The frigid temps of Winter arrived early this year. That first morning we woke up to a landscape covered in snow and temps in the teens, we shivered just looking out the window, and only left the house when clad in bulky layers. Our house pets, like us, have not grown a winter coat, and … More In Defense of Outwintering Livestock
The US is in love with speed and productivity. Amazon Prime can get a package to your door in less than a day. Increasing speed of data transfer is the holy grail of technology developers. We even want our food to hurry up, so our country spawned fast food restaurants spreading like tumors around the … More Slow Food: What Matters More than Efficiency?
For a limited time only, we will have organically-produced peaches in the farm store. Come on by anytime during daylight hours: 200 Creamery Road, Brooktondale, NY. In the farm store you’ll find 2# quarts for $6. If you’re interested in larger quantities, contact Erica about discounted 10# flats.
Our cows and sheep celebrated First Grazing Day in early May, their favorite day of the year, when they get their first taste of lush forage. I can tell it’s their favorite day by how animated they are. They leap in the air, kick their legs, and dash across the pasture with joyful abandon. I’m … More Deadly Pastures
Two years ago I helped my then-5-year-old son plant a sunflower seed in March. I told him was much too early. Undaunted, he tucked the seed into a small pot filled with soil. I was sure his attention would not span the months it takes for a seed to grow into a large, healthy plant, … More Growing Transplants Without Fossil Fuel Heat
If you’ve ever grown fruit in this part of the world, you already know it’s not as easy as putting trees in the ground and waiting a few years to harvest perfect, supermarket-quality fruit. But still this myth of easy orcharding persists. The comedian Jim Gaffigan does a skit about u-pick orchards, saying what a … More Just Plant a Tree and Wait for Fruit?
My pig-headedness (I prefer to call it persistence) has been a useful life trait in some ways: it supplies me with energy to carry on when all signs suggest I should have stopped miles ago. But it can also get me into trouble, as when I set my sights on something that is not actually … More From Pie-in-the-Sky to Pragmatic
It’s the time of year when our lambs are coming off pasture and heading to “freezer camp.” It’s a terrible euphemism, I know. But farmers–like cops, coroners, and other professionals who deal with the nastier parts of life–have our own brand of gallows humor. We’ve been raising animals for meat for 12 years now, starting … More Little Packages of Meat
It’s been a bountiful berry season, with an unceasing flow from strawberries and honeyberries to rasp- and blueberries, followed by blackberries, with mulberries somewhere in the mix too. Mid-August means elderberry picking season, of which we put up gallons of honey-sweetened juice as a Winter tonic. But all these berries we grow at a homestead … More Amazing Aronia
There are a lot of factors that have contributed to the death of the family farm—most of them financial—but I believe a lack of social sustainability played a role too. By “social sustainability” I mean working conditions that can be sustained in the long term for a farmer. It’s common knowledge that farm work is … More Getting Away from the Farm
Shelterbelt Farm 