With the weather so warm and dry I wondered how the winter wheat crop now in the ground might be doing here in West River. So I emailed Darel Anderson, who farms with his dad near Wall and has dealt with weather issues over the years. Here’s what he said:

It looks healthy enough now. I dug down and the roots and stems appear very healthy. It is green on top but the deer have eaten it down so that if we get a lot of wind it may get covered in dirt. Snow cover would be good but not ice or water. It can survive some ice cover but if it stands in water too long it’s dead. Extreme cold is always a concern but it takes a lot to do damage. Winter wheat now days is very resilient. There have only been a couple of years that dad, since the 1950′s, has lost a crop due to winter kill.

Black Hills Milk has a new location in Rapid City! They are located in the Heritage Nursery building at 3500 W. Chicago, just one block east of Sturgis Road. Store hours are Tuesday thru Saturday from 11 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. In addition to milk, they also plan to carry beef, lamb, chicken, eggs, honey and lots of other good stuff.

Dee Holmberg and her dog Buddy will also be located here in the parking lot on Tuesdays and Thursday through Saturday (sometimes Sunday) from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Rancher Marv Kammerer and farmer's son John Buxcel protest at Occupy Rapid City

While many of the Occupy movements around the country have focused on the big banks and the concentration of wealth, occupiers now include farmers and ranchers. In early December over 500 farmers and their supporters gathered in a community garden in New York City to protest being held captive by Big Ag. Monsanto, the corporate giant that controls the seeds for most of the soybeans and corn grown in this country, is a prime target. Other large corporations that control most of the beef, pork, chicken, and milk production in the US are also being called to account.

Forcing small farmers off the land and destroying meaningful jobs is what these corporations do, all in the name of profit. Read the whole story of agribusiness takeovers and farmers’ responses here.

We’ve written about this before, and here it is again—the sad story of the demise of dairy farms in West River. The closing of the Neugebauer dairy business in Hermosa leaves only Black Hills Milk in Belle Fourche providing us with local milk from happy healthy cows.

Milk truck waiting to haul milk to Pollock

The last straw for the Neugebauer family, after milking 365 days a year for 56 years, was the 2007 closing of the milk processing plant in Rapid City. That required them to truck their milk to an East River cheese plant, an expensive proposition. You can read more about the family struggle to survive in a recent RCJ article.

Dairy farms, like other small family owned businesses, need our support. They keep money in the community, money that when spent in a supermarket leaves the state. That locally generated money can be used to support other local farmers and ranchers who have hay and grain to sell. And the business provides employment for family members and hired hands willing to do the hard work.

Unfortunately, advertising keeps consumers focused on low cost rather than on quality. Buying cheap makes the food dollar go farther but shrinks the neighborhood, perpetuates abusive animal practices, and gives milk-drinking children growth hormones and antibiotics that negatively affect health.

Food awareness is needed here, and the long lines at Dawn Habeck’s Black Hills Milk truck in Rapid City suggest that it’s spreading.

One of the pleasures of shopping at the farmers markets, even this time of year, is catching up on the news. Last Saturday I did just that. I stopped at Founders Park in Rapid City and discovered Dee Holmberg and her red van and her dog Buddy, relocated from their former location on East Omaha. As always she was selling canned goods, Hutterite chickens, eggs, corn fed beef and sausage, Alaska salmon and halibut, and Dimock cheese.

Dee has her own farm and garden, raises her own cows, chickens, and ducks, makes her own pickles, jellies, and jams, and sells it all from the red van. How she does it all I don’t know.

You can find her Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday through Sunday from 9:00 am to 3:00 pm at the farmers market on West Omaha Street in Rapid City.