There was tremendous pressure to do well on the exam – the dreaded “matric” – a three day, eighteen hour, strictly proctored exam that covered the entire year’s study of English, Calculus, Pure Maths, Chemistry, and History. Read the rest of this article

By John Mattingly
Ed Quillen was a writer’s writer. He not only made a good bit of his living from writing, he cared about other writers.

Anyone who worked with Ed on the “page,” knows he always found a way to be helpful, and kind, even when he knew the written work needed a lot of work. I appreciated his candor, his skill, and … even though it isn’t directly related, it may be ultimately related: his unfailing tolerance for a difficult dog, one named Bodie. Concerning the other, Ed paid a nickel a word when it was hard for a freelancer to net a nickel for a novel. Read the rest of this article

By John Mattingly
Andrew Jackson was called a jackass by his opponents in the 1828 presidential campaign as a reaction to his slogan, “Let the people rule.”

Some Republicans went so far as to suggest that letting the “people” rule would be the same as herding a bunch of jackasses into Washington D.C., giving them the right vote with their ears, and hoping for the best.

Instead of refuting the accusation, Andrew Jackson shrewdly embraced it, thus turning it to his advantage. He pointed to the virtues of the jackass, all of which are also virtues of a good Democrat: persistence, loyalty, humility, and an unfailing ability to carry the load. Jackson even put a donkey on his campaign posters. Read the rest of this article

By John Mattingly

The winter of 1992 was so brutal in the San Luis Valley that I bought the Palace Hotel as a place to come where it was warm. I really liked the Hotel basement. My son and I had our private hibernaculum down there with a pair of old hospital beds, a poker table, and a black-and- white TV that got one channel. Water ran in a stone-lined trough along the north wall of the basement. We sometimes snuck out through the coal chute to get sandwiches from Danny at Mama D’s. And, my son had the only 25-cent pop machine in Salida, stationed in the Hotel’s north entry, so when we needed a ginger ale, we took a quarter from our war chest, and bought one from ourselves. Read the rest of this article

By John Mattingly

With all the tough issues facing the U.S., such as a lingering war on terrorism, poverty, unemployment, a monstrous national debt weighing in on weak real estate values, not to mention the pointless bickering at most levels of government, it’s easy to understand why a politician would want to make a big deal out of same-sex marriage.

What could be more vital to our national interests than whether or not humans of the same sex can get married? As a farmer, it’s hard for me to imagine an issue that bears more directly on the price of fertilizer. Read the rest of this article

By John Mattingly
When I started farming back in the late 1960s, I had a little time in the winter, during which I started writing. It became my hobby. A lot of farmers are able to pull a hobby out of their profession by fixing up antique tractors, or tinkering with various kinds of collections, or restoring old guns, but I settled on writing. Read the rest of this article

By John Mattingly

The Western United States have always thought of themselves as different from the East, so it isn’t surprising that in matters of States’ Rights, the Western States burned their own brand of mischief, which, in one curious case became known as the Sagebrush Rebellion.

Sagebrush rebels practiced “uncooperative federalism,” or provocative non-compliance with a federal law when that federal law was at odds with a sensible state law, or when a federal law failed to measure up to Westerners’ standards of horse sense – or, in this case, donkey sense. Read the rest of this article

John Mattingly
In 2008, George Mason University conducted a thorough, fine-grained survey of U.S. citizens to learn how much people actually knew about climate change. One of the more curious findings was that, when asked whom they believed to be the most reliable source of information about climate change, 66% of those responding gave the name of a television weather person. Al Gore barely got more votes than those who said there was no one they trusted on the topic. Read the rest of this article

By John Mattingly

My father built the house where I and my two younger brothers grew up in Fort Collins, Colorado. By built I mean from basement stemwall to the kitchen cabinets. With occasional help from Harry and Gene, men my father worked with at Heath Engineering (now the Sundance Saloon on Highway 14 east of Fort Collins), my father did everything from excavation to electrical, framing to roofing, plaster to plumbing, floor covering to cabinets. We even had a fireplace. Father built the house in one spring and summer, mostly in hours after work and on weekends. Read the rest of this article

My father built the house where I and my two younger brothers grew up in Fort Collins, Colorado. By built I mean from basement stemwall to the kitchen cabinets. With occasional help from Harry and Gene, men my father worked with at Heath Engineering (now the Sundance Saloon on Highway 14 east of Fort Collins), my father did everything from excavation to electrical, framing to roofing, plaster to plumbing, floor covering to cabinets. We even had a fireplace. Father built the house in one spring and summer, mostly in hours after work and on weekends. Read the rest of this article

By John Mattingly
Back in December 1975, an earnest fellow named Birch – a member of the Jehovah’s Witnesses – was kind enough to come to my farm to warn me of impending doom. He urged me to repent and prepare for the end of the world – The Rapture, on January 17, 1976.

I offered to bet Birch ten thousand dollars that The Rapture would not come on January 17, 1976. Birch was tempted but admitted he didn’t have that much money in the bank, nor was he sure if he could spend the money in a post-rapture world. In the end, he bet a hundred. We shook on it, and I became a little richer the following month. Read the rest of this article

By John Mattingly

I’ve always thought of farming, ranching, and mining as fundamentally related activities.

The mining museum in Leadville tells us that nothing happens until someone digs something, or pulls something, out of the ground. Though farmers aren’t usually thought of as digging things out of the ground, they dig spuds, sugar beets, carrots, and other root crops. Farming is a process by which minerals are mined from the topsoil through plants with a farmer’s guiding hand. Read the rest of this article

By John Mattingly
I look out the window to see my new center pivot on the loose, crossing a road in front of heavy traffic. Cars and trucks are jammed and honking as the machine spreads out like a praying mantis on the warpath, pulling its electric line out of the ground like a giant umbilical cord. It takes out a fence and three power poles, causing flares of flame as the wires arc to ground. The pivot collides with a house and the end tower starts to ascend to the roof.

I wake up in a cold sweat. Read the rest of this article

By John Mattingly
When my son graduated from high school, I shook his hand and attempted a parody from the 1967 Mike Nichols movie, The Graduate, in which Murray Hamilton takes Dustin Hoffman aside to say, “One word, Son … plastics.”

I took my son aside, and placed a hand upon his shoulder with a wise nod as I said, “One word, Son … fees.” Read the rest of this article

By John Mattingly
So much of our world in the U.S. is packaged in plastic.

Much of our food comes wrapped in it. Even the bulk items in a supermarket are put in a plastic bag and in another plastic bag for carryout. As a farmer, I’ve always thought food stamps should be redeemable only for bulk foods, at special distribution centers near the production of actual food.

Movies and music are packaged in a thin skin of plastic with sticky plastic binders for good measure. I think I recall a story about a famous country-western musician who nearly killed himself trying to unwrap a CD of his own music. Read the rest of this article

By John Mattingly
On May 5, 2011, I happened to be driving back from Denver, listening to “The Mike Rosen Show” on 850 KOA. I have an inclination (perhaps flawed) to periodically hear what the likes of Rosen and Limbaugh have to say about Goodman, Flanders, and in this case, Quillen.

I was surprised when Rosen announced that he and Ed Quillen had written columns in the Denver papers on the same day regarding the death of Osama bin Laden. My first thought was, “Hey, I know Ed. Ed’s going to be on the radio. Go Ed!”

Rosen, however, didn’t invite Ed to call in. Instead, Rosen compared his column with Ed’s, amplifying the “incredible” difference between them. I recall Rosen doing this several times in the past with other columnists who disagreed with him, never entertaining a rebuttal. But, as Rosen would say, “It’s my show, and I can do what I want.” Read the rest of this article

By John Mattingly
Throughout our history, conditions and perceptions have affected several events with unexpected consequences, including:

1. Incorruptible Peasants, aka Land Barons. When the U.S. opened up the Western United States to homesteading, the intent was to stimulate the Jeffersonian “incorruptible peasants” by granting them 160 acres – or 320 acres to a peasant and his wife, thus creating a landed peasant class, unique to the U.S. Going west from Washington D.C. out to the 100th meridian, which is approximately the Colorado-Kansas border, 320 acres was, for the most part, an economic unit for a peasant. The ground was fertile enough, and received enough natural moisture to sustain an incorruptible operation. Read the rest of this article

By John Mattingly

I believe it was Sartre who said, “The only people who have time to rock the boat are people who aren’t rowing. On the other hand, we all understand the need to drop your oars when you see the boat is headed over a hundred-foot waterfall.”

It does seem that the threshold for “dropping one’s oars” has lowered considerably in the last few decades, meaning people complain about smaller and smaller matters, confusing preference with priority, and this has contributed to the contentiousness of our political theater.

In the past, I’ve had a knee-jerk negative reaction to all government for several reasons. Read the rest of this article

By John Mattingly

Most of what I know about farming I learned from other farmers, and many who influenced me the most never spoke to me. Unlike most other professions, a farmer’s work is out in plain sight. A farmer’s roof is the sky; open air his workplace. Some farmers will try to make their crops look good next to the road by making an extra fertilizer or cultivating pass, but another farmer can detect these venial deceptions. Read the rest of this article

By John Mattingly

Back in the late fall of 1976, I traveled down to Springfield, Colorado to participate in the Farmer’s Strike.

I’d started farming in the late 60s when the markets got really good, especially in 1973 after the first Oil Embargo when commodity prices reached record high levels. When commodity prices fell off precipitously in 1976, I was all for letting the world know it was wrong. Read the rest of this article

by John Mattingly

What’s the big political issue of the day?

“It’s The Economy, stupid.” – a phrase used by Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign against George H.W. Bush.

But what is The Economy? As my previous three articles that touched the elusive hide of the economic elephant should indicate, I haven’t the foggiest idea what politicians, talking heads, experts, analysts, and especially economists mean when they force these two words together.

When we talk about The Economy, we’re usually talking about our favorite person, ourselves. We tend to compare our present situation to more favorable times or situations in the past. We seldom compare ourselves to desperate times, with the notable exception of a few old timers who lived through the Great Depression. Those folks have perspective, but they are a dwindling minority, now being somewhere north of their 80s. And when was the last time an octogenarian ran for office, wrote an economic non-fiction best seller, or appeared on CNBC? Read the rest of this article

By John Mattingly

In previous articles the past couple months, “The Elephant in the Room,” and “Debt is a Four Letter Word,” I suggested:

A. The world economy is locked-in on a growth ethic. Though I believe there are good examples of the limits to growth, and although such limits make common sense, it must be acknowledged that over the last 50 years in particular, and perhaps the whole of human history in general, all predictions of such limits to growth have been swept away by innovation, substitution, and expanding (or manipulated) capital markets. Read the rest of this article

By John Mattingly

Four-letter words are effective, on occasion.

I don’t fall in with the pageant of people who claim all debt is bad. It would not surprise me if humans invented written language for the purpose of keeping track of debts. Marks on baboon bones (See Ishango baboon bones, Stone Age Africa) from over 20,000 years ago indicate early homo sapiens were keeping track of borrowings. Debt is as old as civilization, so if one has any faith in civilization, one must concede that there is good debt and bad debt. Read the rest of this article

by John Mattingly

Though loathe to admit it, I’m officially the ornery, cranky old farmer I said I’d never become. Of course, the fact that I, or anyone, is here on earth to complain about it is, in itself, a miracle. The likelihood of any person being alive in the universe is on the order of 10,212 to one.* With this firmly in mind, there is no such thing as a bad meal, cold coffee, an insufficient trade, an unsatisfying lover, a wayward policy, a bad day, or even a tragedy. Read the rest of this article

by John Mattingly

I caught this headline last month: “Americans Want Less Government, Fewer Services.”

Indeed. A recent poll revealed 68% of U.S. citizens have exhumed Ronald Reagan’s famous claim, “Government is not the solution to the problem, government is the problem.”

I spoke with a few agricultural folks about this survey, and they agreed, pretty much unanimously. No big surprise. As a group, farmers and ranchers have a chronic distrust of government programs and meddling. Especially out here in the West, where we’re all rugged as the Rockies and don’t need no “gotdam gumment” stiffs hangin’ round, right?

Well, maybe. Read the rest of this article

by John Mattingly

Editor’s Note: Part 1 of this series ran in the May 2008 Colorado Central Magazine.

Last month, Hal Walter described a rural-residential real estate situation in the greater Wet Mountain Valley that is mirrored to the west in the greater Moffat-Crestone region. The class of homes for sale ranges from a single-wide mobile home on a few acres to a super-sized custom home on a tastefully landscaped developed lot. There also are a lot of double-wides on 35 to 500 acres, few with any farmland or substantial water rights. Though different in appearance, the residences share the common element of being for sale in a market that is more like a morgue. A significant number of homes are simply abandoned and empty. Read the rest of this article

Funny Farm

Farms aren’t usually thought of as wellsprings of humor, except for the clichés about farmers being dumber than a mud fence. Over the years, however, there have been a few memorable moments of comedy on the farm, ranging from camp to Kafka, the former arising from the partial gift of a jackass.

Oh Jerusalem! A clever friend of mine, George, bequeathed to me a half interest in a star-crossed jackass named Jerusalem — my half being the front half, which meant I got to feed him. The world has seldom seen a more dolorous and eternally patient jack than Jerusalem. It seemed he could stand motionless in the same place for days. Read the rest of this article

by John Mattingly

Out a narrow window I see my new center pivot on the loose, crossing Highway 17. Cars and trucks are jammed and honking as the machine spreads out like a praying mantis on the warpath, pulling its electric line out of the ground like a giant umbilical cord. It runs roughshod over a fence and three power poles, causing flares of flame as the main wire cracks and arcs to ground. The pivot collides with a house and the end tower starts to ascend to the roof. I wake up in a cold sweat.

Read the rest of this article

by John Mattingly

I don’t admit this in the mixed company of cattle ranchers, but I used to have goats. Yes, the fact is, I had many goats, such that it was the profits from various goat operations in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s that enabled me to get into the cattle business and expand my farming operation. I owe much to goats, but that’s another story. Suffice it to say I have always had a great fondness for the species. They are clearly among the more intelligent mammals (and I include most politicians in a group that goats could easily challenge), in addition to being a species that helped humans progress, giving them milk, meat and fiber – endowments that ultimately resulted in a larger brain for homo sapiens. Mother never told me, “Be sure to eat your goat meat,” but we all know the rest of the story. Read the rest of this article

by John Mattingly

Prior to September, 2001, I thought of home, land. and security as three separate words.  But as patriotic fever has spread through the country, possibly a fourth has presented itself as home and land as one, and from that, a few points of thought.

1. Look both ways.  Soon after we attacked Iraq, we often heard the mantra, “The safety of America depends on the outcome of the battle in the streets of Baghdad.” Then it moved to include the streets of Kabul, and now Karachi. Read the rest of this article

To the Editor,

Regarding John Mattingly’s “Agriculture and War,” Paragraph 3: Naw, John, the bodies just couldn’t have been that deep. Considering that there are 27,878,400 square feet on every mile of the Earth’s surface, and that the average human body contains no more than 2.78 cubic feet of flesh, bones and blood, then you could fit ten million bodies into each square mile. Read the rest of this article

by John Mattingly

“You’re in the army now,

You’re not behind the plow. . .”

I remember hearing this verse from a song played on movie newsreels in the decade following WWII, in which the farmer appeared in agony, sweating behind a horse. Until he hears a bugle in the distance. Shedding the shackles of the field, the farmer dashes off to enlist, and is soon seen in uniform, holding a gun across a big smile as he enters a roaring field of battle, his honor and fate now restored far above those homely stands of corn. Read the rest of this article

by John Mattingly

A front page headline of the June 3, 2009 Denver Post decried, “MORE FARMERS LOSING HOPE, Suicide hotlines field calls as prices fall and money woes mount …”

An early paragraph pointed out: “In the past year, economics and inclement weather have crippled operations, pushing countless farmers to the emotional breaking point, say industry experts.” Read the rest of this article

by John Mattingly

Last month, under the title, A Species Behaving Badly, I concluded. . .

“Few would argue the most unique aspect of the human species is our consciousness, but there is no reason why that consciousness must be contained and energized inside a global bone atop the body of a non-commensul, energy-eating, land-based, brain-bearing, nest-fouling mammal.” Read the rest of this article

by John Mattingly

We’re in a global crisis: Economic, ecologic, psychologic.

Many fingers are being pointed and wagged.

But I have yet to hear anyone point out that, just possibly, the root of the crisis is a species behaving badly. And yes, I’m referring to the human species, homo sapiens sapiens. That means you, that means me. Read the rest of this article

A Farmer  Far Afield

by John Mattingly

This the second in a series of annual, contrarian views expressed in Farmer Far Afield. The first, A HOUSE IS JUST A HOUSE, provoked an unexpected volume of perturbed responses from folks convinced their home was an “investment.” Read the rest of this article

John Mattingly

We’ve heard a lot recently about Peak Oil, Peak Phosphorus, and even Peak Zinc. According to a Wall Street Journal article last fall, the smart money is investing in zinc (anybody know a good zinc company?). But seldom do we hear about the decline in the U. S. farmer population, a demographic reality that can be legitimately called “Peak Farmer.” Read the rest of this article

Column by John Mattingly

Economy – February 2009 – Colorado Central Magazine

IN THE PAST THREE MONTHS I’ve received an astounding number of offers to show me how to make money in/from this current financial crisis. Some of the more interesting are: Read the rest of this article

Column by John Mattingly

Economy – January 2009 – Colorado Central Magazine

Back in the mid-1980s I was in New York City working with various financiers on omnibus loan re-structuring bailouts for farmers, who, at that time, were going through the same general credit crisis now playing out broadly (and with much more attention) in today’s world economy. I was a principal in a small firm, Judson Securities, which sought funding for a program we called EIO, Equity Investment Opportunity, a fund that, with modest success, matched ag-friendly investors with good farmers. Read the rest of this article

Column by John Mattingly

Economy – December 2008 – Colorado Central Magazine

WE’VE HEARD A LOT lately about Wall Street and Main Street, about the financial economy and the “real economy.” The news has been filled with the worries of PLOPs (People Living On Pavement).

Very little, however, has been said about those of us who don’t live on a street, whose address is on a county road or star route and whose livelihood comes from dirt. Read the rest of this article

Column by John Mattingly

History – November 2008 – Colorado Central Magazine

In mid-September, the west side of downtown Creede was a jumble of railroad ties sticking up from gravel and dirt like randomly dropped pickup-sticks, the rail irons stacked off to the side.

It was a curious sight. At a time when rail transport offers significant economy for moving both people and cargo, why would anyone be tearing out a spur that led into the heart of downtown Creede? Read the rest of this article

Column by John Mattingly

Agriculture – October 2008 – Colorado Central Magazine

“I want to farm it all with horses.”

The speaker (over the phone, long distance), a noted New York City arbitrageur, had recently purchased 1,200 acres under center pivots in Wyoming. Based on readings from his long-time subscription to Amish Farm Journal, he wanted to farm with Belgian draft horses. Read the rest of this article

Column by John Mattingly

Agriculture – September 2008 – Colorado Central Magazine

I recently received an offer to contribute to a Sustainable Agriculture Think Tank — not my thoughts, but rather surplus cash I might have lying around the stock tank, now that commodity prices are at record high levels.

After the Think Tank elaborated the complex web of ingredients comprising “sustainability,” the group concluded: “But no matter how elegant the system or how accomplished the farmer, no agricultural system is sustainable if it’s not also profitable.” Read the rest of this article