Interesting things happen on a farm, some fun, some less so. This is a good place to check for a picture of day-to-day life on Cairncrest Farm.
A Farmer’s Guide to Planting and Protecting Trees Trees are the backbone of a healthy ecosystem Planting trees is wonderful. Every day during the growing season trees pull carbon out of the atmosphere and fix it into their woody biomass. In these days of crazy conflagrations and epic floods, sending carbon into long-term storage in...
Cider Apples Fruit is the Foundation of Great Cider Over the past few years hard cider has become more widely available, and some small amount of it even tastes decent. Lagging behind is knowledge of cider’s unique history. From the pilgrims in Plymouth until sometime in the 1800s cider was the the most common drink...
About Hog Panels Also known as "cattle panel" or "hog wire," hog panel is a rectangular sheet of robust fencing commonly used to contain pigs or other livestock. It is made of extremely thick wire, welded together and galvanized. Designed for outdoor farm use, it is very durable, which makes it an ideal trellis material....
The most recent addition to the farm is a lop-eared bunny named Acorn. She lives in an open bottomed hutch on the lawn, where she passes her days eating grass or lying around in the shade. She has soft fur, big eyes, and a calm temperment, so it’s no surprise that the kids love her....
Gazing upon the forty-two thousand pounds of broccoli that is currently sitting in palletized stacks of boxes down by my driveway raises some questions: questions about the intricate supply chain that brought it from a field in Mexico to my farm in central New York, questions about a food system that aggregates and disaggregates food...
One of the particular joys of this spring has been the return of visitors. Over the past month a steady flow of grandparents has passed through the farm, and as I write this my friend Mark has come to stay for a while. We all have our peculiarities, and one of Mark’s is that he...
The commonplace is easy to take for granted. For example, I imagine that I would be thrown into an endless state of rapturous wonder if I saw a pterodactyl flapping its way over the farm. While I would, of course, be amazed for a bit, I have no doubt that if the skies were alive...
I have recently suffered a devastating blow. I like to think of myself as stoic, as someone who calmly accepts the difficulties that are an inevitable part of being alive. But the fact that I can no longer drink three cups of strong black coffee in the morning without suffering heartburn is proving to be...
By Garth Brown One wonderful thing about my dog Oban is that he didn’t notice that I forgot his seventh birthday last month. Of course, he forgot it too, and passed the day like any other, lying in front of the wood stove when he wasn’t out playing in the snow. Like every dog I’ve...
By Garth Brown On a happy farm animals rarely go through fences. Ideally, fences keep animals where they should best be at a particular time for their own health and the health of the farm. So long as livestock have food, water, and somewhere to lie down they are usually quite content. The exceptions to...