History of the Organic Farm
Here is an exciting newsletter from V.E. Irons
back in 1982 about the incredible farm
where Springreen grows!
FEBRUARY 1982
For the past four years the greatest problem facing Springreen Distributors has been "WHAT ABOUT SPRINGREEN"? The demand became great from the Health Food Stores as well as the Doctors. For a few years we were successful in supplying the demands for all three departments but, about four years ago, we were on the verge of running out of merchandise. At that time we gave up the Health Food Store line and the Doctor's line so as to devote the entire supply to our health counseling organization because our health counseling distributors were the ones that developed the demand in the first place. We next spent a couple of years supervising the production problem although the farm did not belong to us. We wanted to see if it were possible to produce more per acre. We became convinced that we could not and realized that we had to add to the acreage by accumulating more land. A careful survey of the land along the Missouri River for over two hundred miles east and over a hundred miles west showed that we had no chance of obtaining a sizeable acreage that was free of chemical fertilizers, weed killers and poisonous sprays. History tells us that the valleys of the Nile and Euphrates Rivers were at one time very fertile. Today our beautiful Missouri River with many thousands of acres of wonderful soil is running the same gauntlet of those other rivers. Future generations will put the Missouri River in the same category as the Nile and Euphrates as Has been fertile valleys.
After six months of searching along the Missouri River we decided to give up and look elsewhere. We did not want to go too far because it would be very costly to move our farm equipment and plant. We did learn however, that toward the Ozark Mountains many farmers had given up actual tilling of soil -thirty to forty years ago and instead leased their farms for hay, forage or pasture. We found many farmers who had never used weed-killers or poisonous sprays on their land because they never planted anything and had simply given up farming as a way of life. In the middle of July 1980, after investigating many such farms we finally decided on one particular farm in Richland, Missouri, containing five hundred and thirty acres situated on the Gasconade River two miles off the old "66" route to California (now Intra State Route 44). It is situated about 38 miles Southwest of Rolla, Missouri and 70 miles Northeast of Springfield, Missouri.
As you enter the property you are about five hundred feet above the Gasconade River that surrounds the farm like a horseshoe. From the entrance you continue downhill about a half mile where you come to the home of Dave Rairden, Managing Director of the farm and plant. About 400 feet farther you come to the Processing Plant, a building fifty by one hundred feet surrounded by an outside condensor about 20 feet high, a furnace and boiler room and two big barns with stables. Another 600 feet further on comes another home occupied by James Rairden, son of the manager. Then there are many open fields and meadows. Bordering the river are three fields of low bottom land totaling about a hundred and fifty acres. Above these bottomlands are three large fields of approximately 100 acres called Second Bottoms. Above these are a third and fourth bottomland fields of 50 acres each that lead back to the plant. The remaining acreage is made up of forest land with many forms of wildlife. Moving the Farm and Plant from North of Kansas City, Missouri was the biggest job of my eighty-six years. We had been in Farley, Missouri 36 years and had accumulated a lot of machinery, equipment and tools. It took three months of hard work and many heartaches before the job was done. To give you some idea; Have you ever been going by? Did you ever been stopped at a railroad crossing where a freight train is ever try to count one hundred cars as they flew by? It took the equivalent of one hundred and fourteen freight cars to carry all the tractors, trucks and plant equipment. Imagine cutting a huge plant in small enough parts to load on trucks, moving it 225 miles then trying to put it together so that it will work. For over six months many of us worried over that one question, "Will it work"? To top it all off, it was done during a severe rainy season. This country in 1981 got by far more rain fall than any other year since record keeping began. At one time in a sixty day period it rained every day but three.
No one seems to realize that to produce SPRINGREEN we use more fuel for heating, condensing and refrigeration than most large hospitals. All this is necessary for one purpose only - to RETAINthe LIFEin the product. For this we needed three phase, 440 volt electricity. It cost us $35,000 to get this electricity installed and the company promised installation by July 31st. The rains interfered so they made it September 1st without fail. More RAIN came so about the third week in October they said that it was ready to go, but Dave Rairden, our Manager, maintained that they did not have sufficient transformers to carry that electrical load. The electric company insisted that they did. RESULT - all transformers were burnt up. This delayed us two more weeks. When they were ready to go again, our manager said, "Your meters are not strong enough or big enough". They objected. RESULT - the meters burned up costing us another fourteen days. It was finally October 25th before we actually had Juice (electricity) turned on and could go to work.
The QUESTION - "How do you plant a crop with these changing promises and so much rain"? These delays caused us to loose 45 acres of beautiful Oats that matured so far that we could not use it because as you well know, we cutthe grassat the first joint stage. Despite all these problems we were able to produce two thirds as many pounds of SPRINGREEN as we had ever produced in our best year at the old farm. In other words, we accomplished in less than three weeks what usually took nearly a whole year to produce. So the future looks very bright for SPRINGREEN.
We feel this particular SPRINGREEN is superior in quality to what we have had produced at the old farm. One important point that has been proven to us during this whole moving process is that the most important asset our SPRINGREEN has over any other food supplement in the world today is the LIFE in our product. We seem to be the only Company in the World that pays any attention to preserving the LIFE in the product. No ONE seems to realize how important we think the LIFE is until you realize how much time and money is spent to get the product to the Public and still retain its LIVE FACTORS. It would be so much easier to save thousands of dollars in equipment and thousands more on propane for steam and refrigeration as others do and not preserve the Life in our product. For example, we have to use a tremendous amount of steam, electricity and propane just to VACUUM DRY and REFRIGERATE our product to retain the LIFE in it.
No one else seems to care enough to roll dry the product in a Vacuum nor does anyone else realize how important that VACUUM is in preserving LIFE. Out of a total of over thirty inches of Vacuum there is only one particular spot where we have to maintain that Vacuum in order to produce a nice GREEN, LIVE product. Even dropping the Vacuum just a half inch would KILL the product by turning it brown. When the Vacuum is kept at exactly on that one spot, you could open the doors of this great big dryer, put your hand immediately right down through the product for a distance of two feet and it would be comfortably warm and the product green. But if that Vacuum drops just a half inch you would burn your hand in putting it down through that same powder and the product would become brown and DEAD.
A new product has come on the market in the last three or four years. It is an excellent live product in its original form. It is high in protein content and many minerals BUT on the product label it states they dry it with a Spray Dry system which permits the product to reach a temperature of 176 degrees Farenheit. Enzymes and LIFE are Killed anywhere from 116 degrees F and above. But they do not worry about the temperature because the proper procedure to retain the life of the product is too costly. We seem to be the only ones that produce a Marketable product that tries to keep the LIFE in it. Each one of our health counseling distributors should make capital out of this because it is the BIGGEST ITEM in FAVOR of SPRINGREEN.
In addition to this low temperature drying (approx. 90 degrees F) the very next step in producing SPRINGREEN is also important from a LIFE preserving standpoint. When we remove the powder from the dryer it has to be rushed immediately into a "Powder Room". The humidity in the Powder Room must be kept below 30% at all times. Now, when you stop and think, the humidity just before a rain runs up to 95% - 98%. Many days when there is no rain at all the humidity in the air can be 60% to 70%. When we were trying to produce our First crop on the new farm it was raining on the outside with a humidity of 98% and yet in our Powder Room we had to reduce that humidity down to below 30% and hold it there. To get the humidity from 85% to 95% down to 30% and keep it there took a lot of planning, money, time and material. In preparing the room we put 6 inch insulation on the 3 inside walls and 8 inch on the outside walls. The first step we take in the Powder Room is to grind the Vacuum dried juice (SPRINGREEN). When it is taken from the Drying machine, the SPRINGREEN is like dried large leaf tobacco and resembles crepe paper. From the roll dryer the SPRINGREEN is ground up into a fine powder. When it goes through the grinder considerable green dust comes out when the grinder is opened. This green dust picks up any moisture that is available and becomes very heavy and gummy. If the humidity is 30% or below, the dust remains a dust. It it is over 30% it absorbs the moisture and soon turns brown as will our powder. We developed and built our own machine to collect the dust while the moisture remains below 30%. From the Powder Room the product is kept refrigerated at 38_F and the humidity is kept below 20_F in the walk-in cooler.
The SPRINGREEN Powder is taken to a Kansas City cold storage warehouse where it is kept until ready for tableting at our Kansas City Plant. We take pains all along the way to keep the powder refrigerated at 38_F and humidity below 30%.
After tableting, the tablets are placed into a dark brown bottle with a rubber gasket in the cover. The full bottles with covers on but not tightened are put into a chamber where the oxygen is drawn out and replaced with nitrogen which is inert. The covers are then turned down tight. All these steps are to retain the LIFE in the product. WHO else and Where else are these steps even considered necessary. No one else would pay $35,000 to get 440 volt 3-phase electricity or even need it. No one else would bother with a large outside boiler room, a 30 ft. condensor for vacuum pumps or worry about the moisture because they don't think the Life in the product is that important. It would be so much easier to dry the grass in its entirety, pulverize it and sell you HAY in ground form, OR perhaps tray dry or spray dry the grass juice. The analysis might be the same but there is NO LIFE. Remember LIVE foods produce LIVE TISSUE - DEAD FOODS produce Dead Tissue.
This brings us to a most important point of Health. In 1900 the US was in FIRST place as far as Health is concerned out of a total of 93 Civilized nations. In 1920 we were in 2nd Place. In 1978 we had dropped to 79th place.
More than 1 Notch per year. Think of it, the richest nation in wealth, knowledge, hospitals, doctors and nurses YET near the bottom in Health - all in 82 years. YET, in 1920 we had No Vitamins. A vita-mine means -a LIVE AMINO ACID. Today the vitamin business is a billion dollar industry and our Health has steadily worsened. So what good are Dead Vitamins?
THINK IT OVER ONLY LIFE BEGETS LIFE
ONLY LIFE SUPPORTS LIFE and ONLY LIVE VITAMINS will save us
SUCH IS SPRINGREEN
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