Organic Certification Time

      June comes to an end, the longest day of the year has come and gone, the days get uncomfortably hot, the wheat starts to turn from green to gold, bringing with it harvest anxiety.  It also brings the organic inspector.

      Two years ago, the inspector came as I was emptying the grain bin in preparation for the 2016 harvest. I had to take three or four hours out of my day to visit with him.  As we sat going page by page through the voluminous application I had filled out in February, I couldn’t help but think of the things I should be doing, namely, hauling wheat.

     It wasn’t a problem last year, because there was no wheat harvest.  I did have a bin full of wheat, but I had until September to dispose of the wheat and prepare for millet harvest.

      I was getting a little worried as of last week when I hadn’t heard from the CDA (Colorado Department of Agriculture).  I had their letter saying my application, filled out in January this year, had been found acceptable and an inspector would be getting in touch with me.  It wouldn’t be the first time I had somehow disappeared from their oversight.

      In 2015, I called finally in August to ask about my organic certificate, which had not arrived.  I seemed to catch them by surprise.  Three weeks later, I got my certificate in duplicate, first via email, then by US Mail. 

      When I was doing my taxes for 2015, I couldn’t find a fee for the inspector’s services.  I emailed the inspector, and a week later, I got the bill.  Somehow, I dropped out of sight that year.

      My worries about the inspection came to an end on Monday when an inspector telephoned me to ask if she could come for a visit on Friday.  That’s right.  She.     

     I asked what happened to Mark.  She said they like to have different people look at different operations, so a new inspector.

     On Friday morning, she called about 8:15 and said she was leaving the pavement for the gravel roads.  Our appointment was for 9:00, but I told her she could come earlier if she wished.

     When she arrived, I asked her where should we start.  She suggested we take a tour of the operation while it was still cool.  I said we should take my pickup, since we would cover some rough ground.

      I apologized for the state of the old 4 X 4’s interior.  She laughed.  She said she grew up in Montana in a community the size of Woodrow.  Then I laughed.

      We took a 20-30 minute tour of the place.  She wasn’t a bit worried if the runoff from the pasture could enter the wheat field.  “You can use manure for fertilizer,” she said. 

      I told her about the time the cattle got out and into the wheat as I was working on the combine.  I called Amy, then the head of the organic department, who asked how long they were in there.  When I said about 30 minutes, she said not a problem, don’t worry about it.

      My riding companion shrugged that off, too.  She pointed out that I couldn’t keep the deer out of the field.  Boy is that the truth.

      We looked at the wheat, still a green tint, hail damage apparent.  I took her to the “border” and pointed out the buffer zone between Jim and me.  She wanted to know why I harvested the buffer zone first, because that meant an extra cleaning of the equipment.  (She revealed that she was quite familiar with my application.)   “Most people do it last.  That way, they don’t have to clean the equipment.”

       I pointed out that I don’t have a moisture tester, so harvest the buffer zone, clean the combine off, not much of problem after only two or three bin loads, cut enough for “purging” what I couldn’t get out with compressed air and haul it to town where I could get an accurate moisture test.  If it should happen to be too wet for safe bin storage, the elevator was stuck with it, not me.

      Her turn to laugh again.  “Method to your madness,” she said. 

     I took her north to the windtower road and east to old number 119, the furthest east machine.  She observed that two of the three windmills are located in the CRP.  I indicated where the MET tower used to be and how much of a relief it was not to have to navigate the guy wires, especially with one eye.

      We returned to the house.  She wanted to see where I stored my chemicals.  We had to navigate the interior of the shop.  I apologized for that.  No worries she said.  She seemed satisfied that the chemicals are all in Orrie’s green cabinet where I can lock them up when the grandkids visit. 

     I warned her that I was for all intents and purposes, a bachelor at this location, that she shouldn’t expect pristine housekeeping as we returned to the house to do the paper work.  She reminded me she was a Montana girl, not to worry.  So I didn’t.

     Her laptop was hooked to another screen, so I could see what she was doing on her keyboard.  We zipped through my application.  I had most of my paperwork handy.  She took a quick look at all my clean-equipment affidavits, which was pretty lengthy since it included all of Jim’s equipment used to plant and harvest the millet crop.

     One of the demerits I got last year was for having no documentation for a clean grain bin.  I wasn’t sure I had done that for Jim’s bin, but there it was when I leafed through the paper.

      I had to go to my laptop to find the planting date for the 2016 wheat crop.  That I could find it made her happy—documentation kept and available.  The wheat was an item since I sold it in 2017, since the last inspection.  I have to keep records so that my harvested grain balances with the disposal of that grain.

       She asked if I had grain receipts.  I had those from the trucker that hauled the organic stuff.  I said I could find weigh tickets for that I sold on the “conventional” (as opposed to organic) market.  I said I could probably find them if I dug deep.  “Dig deep, if you don’t mind,” she said.

      I went to the file cabinet where Granny had wheat weigh slips in a file so labeled, some going back to the 1970’s.  I dug out all the 2016 receipts.  She leafed through them and that was that.  In other inspections, we did all the math, including how much for seed, how much sold or given away in buckets.

       When I told her I probably hadn’t sold or given away more than four or five bushels, she said we didn’t have to concern ourselves too much with that.  We went through issues of concern from last year’s inspection, including the mouse poison I keep in the garage.  Did I use it on the organic fields?  No.  Where?  In buildings around the farmyard.  How about the gopher bait?  In the farmyard where the buggers throw up burrows if left unmolested.  But not in the fields?  No.  Checkmark that item and on we go.    

     She signed, then I signed the inspection report on the screen of her laptop with a stylus.  Her start time was listed as 8:30, the end of the interview was 10:00 a.m.  We were done.

     She loaded up her computer and brief case and took off.  She said her next project was helping to investigate some miles of fields adjacent to railroad tracks, where the railroad sprayed sterilant on the track right-of-way and it drifted several yards out into farmers’ fields.  Sounded more interesting than going through pages of an application.

      It was only ten o’clock and I could get back to the summer fallow.  And to worrying about a grain bin for wheat harvest.  My bin is still full of millet.