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My Grand Theory of Technological Progress Lately I’ve been luxuriating in the ocean of articles detailing the troubles faced by Meta, nee Facebook. So far, the pivot from being a company that offers you Minions memes in exchange for every kernel of data that can be gleaned from your digital life to a company that...

I am at heart a localist, particularly when it comes to food. Problems like dismal animal welfare standards, exploited farm workers, and certain environmental impacts are made much more tolerable by being kept out of sight; we get cheap food without having to look squarely at the true costs. I also believe in an affirmative...

While shopping for pens and other knick knacks for the kids, I noticed something interesting. Everything was almost out of stock. There were only nine of the blue pens I wanted left and only eleven of the red. There were only two orange and four black notebooks. If I didn’t order immediately, who knows how...

The idea that weight gain occurs when a person eats more calories than they burn and loses weight when they burn more calories than they eat is obviously true; gaining weight requires an energy surplus, while losing weight requires an energy deficit. If you look at the chart above you’ll see that from 1970 to...

In the early years of the farm we had a wonderful neighbor named Don. He’d retired from dairying in the 90s, but he still planted a little corn, which he’d harvest late to ensure plenty of deer were around for hunting season, and in the summer he ran heifers on his huge, scrubby hill pasture....

The big idea you’ve (probably) never heard of When thinking about how cattle contribute to climate change, most public focus falls on methane. It’s a gas emitted by ruminants, and it has a direct impact superficially similar to exhaust from a car: it goes up into the air and contributes to the greenhouse effect. But...

Watch Out For Wild Fork Foods Rotten Meat, Corruption, and Your New Neighborhood Butcher Wild Fork Foods has stores popping up in cities across the country. It looks like a great idea – a local retailer focused on providing a big selection of quality meats available both in store and delivered to your home. In...

An exercise in imagination Picture it: it’s your first day exclusively eating food you’ve grown yourself. This moment has been months in the making, from planning a garden to getting sheep to installing a root cellar. You sit down to a meal of lamb meat balls and roasted potatoes hot from the oven. You have...

How to Grow Everything Extreme opinions attract the most attention online. This dynamic can be innocuous, if stupid, as in the case of sports, or incredibly corrosive, as in the case of politics. But in other areas it’s just confusing. For example, I’ve recently seen people condescendingly claim that it’s delusional to imagine that anyone...

Pork Inferno When cooking goes wrong Building a cinderblock oven is simple. Smooth out an area of ground, decide on a size, then stack up four courses of cinderblocks, leaving an opening to shovel coals or charcoal into the bottom. Use a mason’s hammer to chip out divots from a few of the blocks and...