Practical instructions on gardening, farming, and much more!
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...
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...
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...
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...
The Most Critical Part of Seasoning Firewood As September settles in, nights are already getting cold enough that the morning air has a little bit of a bite here in central New York. Though the wood stove at the heart of my house sits unused, I know in another month it will be time to...
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 Basics of Grass Fed Steak There’s an idea floating around that grass fed beef is fundamentally different from grain fed. And it’s true that well raised grass-fed beef does taste better and is more nutritious. But it is still beef, and there doesn’t need to be any mystery about how to cook it. Prime...
The Definitive Guide to Pastured Turkey Why You Need This Guide There’s a lot of stress and uncertainty when it comes to cooking the Thanksgiving turkey. This is only heightened when it’s a high-quality, pastured turkey, rather than a bargain bin bird grabbed from the supermarket meat case. But it does not have to be...
By Edmund Brown Two weeks ago I mentioned rotational grazing. I thought this week perhaps it would be interesting to show all the hardware I use to keep the cows on fresh grass every day. First, a quick summary of the manifold reasons that rotational grazing is a worthwhile practice. Grasses and ruminants co-evolved to...
In parts I and II of this series I discussed some of the great things about Black Locusts. In this post I’ll finish the overview of this marvelous tree. The rapid and vigorous young growth Black Locusts exhibit is worth exploring in more detail. Most forestry products at the small scale are difficult to make money on because the timeframes for investment are...