Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Chickens in a small-scale food production system, whether that’s a suburban backyard or a bit of acreage, are valuable first for the services they provide. In nature, scavenging omnivorous birds form a symbiosis with large mammals.
Gardeners new to the concept of carbon gardening often ask these two questions: What good soil management strategies will help maximize carbon sequestration? And, what would be a good plant palette to help accomplish this? Good questions both, to which I wish I could give detailed, specific answers.
“Not only do Indigenous diets provide us with nutritionally balanced, seasonal local food, but they help us recognize the connection to our physical place in the world, as well as the wisdom of those who have come before,” says Mariah Gladstone (Blackfeet, Cherokee), founder of Indigikitchen. “This helps us care for ourselves, the land, and each other.”
To me, the more telling vandalism is in the gutting of local economies, wrought by the huge industrial abattoirs, markets, feedlots and all the other paraphernalia of modern large-scale farming which has been removed from public view. In the past, towns and cities usually grew up around working functions, as commercial or industrial centres.
Encouraged by the Federal legalization of hemp in 2018, Fibershed has continued research into the versatile crop this year, deepening understanding of the plant and the fiber, prototyping hemp textile production in Northern California, supporting agroecological trials, and charting a path forward for weaving hemp into the region.
Water scarcity is real. To ignore it, or to assume that it is only a problem of the developing world is to be blind to the errors our egos have cause. We in the Western world waste more water in a day than some families around the world would see in months. Much of what we use water for is to sustain a lifestyle that we largely take for granted.
In 2004, cattle ranchers Tom and Mimi Sidwell bought the 7,000-acre JX Ranch, south of Tucumcari, New Mexico, and set about doing what they know best: earning a profit by restoring the land to health and stewarding it sustainably.
More local food is appearing in grocery stores and restaurants and even schools, thanks to a growing number of “food hubs”; but it is a drop in the bucket still, compared to the food that is trucked in from afar. What do we need to turn this around? At least four things, each with practical and policy implications.
As these “Farm Gardens” expand and become nodes that merge, I envision entire fields fully planted, feeding the soil, wildlife, farm animals, and us. I look forward to continuing to share this experience with you as the process unfolds.
Around here, we have a goal to produce 80% of our veg, fruit, meat and dairy within five years of moving onto our land. This is year three, and while we’ve reached that goal for summer veg like tomatoes and cucumbers (until this year’s drought), I have not had as much success with the fall garden until this year.
The 1973 dystopian science fiction film “Soylent Green” is set in the year 2022, just one year after a nonfictional Finnish company hopes to begin selling an artificially produced yellow protein-laden flour created by bacteria that the company says will revolutionize food production.
The flour is derived from vats of yellow bacteria whose fermentation process create a yellow protein that when dried looks like flour.
We betray the Greek origin of western styles of thinking every time we use the singular to discuss the opposite — the sheer abundance and bounty of foods and food choices that modern living and technologies offer.
So, for example, we have city discussions about the need for a city policy on urban agriculture, instead of city discussions about the need for city policies to support various forms of urban agricultures.
