Jenks Farmer

Have a listen if you'd like—it's been my garden theme song this year. It's folksy angry chick music, so I don't blame you if the obscure tune didn't make your playlist. And to have an oom sha la la dance party with to celebrate starting that garden!...

Packed with descriptive photos and painstakingly detailed recipes and methodology, this book aims to equip readers with the knowledge and techniques to tailor their meat cutting and purchases to the recipes they want to make.

Footer agrees with that sentiment, too: He's not out to badmouth or disparage all other forms of composting while acclaiming the value of the bokashi method; rather, he acknowledges that bokashi composting is not for everybody, and that traditional, windrow...

Where Will They Sleep? Barns burned down. These are just some of the big questions you'll want to consider as you decide whether to take on an apprentice next year, but surely there are others that are specific to your situation.

He'd tripped while doing chores (whiplash), fallen and hit his head (concussion) and, unable to process his state of injury, started to freak out (panic attacks). My parents opted to take over farm duties, with my family using odd weekends to pitch in...

When it comes to vet-school admissions, this cutting-edge approach gives students the edge, Tracy explains. A Kentucky high school gives students the tools for agriculture-related careers while modeling sustainability.

I might have been a farmer, but I wasn't really feeding people. And I hope whoever these celebrity farmers are will make sure that is their message: If you want to get where I am, work harder than you dream.

At best, Mr. B and I will probably have to dedicate at least four hours to the chore each week. While I find it a rather relaxing and enjoyable task, it's not as simple as cutting clean lines into a vast open field.

Spring has arrived on the farm, and with it has come all the beauty and wonder of the land coming alive. The trail leading back to home began to show spots of color: yellow and orange and white daffodils popping up in tufts along hillside slopes, pink...

Deep litter allows droppings to accumulate in the litter material, composting it right inside the coop. You heard me, people. The Girls' coop satisfies their housing requirement and allows me to exert minimal—yet efficient—effort.

HF: You've written about the problems with creating Farm Bills spanning half a decade at a time. The delightful book by Brian Walker and David Salt, Resilience Thinking: Sustaining Ecosystems and People in a Changing World (Island Press, 2006), is a good...

Despite that, there are more than 80,500 farms across the state producing 400-plus commodities and nearly half of the fruits, nuts and vegetables grown in the U.S., according to the California Department of Agriculture .

Periods of transition are like that, I guess. But now that we're at the new farm, I have a gardening itch I just can't quite scratch. Weed Like Crazy Rachael Brugger The reality of a farm in transition, particularly at the end of spring/beginning of summer,...

I'm terrible at arguing politics; instead I'd like to share five steps we're taking to try and reduce our carbon footprint on the farm. As a passionate lover of the outdoors, I enjoy sunny, warm weather as much as the next person, especially after a soggy,...

Even if you don't have a home field advantage in the world of agriculture, you can get your farm started off right with these beginner tips. Then add the unknowns, like bad weather and pest and disease pressure, and you have a recipe for a big bowl of...

Until gardening conditions work in our favor, spring cleaning is the name of the game. Finally, you get that chance to unload all the weight you've been carrying around in the form of useless stuff.

Drew Coons There is one pond pest worse than a beaver: a river otter. Beavers then cut down Kit's weeping willows, and during one flood, a beaver even treaded water to gnaw down my cypress tree above an anti-beaver wrapping.

That just makes my day!” —Jodi Skoien-Tucker Give yourself room to grow—both literally and figuratively! “Give the plants plenty of space!” —Erik Hager Giselle Hager “Give yourself a five-year grace period from the very beginning.

Because of this personal stake, she says it's her goal to turn research into advocacy and action. “Since the aim of [Missouri's Show Me Healthy Women] program is to provide screening services to vulnerable women, it is important to ensure that access...

An unidentified floating odor around our farm has us scratching our heads to what could be the cause—and we could use your help. Is there anything else I may be overlooking here that I should be checking into?

This short season before the growing season—the almost not yet of spring—can seem like an eternity. After spending the winter reading all of the books and doing all of the research, you come to the conclusion that farming is all science, but it's...

It is also possible that more neighborhoods and—why not—perhaps whole towns will be set up around farms akin to the “agrihood” trend we are seeing now. Then it's the consumers who can't afford grassfed meat, of which there very well may be more...

We received our first true snowfall since we moved here a year and a half ago, so it hasn't been difficult to cozy in and spend time just being a mom and embracing our new life as a family.

And note the distinction: The hives , not the individual bees. Yeah, I know, right? Tags beehive , beekeeping , bees , honeybees He marched up and lifted the lids, sans bee hat. This means that an individual group of bees in a hive, even if they were...

The complexity of soil nutrition can bog you down. So 5-5-5 is equal doses of nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium; 6-10-4 gives a smidge more nitrogen, a hefty extra load of phosphorous, and so on.

Business-savvy farmers might be misleading customers about how chemical-free their products actually are. Conventional farms are not going to start advertising their practices openly because if they did, they know their sales would plummet.

Farming is still farming. The question is: Will it last? What can we learn from each other? Here's what you said: Ronny Williams The problem with small-scale farming is higher overhead and because of that the price of your product is higher than that...