The Future of Feeding Ourselves
The future of food will be different after COVID19. We should be planting our Victory Gardens NOW!
Category From the Soil
Field To Fork: Food Choices and the Future
Near Coles Knob in eastern Floyd County, many acres of former mature forest are being cut (down to what’s left of the topsoil) to create pasture to grow beef cattle. (Wood chips likely now on a freighter ship to Europe.)…
Seeing the Forests
Found in my collections of snippets, a quote from Wendell Berry, one of the few wise men of our era, in my opinion: To destroy a forest or an ecology or a species is an act of greater seriousness than…
When Our Forests Disappear
This is the first part of a four part series in the Floyd Press, first installment in this week’s edition. — FBF When the oak leaves fell from November trees along the crest above the house, we were shocked to…
PeeCycling
It is true that the tomatoes are leggy and the peppers not a deep dark green as they should be. They seem to be telling me that they are in short supply of something–and probably on or all of N,…
This Bountiful Land: Pasture First Cutting
It was not the purpose for cutting and baling hay that the grands have a place to play King (er Queen) of the Mountain. But the fact that they invented their own entertainment and burned off some youthful energy in…
The Family Farm: This Week’s Final Film
The trailer here points the way for more of what you’ll see–and afterwards, discuss at the Floyd Country Store, perhaps after sharing a pot-luck dinner staring at 6:30. Highly recommended. Take a look at this month’s SustainFloyd Newsletter, or skip straight…
Poultry Palace Complete
So you long-time readers might remember the great Chickalanche of the winter of 2014. All the snow off the barn roof came down with a swoosh onto our chicken pen and destroyed it. (And one of us got to say…
Tomato Horn Worm: Gotcha!
Moveable Feast: Dinner is served. As a matter of fact, dinner is almost done for the eggs embedded with great accuracy and intention by the mother wasp into this otherwise invisible garden pest–the tomato (also called the tobacco) horn worm.…
Got Legs Under Me At Last
While the cat’s away…but it wasn’t mice in the garden while we were out of town. It was beetles, weeds, and from the outside, deer browsing on the beans along the fence. Oh well. All that hard work to make…
I Come to the Garden Alone
Another few weeks and Ann will be threatening me with my life if I bring in another five gallon bucket of tomatoes or beans or squash. This is a statement of faith, as anything can happen in love, war or…
Fruitless: Unpollenated Gardens
Finally in the middle of July, our garden is visible above the ground, even from the road some 30 feet away. For the longest time, it seemed like an iceberg–7/8ths below the surface, invisible. Now tomatoes near the tops of…
Garden Gate(d)
Don’t ask me how people do it with unprotected gardens in Floyd County. We’ve had to enclose ours in a stockade fence against the deer, and the place only lacks razor wire around the top or it would look like one…
Vegetables: Not Without Water
This time of year, the day starts early and ends late. It starts and ends outdoors. These are the HHH days, where heat, haze and humidity spawn afternoon showers–if we’re lucky. If we’re not, the garden takes an extra hour…