Old Dogs, Old Tricks
Edmund went away for a long weekend, which meant I was on livestock duty and also that the animals weren’t on their best behavior. On Friday I was drinking my...
Garth Brown |
Blog
Old Dogs, Old Tricks
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Razing Mango Mountain
Last July after more than week of mango extravaganza, we reached the end of the useful life of our windfall and I raised Mango Mountain with a little strategic pushing...
Garth Brown |
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The Big Organic Loophole
Stroll down the aisle of a health food store, Whole Foods, or even a regular supermarket, and you’re likely to spot dozens of labels and seals, each signifying something about...
Garth Brown |
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The Greatest Turkey Story Ever Told
With Thanksgiving approaching my mind wanders to a particular section of The Physiology of Taste (published 1825), in which its author, Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, lays out his many thoughts concerning...
Garth Brown |
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Manageable Catastrophes
Many of the problems with modern agriculture are rooted in technological complexity. Massive tractors till land and spray it with herbicides to render it as close to sterile as possible....
Garth Brown |
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The Most Annoying Part of Winter
The most frustrating part of the winter is its tendency to turn water into ice. Keeping livestock fenced, housed, and fed all present challenges, but nothing can compare to the...
Garth Brown |
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Hippoboartamus
As the days turn colder the pigs have been moving into their winter quarters. This is most important for the little ones born this fall, who need a dry, sheltered...
Garth Brown |
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Loose Cow!
Most good stories about livestock begin with an animal being where it shouldn’t. Since I aim to minimize the frequency with which this happens I suppose one of my goals...
Garth Brown |
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The Problem with Cedar River Farms
Update 09/21/22: JBS near you I still encourage you to read this post, which details how mega meat packer JBS uses brands like Cedar River Farms to market beef. While...
Garth Brown |
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Are Invasive Species a Problem?
The worm in the picture above is a wandering broadhead planarian, an invasive species colloquially known as a hammerhead worm. This one turned up in the loose soil where I’d...
Garth Brown |
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Existential Farming
This Thursday I took my kids back to the little waterfall on the edge of our property. The walk was only about half a mile, but to make it more...
Garth Brown |
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20 tons of Dust
Thinking about, managing, and handling large volumes of things that most people are happy to spend as little time as possible dealing with comprises much of farming, e.g. poop, dirt,...
Garth Brown |
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Good Fences Make Good Farms
It’s easy to spot the negative parts of the current agricultural system. Ever larger machines churn across ever larger acreages, farmers mostly see themselves as business owners operating on razor...
Garth Brown |
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Trash Trees
It’s easy to assume trees have a natural hierarchy, with towering sequoias and oaks at the top, sugar maples and hemlocks in the middle, and jack pine and willows at...
Garth Brown |
