Articles tagged with: farming
If you’ve ever felt that tug in your heart to farm, you know the impulse cannot be denied. You might end up in something else, but no matter what you’ll always find yourself wistfully dreaming of rows of summer vegetables, rich, loamy soil, the red splash of ripe tomatoes, and the taste that makes supermarket ‘vegetables’ unworthy of the name.
I am trying an experiment this year–one variety of tomato; two methods of training. The variety is called Santorini, and it was passed along to me by the kind folks at Skyfire Garden Seeds out of Kanopolis, Kansas.
This week’s links include child nutrition legislation, growing food as medicine, and the controversy over California’s beloved strawberry crop and Amish farming methods.
There were no pickup trucks in the BMW-packed parking lot, and few farmers with dirt under their fingernails could be found milling about the sleek hotel lobby. But the place was swarming with venture capitalists from some of Silicon Valley’s marquee firms looking to grow profits with investments in sustainable agriculture.
I recently joined Slow Food Austin for a farm tour at Johnson’s Backyard Garden in Austin, TX, where we spent the morning visiting with Brenton Johnson and touring their farm.
I love the fence.
I hate the fence.
The fence allows the goats to wander around, pooping outside of the barn where I don’t have to clean up. The fence leads the pony and the sheep to the pond to graze so I don’t have to mow the grass on the tractor-tipping slope of the dam. The fence lets the chickens rush through its squares to safety, leaving violent offenders of the leash law barking and foaming at the mouth on the other side.
But the fence is so needy.
This week’s link roundup is a little light, but that balances out the double-posting days we’ve had. Going forward we will by syndicating more of these types of articles as well.
The USDA and Department of …
The American government has a long and proud history of playing into the hands of various large interests, whether it be the railroads, the pharmaceutical companies, the automakers, or Big Ag. Despite its pledge to uphold the rights of the American people, it tends to spend more of its time and effort upholding the right of lobbyists to fleece the American people of their wealth and, in the case of the food companies, their health.
My mother raises hogs, they are raised on pasture and fed corn or milo depending on her crop rotation (she plants her own row crops to feed them). They are left with their mother until they are ready to be moved to the “fat hog” pen. They are never given any types of hormones, so they grow at varying rates.
There was a time when we understood animal behaviour because we lived in closer proximity to our livestock and we learned how to provide for their needs from our daily observations of them. That kind of hands-on husbandry fosters a knowledge and experience that modern agriculture has all but eliminated, but from which it could benefit. Contented, stress free animals are far more productive and, if paid the attention they deserve, will give all the clues needed to keep them that way, at a minimal dollar cost and with less intensive management.
