Manure-laden tap water in rural Wisconsin

"Kewaunee County conservation officer Davina Bonness collected this tap water from a homeowner in 2016. It contained animal waste that matched manure spread on a nearby farm field."

As reported by the Wisconsin State Journal:

The majority of private wells in southwestern Wisconsin are substantially polluted with fecal matter as concerns intensify over pollution of rural drinking water, according to a new study.

Results from the independent study released Aug. 1 indicated that 32 of 35 wells — or 91% — contained fecal matter from humans or livestock, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported.

“As a researcher of groundwater for 25 years now, I continue to be amazed by the level of fecal contamination in Wisconsin groundwater,” said Mark Borchardt, a research microbiologist for the U.S. Agricultural Research Service...

During testing in April, it was discovered that some of the wells contained illness-causing pathogens such as salmonella, rotavirus and cryptosporidium...

On July 31, Democratic Gov. Tony Evers proposed new rules aimed at farmers and their use of manure and fertilizer. The regulations would focus on the regions vulnerable to nitrates, another source of groundwater pollution.

But those measures will require authorization by the Republican-controlled Legislature.

Small farms as Airbnb hosts

Excerpts from an article in Vox:

Seren and Steve Sinisi’s livestock farm, Old Crow Ranch in Durham, Maine, touts the tagline “meat so good a vegetarian would eat it.” While meat may be their bread and butter, farm life isn’t cheap. That’s one reason the Sinisis are looking to make extra income by renting out space at pastoral Old Crow to vacationers who’d like a taste of New England farm life...

Lucky for Seren and Steve, city dwellers and suburbanites are hungry to spend their vacation time in a bucolic landscape with the promise of some wholesome downtime and maybe a locally sourced meal. They are part of a growing agritourism trend of family farmers with small to medium farms using their land, food supply, and livestock to attract guests on websites like Airbnb and VRBO, increasing their farms’ revenue and exposure.

The agritourism industry offers farmers an easy, semi-passive form of income. It’s a boon both for farms and for businesses like Airbnb, which profit from the reservations made through their websites. Airbnb recently released data showing that last year there were 57,000 rural listings on the site...

Vacationers have reported looking for more than just a hotel stay — and experiences are built into a farm’s fabric. On a farm stay, guests might have the option to stargaze, enjoy outdoor sports, or see piglets birthed. Airbnb already offers add-on “experiences” that don’t require an overnight stay but include farm events like cooking classes or a “meet the goats at a small farm.” These let farmers host one-off events on their own terms and, according to Airbnb, “create new revenue streams in a way that doesn’t require upfront costs typically associated with starting a new business.”

Interesting graph of U.S. corn production (updated)

Excerpts from a Washington Post article:

Today, the United States is the largest producer and consumer of corn — and by a long shot. Corn is in the sodas Americans drink and the potato chips they snack on; it's in hamburgers and french fries, sauces and salad dressings, baked goods, breakfast cereals, virtually all poultry, and even most fish...

In the 1920s and 1930s, scientists discovered a way to boost corn production to a level that was previously unthinkable. They bred hybrid strains that had larger ears and could be grown closer together, which allowed farmers to produce a lot more corn without more land. The discovery, coupled with the introduction of new industrial fertilizers and more efficient farm tools, such as tractors, led to a thunderous rise in output...

[In the 1930s, when my mother cultivated her family's cornfields with horse-drawn equipment, she cross-cultivated - first traversing the field east-west, then north-south.  That's how far apart the corn plants were.]

The most incredible thing about the corn grown in America today is how little of it we actually eat. Less than 10 percent of the corn used in the United States is directly ingested by humans. The bulk is either turned into ethanol, for use as fuel, or fed to the hundreds of millions of animals we raise. Cows, chickens, pigs and even fish, which are fed pellets made largely of corn, eat several times the amount of the grain consumed by people each year...

Sweet corn is what Americans grill in the summer, and boil or bake during the rest of the year. It's eaten on the cob. It gets stuck in your teeth. And it accounts for only about 1 percent of the corn grown in America...

Flint corn, which has a soft center and harder outer shell, is what most people know as popcorn...

And then there's dent corn, a.k.a. field corn, the most important kinds. It accounts for the vast majority of corn grown in America today..

This morning an article at Accuweather is entitled Trouble could be brewing for farmers in the US Corn Belt.

Corn planting is behind schedule in the United States because of the weather in four of the top six states for corn production -- and that situation is not expected to improve when the latest Crop Progress report is issued Monday by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), according to an AccuWeather analysis.

Illinois, Minnesota, Indiana and South Dakota are the four states significantly behind schedule and expected to remain that way, according to AccuWeather meteorologists who have been analyzing the data. Those four states combined produce nearly 40% of the corn in the U.S. If the weather continues a wet pattern through late May, consumer prices could go up this summer...

By this time of year, 43% of corn crops would already be planted in Illinois, according to the five-year average provided by the USDA. However, just 9% has been planted so far. Iowa averages 26% of crops planted at this point, and 21% has been planted so far.

Three of the other top corn producers are lagging behind this season so far. Minnesota (2% of corn crops planted by now compared to its five-year average of 24%), Indiana (2% compared to 17%) and South Dakota (0% compared to 17%) are also well off pace.

And note that based on the Washington Post article, a significant rise in corn prices will affect a broad array of products.

Addendum: A map from Paul Douglas' weather blog -

Addendum #2 (June):
The map above was for early May.  The one below depicts precipitation for the months of April and May, described not only as extreme but "biblical" in extent:

Here in Madison in early June I returned from an out-of-town errand yesterday, driving past farm fields that not only are not showing growth, but often had not even been planted.

Topsoil moisture is extremely high, and the question arises as to whether when farmers are able to get into their fields, will the late start mean they won't even be able to plant corn?

Scariest photo I've seen all year

That white cloud on the ground is anhydrous ammonia flowing across an Illinois suburban neighborhood after an early morning accident involving a tractor transporting a tank to a farm field.

I used to give lectures on the hazards of toxic gases, and while the war gases like phosgene and mustard gas are fascinating, the more relevant risk for civilians is exposure to ammonia and chlorine.  Anhydrous ammonia accidents usually occur in rural locations while using equipment like this:

The gas is also potentially flammable, which is why hazmat officials advised residents near the spill to turn off heating equipment while sheltering in place.

Top photo via and some discussion here.  Lower image cropped for size from the original.

Introducing Candida auris

The man at Mount Sinai died after 90 days in the hospital, but C. auris did not. Tests showed it was everywhere in his room, so invasive that the hospital needed special cleaning equipment and had to rip out some of the ceiling and floor tiles to eradicate it.

“Everything was positive — the walls, the bed, the doors, the curtains, the phones, the sink, the whiteboard, the poles, the pump,” said Dr. Scott Lorin, the hospital’s president. “The mattress, the bed rails, the canister holes, the window shades, the ceiling, everything in the room was positive.”

C. auris is so tenacious, in part, because it is impervious to major antifungal medications, making it a new example of one of the world’s most intractable health threats: the rise of drug-resistant infections...

Other prominent strains of the fungus Candida — one of the most common causes of bloodstream infections in hospitals — have not developed significant resistance to drugs, but more than 90 percent of C. auris infections are resistant to at least one drug, and 30 percent are resistant to two or more drugs, the C.D.C. said.

Dr. Lynn Sosa, Connecticut’s deputy state epidemiologist, said she now saw C. auris as “the top” threat among resistant infections. “It’s pretty much unbeatable and difficult to identify,” she said.

Nearly half of patients who contract C. auris die within 90 days, according to the C.D.C. Yet the world’s experts have not nailed down where it came from in the first place...

As with antibiotics in farm animals, azoles are used widely on crops. “On everything — potatoes, beans, wheat, anything you can think of, tomatoes, onions,” said Dr. Rhodes, the infectious disease specialist who worked on the London outbreak. “We are driving this with the use of antifungicides on crops.”

More information at the New York Times.

154 cases in Illinois.

A thousand dead dolphins on French beaches

 
As reported by France24:

“There’s never been a number this high,” said Willy Daubin, a member of La Rochelle University’s National Center for Scientific Research. “Already in three months, we have beaten last year’s record, which was up from 2017 and even that was the highest in 40 years.”

Though Daubin said 90 percent of the fatalities resulted from the dolphins being accidentally captured in industrial fishing nets, the reason behind the spike this year is a mystery...

Autopsies carried out on the dolphins this year at La Rochelle University show extreme levels of mutilation. [note the severed dorsal fin in the photo]

Activists say it’s common for fishermen to cut body parts off the suffocated dolphins after they are pulled up on the nets, to save the nets...

It claims many of the trawlers they watch in the region don’t activate the [dolphin-] repellent devices, fearing they will scare off valuable fish as well, and only turn them on if they are being checked by fishing monitors...

She cited scientists who predict that the current rates of fishing will likely drive the dolphin population to extinction.

Pullet surprise

Every spring I'm pleasantly startled when I visit our local Farm and Fleet store for hardware and supplies, and find livestock for sale.  Pictured above are the Rhode Island Red pullets ($2.99 each).

I would love to have purchased some for the back yard, but they would quickly have become food for the raptors or the foxes in the woods.

Extreme free-range chicken farming

From the always-interesting Atlas Obscura:

Massimo Rapella, a 48-year-old chicken farmer from northern Italy, is helping chickens rediscover their wild side. Since 2009, Rapella and his wife Elisabetta have been keeping an estimated 2,100 hens in a patch of pristine Alpine forest near Sondrio, in the heart of the Valtellina valley...

Shortly after relocating, Rapella and his wife started keeping a few chickens to provide eggs for their own consumption. But soon enough they noticed some unexpected behavior from their flock. “Our chickens liked roaming around the nearby woods,” Rapella explains. “So I encouraged them to venture out and lay eggs in the wild.”

A few months later, Rapella saw that the birds looked healthier—with shiny feathers and bright-colored wattles—and that their eggs had a fuller taste. “I started wondering if I could take on more chickens and create an ‘Alpine egg’ to sell in local markets,” he says. Today, he sells his uovo di selva, or egg of the woods, to about 400 direct consumers and 40 restaurants...

Most domestic chickens today would not find themselves at home in a forest: at least, not immediately. “The first large batch of chickens I took in looked very lost,” Rapella says. “They had never seen a tree nor a bug in their life, and they were scared of snow.”..

“White birds really stand out to predators,” Clauer says. Rapella keeps two different breeds of chicken: Hy-Line brown hens and the easy-to-spot white Leghorns. While he once lost the occasional chicken, now he relies on a double fence and two trained Maremma sheepdogs to keep badgers, martens (a weasel-like carnivore), foxes, and buzzards at bay.

Rapella’s chickens lay eggs almost every day, like any domesticated chicken, but they do so in the woods. “They like natural nests offered by tree roots or branches,” he says. “Usually when you spot a cranny with some leaves, you know there could be eggs.” Once a hen finds her favorite nesting spot, she goes back to it for each subsequent laying, making Rapella’s egg-hunting easier. Together with two employees, he gathers an estimated 1,000 eggs every morning.

His uovo di selva tastes like egg, but concentrated. There’s more flavor to it, and also more protein, due to the bug-filled diet of the chickens. As a result, when chefs whip the whites from Rapella’s protein-rich eggs, they get three times the volume. The egg yolk can even change with the seasons...

More at the link.