Siberian Rye - Why i want to grow it

Back in 2006, the high fuel prices during the Iraq War, in conjunction with the Ethanol Mandate, had resulted in skyrocketing feed prices. Gas was over $5 a gallon. Diesel was even more. The duck feed I was buying had just about tripled in price. The bags of wheat, for example that I used to buy for sprouting grains for my ducks feed mix, went from $16 a bag to $46. I gradually doubled the price of my duck eggs, in order to cover the increased feed costs, but as a result I lost half my customers. Then the economy crashed and I lost 95% of the rest of them. I knew of other small farmers in my area in a same situation with skyrocketing feed prices with their organic chicken egg production. They simply decided to cut their losses, and sold all their layers to be butchered for pet food. I could not do that to my lovely Welsh Harlequin ducks, so I forged on at a loss. I ended up shoveling hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of expired duck eggs into my wood shavings compost pile. All that work, all that expense, wasted.
 I decided that in order to not be at the mercy of rising fuel prices, and its effect on feed prices in the future, I should jump start my life-long dream of a “One Straw Revolution” grain field, and grow some of my own grains.

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