Category: Sustainability

White’s Hill Hop from Billie Best on Vimeo.

Farm Bill Hackathon Graphics Power Point File Farm Bill Hackathon Graphics PDF File

Occupy your mind with a new idea about how to solve the really big problems in Washington, DC and around the world. Money is moving in the wrong direction. Big piles of money are now a person with civil rights and a vote. That’s because it’s easier to print money than it is to rally [...]

From: Billie Best <billie@billiebest.com> To: Discuss Issues in Livestock Processing <livestockprocessing-l@list.cornell.edu> Sent: Mon, Oct 17, 2011 1:33 pm Subject: OT-chicken illness question I have a flock of 45 pullets born August 23. They have been free ranging on my farm since October 1st. They are mixed in with my laying hens, a flock of 20+ [...]

(This version is 300-words shorter and more focused on public policy than the original post.) My $4,500 Kidney Stone (Or, a case against health insurance mandates and for a community-based single-payer health care system)  By Billie Best, Published in Berkshire Trade & Commerce, November 2011 (download PDF file)   I woke up at 4:00 one morning in late [...]

It’s not often my cows and global corporations cry together, but then it’s weaning time. Seis has been fed by her mother, Cinco, for so long, she has no idea what it’s like to go out and get food for herself every day, and by the sound of her voice, I’d say she thinks it’s [...]

I woke up at 4:00 in the morning on August 24th feeling like I had been hit in the gut with a baseball bat. I assumed it was an evil bladder infection, so I chugged a pint of water. Within a few minutes I threw up the water. It definitely was not a bladder infection. [...]

I spent the summer farming as much as possible, playing hooky from my consulting practice, limiting my volunteer work, squeezing out my writing, and ignoring my housekeeping. It was my fourth summer as the sole farmer on the farm. Finally I felt I perfected every mission critical task and process. I was gung ho to manage [...]

Rule of thumb: When things appear to be going perfectly, you are probably missing something. My advice is duck and cover because it’s just about to hit you. I woke up this morning with the same smug buzz I wrote about yesterday — opened all the doors and windows, meditated, breathed deeply in the sun, [...]

I harvested the last of the asparagus in my former vegetable garden before I turned the cows into the south pasture for the second time this season. It has been a three week streak of me doing farm work in every available hour, and I am feeling smug about my accomplishments. So many seasons past I [...]