For nearly 20 years now, I’ve been fully immersed in the local food movement, investigating and promoting the ways that it helps to heal the earth, build community resilience, improve local relationships, enable healthier partnerships between humans and livestock, and improve our well-being. That last attribute has been an interesting sticking point for our family […]
Asking For Help
Asking For Help March 5, 2013 Tags: family farming, sustainable agriculture Bob and I acted as though it were completely natural when Sara and Raymond, friends of ours with a CSA about 30 minutes from here, wrote about a month ago and asked us if we’d assist them with a barn-raising at the beginning of […]
But can we feed the world?
Photo by Seth Joel Sooner or later the question comes up, whether it is between two friends sharing a pot of stew made from local grassfed beef and their garden harvest, livestock farmers gathered on a pasture walk, neighbors working together to tend a flock of backyard chickens, or organic vegetable producers discussing yields at […]
Cooperating Across Generations
Cooperating Across the Generations January 29, 2013 Tags: family farming, parenting Farming should be about making way for the next generation, as well as serving the needs of the present. If there’s a romantic image that tugs at our heart strings as much as the thought of homegrown tomatoes, it’s the multi-generational family farm. In […]
The Price of Corn
This past weekend I made a trek out to central Wisconsin to speak at the state’s annual grazing conference, which typically draws farmers from all over the Midwest. This was the second time I’ve been invited to join these folks, and I remembered it fondly from back in 2009, when the conference center was packed, […]
Can We Eat Meat in an Ecological and Economic Crisis? Yes.
Can we eat meat in an ecological and economic crisis? Yes. October 9, 2012 Tags: radical homemaking, grassfed cooking, grassfed meat, sustainable agriculture, Tuesday Post Thirty-plus years as grassfed meat farmers has taught my family to anticipate unpredictability. One minute we’re in floods. The next, drought. One minute livestock farmers are accused of being cruel […]
Sidestepping the Upsell
Bob and I had the delight a few weeks ago of sharing our day at our farmers’ market with a young man who is preparing to go into grassfed farming. He worked closely with my mom and dad to understand the production end of the farm, then chose to spend a day with Bob and […]
Health Lessons from a Local Diet
For nearly 20 years now, I’ve been fully immersed in the local food movement, investigating and promoting the ways that it helps to heal the earth, build community resilience, improve local relationships, enable healthier partnerships between humans and livestock, and improve our well-being. That last attribute has been an interesting sticking point for our family […]
When A Farmer Hops Off The Fence
When an email from the group Food Democracy Now! landed in my inbox last week, asking farmers to occupy Wall Street, it seemed only right that I notify the subscribers of GrassfedCooking—a free monthly e-newsletter I run for other farmers of grassfed meats—and ask that they consider joining. Some farmers, myself included, heeded […]
Why A Farmer Would Occupy Wall Street
Why A Farmer Would Occupy Wall Street December 5, 2011 Every week during the growing season my husband and I cart our family’s grassfed meats to market, priced at $11/lb for pork chops, $7.50/lb for ground beef. Every week we meet someone who tells us the prices are too high. And yet, at those prices, […]