Posts Tagged: agriculture

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

I am trying to go with the flow. I thought it would improve my technique to know the origin of the phrase. According to UrbanDictionary.com “go with the flow” was first known to be used by Marcus Aurelius who ruled the Roman Empire from 161 to 180. I remember my Grandma Best, a lifetime school [...]

A report this week from the Disassociated Press reveals government and industry consternation at the public outcry over tomatoes bio-engineered to thrive on animal and human urine. One lobbyist said, “All these years we’ve been bio-engineering vegetables to thrive on poisons that pollute the water and soil and may cause cancer, and the public has [...]

After a couple more blizzards, rain on snow, a sand storm of sleet, and an accumulation of three feet of snow with a hard ice crust — the charm in my last blog post is completely gone. There will be no photographs of my lovely farm here today. I don’t want to confuse beauty with [...]

A snow storm from the midwest and a rain storm from the Atlantic collided over the farm during the night, and this morning it’s a complete white out. There was no sunrise, just a cross-fade from black to murky grey to silent white. I started morning chores early because the cows and the goats were [...]

The farm is my lava lamp, always in mesmerizing motion. The chickens swish from one side of the yard to another, across the snow, looking for food, hiding from the hawks. The cows and the goats circle the hay feeder, wander over to the water trough, take a lick of salt, head-butt each other, and [...]

I just finished reading the Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck, as part of my continuing education about the history of food and agriculture. I wasn’t at all prepared for the ending. I like resolution. Toward the last few chapters of the book I was holding the paperback in my hands, a very thick slice [...]

A few years ago I read 1491 by Charles Mann. I picked up the paperback in an airport on the way to an agriculture conference. The book stunned me.  I had no clue about the truth of civilization on the American continents, which is that before the Europeans arrived here there were millions of people [...]

Each year a particular circle of friends produces a wild, foraged, and farmed dinner purely for our own indulgence. It’s a gracious competition where everyone eats the rewards. This year the menu included my own country veal pate, pickled wild ramps, creamed nettle soup, an exquisite homemade hard cider that was more like Prosecco, nettle [...]

I just listened to this podcast from Yale’s Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity about diet-related disease, the environmental cost of industrial food, and the lifestyle habits of Americans, who lead the Western world in watching TV and eating crap.  It’s a brilliantly concise (14 minute) interview with New York Times columnist Mark Bittman, [...]