A while back we made contact with a woman who grew up on our property in the 1950s.  Renee was kind enough to share some pictures, and I’ve finally gotten around to scanning a couple of them, as well as found the approximate point that they were taken from in order to do a photopoint [...]

As the last post indicated, food security is a pretty compelling issue in the US, and the Northwest in particular. For a state that is awash in good farmland with which to grow enough food to feed all of us, a series of socioeconomic and cultural conditions prevents the food from getting from where [...]

Via Resilience Science, who got it from Edible Geography(with excellent commentary) comes a new project of the USDA…the Food Environment Atlas.
It’s a pretty fascinating tool…pounds of meat consumed per capita per year, access to grocery stores, WIC redemptions (pictured), and farmer’s markets are available down to the county level. We spent a [...]

I wish I had that tractor for the 3500 trees that we planted a few years ago

Extreme Tree Planting – Trees for Earth from Peter Hill on Vimeo.

Allan Savory of the Holistic Management Institute spoke recently in Ireland…the full video sat in my browser for a couple of weeks until the holiday madness subsided. Things have calmed down a bit, finally. Here’s an exerpted version

Allan Savory – EXTRACTS – Keeping Cattle: cause or cure for climate crisis? from Feasta on [...]

Gene Logsden has a good post up about the piles of corn that end up in the midwest at the end of harvest season. Oh, my aching HFCS.

With the Copenhagen climate talks stuttering along, it seems like past time to throw in some quick comments
The effect of livestock on greenhouse gas emissions are often overrated, if not entirely exaggerated
Pasture is part of the solution to the carbon issue
Some farms are doing it right
And the systems exist to fix the problem
OK, seriously, I [...]

Our friend Clare was interviewed on KBOO recently along with Joel Salatin…quite a coup. I found it especially interesting to hear Joel talk about the massive gullies that were on his land when his family arrived there, since we are dealing with similar legacies of past land abuses.
They talk about land, farm [...]

It’s that time of year again…you have an opportunity to purchase some grass fed beef raised by our neighbors, the Thorntons.  The Thorntons have been on their ranch since the 1930’s, and breed the steers that we raise for our grass-fed beef.  They have 2-3 cows that will be butchered this fall – 1 in [...]

The lack of posts recently can be somewhat attributed to the vagaries and long lists of summer, and somewhat attributed to a bit of farm excitement that happened early in July. I didn’t want to post until I had a complete story, and the story dragged on somewhat.
Now, however, things are back to normal, [...]