There’s a lot of news about farming and food, but an unfortunate amount of it is poorly researched, biased, or incomplete. These posts set the record straight.
Perils of the Convenience Economy How fast is too fast? In his book Fulfillment Alec McGillis writes about the impacts and implications of an economy run by Amazon. I was particularly struck by his description of the way increasingly automated amazon fulfillment centers make life harder rather than easier for workers. Instead of walking from...
A Farmer’s Guide to Planting and Protecting Trees, Part Two The first years are the hardest, but nature finds a way If you missed last week’s post about all the benefits trees bring, particularly when planted on farms, read it here. Once trees make it through the tender first few years and have a chance...
The False Choices of Big Chicken No matter what the label says, almost all supermarket chicken is the same Though it resides in the murky area between legitimate and pop psychology, I am quite fond of the idea of choice paralysis, meaning the idea that having more options makes it harder to happily settle on...
The Sorry State of Fake Meat Beyond Meat isn’t doing well. Is that good or bad? The share price for Beyond Meat has been in steep decline recently, and this week news broke that Taco Bell has nixed a planned collaboration after a veggie carne asada product failed to impress. If you can’t meet Taco...
How Many Cows Are The in the World? Tracking the Global Cattle Inventory: 1 Billion Cows A few weeks ago I saw a chart claiming that the global population of cows had been hovering at around one billion since the 70s. If true, this would be huge. Rather than getting into the nitty gritty of...
Simplicity Traps From veganism to strict carnivory, a staggering range of diets can be found on the internet, each backed by a group of well informed adherents armed with reams of studies and hundreds of testimonials. The squishy middle of Weight Watching and calorie counting and zone dieting really is mostly about trying to lose...
Cairncrest Kids Chronicle 2021 The new issue of the Cairncrest Kids Chronicle is out and being shipped with every November order! Below is a sample of the sort of writing and art you can expect, but there’s much more, including: -Two mazes -Worm facts -Turkey crafts -Nyssa’s hamburger rice recipe
The Belcampo Meat Debacle in Four Questions What was Belcampo? If you’re hanging out on the website of a farm as obscure as mine, there’s a good chance you are already familiar with Belcampo. But in case you’re not as deep in the alternative ag weeds as some of us, here are the basics: founded...
Hair Sheep Hair vs. Wool Although most of us naturally associate sheep with wool, it is actually something of an anomaly. Wild sheep, including the mouflon, ancestor to all domestic sheep, do not have a fleece that needs to be sheared. Instead, they shed their hair each year. Wild sheep do have a sort of...
Cairncrest Kids Chronicle Hard Hitting News, Fresh From the Farm In these days of consolidated, partisan, sensationalist news, it can be hard to know where to go for high quality, unbiased reporting. This is why I’m thrilled to announce the launch of a new media organization, committed to covering all the most important stories, at...