Author: Garth Brown

This is the fourth installment in a multi-part series. If you're new to the blog read this post first so you're up to speed. Last week both Garth and I each had a respective night of little sleep and subsequently had quiet and private coffee cravings. Had we both been insomniac on the same night I suspect...

Almost all livestock fencing is ultimately a psychological ploy. This is obvious in the case of a single strand of flimsy electric twine successfully containing a few dozen beef cows, but the five strands of high tensile wire around the perimeter would not stop a cow for too long if they didn’t also have a...

This is the very end of my chicken supply. I like chicken soup made from 'retired' egg hens. I dug my last two small chickens out of the bottom of my freezer last week and Normandy made a really great stew over the weekend. Yesterday I finished off the left-overs for lunch. I'm also staring...

I’ve always enjoyed cooking, and I’ve always been concerned about the treatment of farm animals. I was a vegetarian for several years, and I have an abiding interest in dietary science. But, as much as I am and always have been interested in food, I am blessed to have a reasonably healthy relationship with it....

I recently restocked on maple syrup by bartering with Brian from Mill Hollow Maple. One component of this year's home-grown adventure is to be involved in, or at least lay eyes on, all my various foodstuffs during production. So we made a little family outing to go see the boiling as it happened. He has a...

I had never eaten a ramp until I moved to the farm, and once I was here it still took a couple years before I figured out where they grow. Ramps employ a very clever strategy to harvest their yearly allotment of energy. By being just about the first thing to grow in the spring,...

A year ago today Alanna and Arden and I got in the car and drove a couple hours west to buy a puppy in a Friendly’s parking lot. It sounds sketchy when I put it like that, and, to be clear, I don’t think the parking lot of a casual dining establishment is the best...

You may have noticed when I've written about roots I've said nothing about parsnips. The reason is I screwed up last fall. Parsnips sweeten dramatically after some frosts and cool weather. They convert starches into sugars when the cold arrives. I like to maximize the flavor in my foods, so I left the parsnips in...

I put in blackberries, raspberries, and black raspberries the first year I established the garden, and I've never regretted it. Well, the black berries were actually terrible. Though they were a varietal supposedly suited to central New York's climate, they never amounted to much. Being a primocane type, they would rocket out of the ground first...

With apologies to H.P. Lovecraft and to any readers who find what follows idiotically abstruse. I have written in the past about mental strain of a limited diet, and lately this has become more acute. The weather has finally begun to warm, and some seed have started, but the food supplies continue to diminish. So...