farming 65
Wholeness and Gratitude: Working through Scott H. Moore’s How to Burn a Goat
Moore insists that his book about farming is not exclusively about rural places: “the point is not even about farming . . . most of what I’ve said in this…
Brass Spittoon: Are Lab-Grown Foods a Good Idea?
Gracy Olmstead, Garth Brown, and Jason Peters on whether Solein can save the planet.
Live like a Tree
I am an unlikely localist. My life is a product of globalization. My mother’s side of the family is from Singapore, China, and India, linked to each other through the…
What Wendell Berry’s Brush Teaches Us About Capitalism, Community, and “Inevitability”
[Cross-posted to In Medias Res] The Art of Loading Brush: New Agrarian Writings, the latest collection of writings by Wendell Berry, isn't a perfect book, nor the perfect expression of…
And Then Came the Chickens, Part Two: A Dispatch from Dumb-Ass Acres
“Bawk-bawk be-gehk!” she cries, and I know just where she’s coming from.
And Then Came The Chickens—After the Bobcat: A Dispatch
Heaven favored me with three successive clement weekends.
The Holy Earth and Liberty Hyde Bailey’s Front Porch Cred
He wrote sixty-five books and had a hand in another hundred and thirty-five.
Oneself as Another in the Controlled Burn: A Dispatch
Low flames and smoke and visions of the eschaton.
Life in the Kolache Belt: Reflections from the Intersection of Food, Faith, Farming, and Fracking
In some ways, the little farming community of Hallettsville where I have spent a writing sabbatical still resides in a simpler time. Czechs and Germans came in the 1800s and…
Fences, Vines, Bees, and Huge Chickens
Hidden Springs Lane. We’re building fence this summer. I purchased 150 eight foot posts and we’ve been slowly planting them. We’re putting a paddock in the front and a larger…
Where Will You Die?
Hidden Spring Lane. “I plan on dying here.” The words came quite unbidden and surprised me. We were in the process of building a house on a few acres in…
Memory and the Damming State
The family’s life in this village had come to an end when the lake was dammed in 1958. One wonders who would consider such things worth it.
Getting the Garden Going, One Baby-Step at a Time
[Cross-posted to In Medias Res] This academic year Friends University found itself wondering what to do with a plot of land, directly beside and behind some student dormitories. Through a…
On Being a Worthy Heir of the Agrarian Contrarians
But, as Shakespeare wrote, we sometimes “by indirections find directions out.”
Occupy Food! (And Other Simple Things)
[Cross-posted to In Medias Res] As Christmas and the end of 2011 approaches, I find myself thinking gratefully about what Leroy Hershberger has enabled my students and me to learn…
Global Warming, Local Farming, and Naomi Klein: A Trip to the Land Institute
[Cross-posted to In Medias Res] Wichita, KS A couple of weeks ago some fine intellectuals, political figures, journalists, and activists associated with this blog gathered together to talk about localism,…
Get Rich! Become a Farmer.
This “summer of Hell,” to borrow Peters’ phrase, has had me in too many hospital/doctor waiting rooms. But as I was recently counting up co-pays and deductibles in my head…
Agrarian Politics: Why I Care
Interest in agrarian politics can start in childhood. As feminists used to say, "The personal is political."
Sausage Time Machine
Does food have a context of time and place?, or, How to make your own sausage.
Which Came First, the Chicken or the McNugget?
In many ways, the Los Angeles County Fair is not so different from county fairs all over the country ... except for its agricultural exhibit.
Technique and Food: Why our Local Food System does not Feed Us
Here are the local puzzle pieces that we somehow need to fit together: great farms; committed, hard working farmers; a university of world class researchers; a highly participatory local political…