Posts Tagged: Food

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

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 [...]

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 [...]

Here on the farm we’ve been looking for Earth Day inspiration and we found it in Texas where Governor Rick Perry yesterday proclaimed three “Days of Prayer for Rain in Texas” as a way to mitigate climate change. I guess if you’re going to kick a problem upstairs, you might as well kick it all [...]

A friend who reads my blog commented recently “farming seems stressful,” as if to ask why I put myself through it, and another said, “Maybe you should stop farming,” as though it’s not good for me. I am finishing one of the most exhausting weeks I’ve ever been through on the farm, and so these [...]

The past couple mornings I have opened my eyes feeling a heaviness that would hold me in my bed if it weren’t for the sound of the chickens on the porch, the roosters crowing, and the cows coughing at the water trough. I worry about the coughing and remember what’s it like to have too [...]

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 [...]

As you approach the supermarket’s automatic doors you walk onto a conveyer belt where your retina is scanned, your bone structure is measured, and your weight flashes on a flat screen in big red numbers before the glass doors open to let you inside to do your shopping. As you place your hands on the [...]

I subscribe to a number of food industry newsletters because I edit a monthly digest of farm and food news stories for the Northeast Sustainable Agriculture Working Group. One of the weekly newsletters I receive is about new equipment and supplies for industrial meat processors. This week’s hot topic is automated smoke stick loading robotics [...]

It’s Monday morning, the sky is grey, and it smells like autumn. A patch of leaves here and there are going from green to peach and the tall summer weeds are getting woody.  I have a conference call at 11:30, the washer and dryer are full and waiting, and there are dirty dishes in the [...]