Food & Water

Cereals, agroforestry and droughts: an interview with Martin Crawford

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Yields from arable crops in the East of the country, (which is where the main arable crops like wheat are grown in this country), are going to be down by at least 25% and maybe more, because the damage has been done. It can’t be recovered – it’s too late for that now. It’s not all fine now and it really shows that a spring like this, which seems to be becoming the norm…..for the last four years we’ve had pretty dry springs – not as dry as this one but it seems to be becoming a pattern.

Renouncing, reclaiming, rebuilding: The 3 steps of radical homemaking

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Yesterday I counted 85 spears of asparagus nudging their way up through the soil (Asparagus may be finished in some parts of the country, but we’re zone 4 here in cold upstate New York). I crawled along the row on my hands and knees, pushing aside clumps of rotted manure to reveal each spear. I ran inside and proudly reported the figure to my husband Bob. Then I called my mom, and told her, too. It took me longer to get this asparagus growing than it did to earn a Ph.D. I consider the achievement just as significant.

Backyard clotheslines and washboard secrets

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Friends smile wanly when they see my wife’s corrugated washboard in the sink. They wonder when we are going to go down to the “crick” and pound our clothes on the rocks. This is very funny, of course, but it reveals the modern ignorance about washing clothes that is becoming nearly universal. A washboard is still the cheapest and often the only way to get dirty clothes clean… buy one that is only rough surfaced. The ones that are only smooth-surfaced are no good for dirty clothes… and if the clothes aren’t dirty, well, throw them in the automatic washer. It does a real good job on clean clothes.

Radical homemaking, radically enriching

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When I finally got a copy of Hayes’s book, Radical Homemakers, I confess it wasn’t what I expected–rather than a serious, theoretically grounded critique of consumer culture, family life, and the structural obstacles that often stand in the way of adopting a simpler, more communal lifestyle, I found an often sloppily researched but nonetheless impassioned instruction manual-cum-rallying cry.

The nutritional resilience approach to food security

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Very few soils have a perfect balance of minerals. As a result, their fertility is limited and the crops grown on them cannot provide all the nutrients people need. As people can get food from elsewhere at present, these local deficiencies do not matter too much. However, if the option of filling one’s plate from all over the world disappears, human health will likely decline unless the missing minerals are applied over the next few years.

Praise be baling wire and binder twine

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In fact, the major hazard to life on our farm is old, rusting baling wire that somehow wanders off into the pastures to waylay mowers or end up in the rumens of livestock… my mower loves the stuff and can find a piece even if there is only one little strand in a ten acre field.

Medicine of the Heart

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This is a medicine story. And if I could tell you all the medicine stories I heard in my travelling days I would. Because those stories are about how life turns around just as you think it’s about to end. We need more than anything now these stories of restoration and regeneration because they hold an opportunity. If there is one theme that unites them all it is this: the transformation moment comes when you realise it’s not just about you.

Fences of fruit trees

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Almost anyone who has a backyard or garden would do well to plant fruit trees for the years ahead. Most fruit trees, though, take more years to mature than most of us have to prepare, and take up more space than most of us have in cities or suburbs. Luckily, only a few centuries ago master gardeners developed a way to cultivate fruit in narrow spaces – one that yields more fruit, more quickly, and perhaps with a longer growing season.