Podchef | February 28, 2009
Small farmers are truly a silent minority. With just a little over 2% of Americans classified as “farmers”, we are a very small minority, as well, with just 57% of us earning well under $250,000 per year. This has me worried. Although small farms are on the increase, and inroads are being made into sustainable, [...]
Podchef | February 25, 2009
When it comes to shopping, we’re all a bit piggy aren’t we? We go from store to store as the whim takes us. Most of us think nothing of going to the stores as many times in a week as it takes to get what we want. We use and consume resources at an alarming [...]
Podchef | February 19, 2009
Elsewhere1 I have written much about the primary currency of the domesticated dairy cow–milk. I may have, in passing, even mentioned her gift of the occasional calf. Now, that is a dividend not to be sniffed at.2¬† But to date, I am pretty sure, I have never mentioned one of the chief payments a cow [...]
Podchef | February 18, 2009
There is something I just don’t get. Why do farmers always seem to forget to keep some of the cream for themselves? At at time of falling incomes and rising prices, surely holding something back makes sense, right? Or is it that the American Farming Machine has gotten so big, that it can’t see it’s [...]
Podchef | February 16, 2009
Here is an udder. Bridget’s udder. I am sure she thinks the warm coating of hair all over it is nice. In truth, it is. Soft, hairy, warm, sweet smelling, and despite it’s pendulous nature, everything an udder should be. However, in a dairy cow, especially a hand milked Jersey, udder hair is a problem. [...]
Podchef | January 23, 2009
Elsewhere, I have written: Will this decade see the end of Agrarian Farming? Certainly I am not the only writer, farmer, eater-of-things-grown to pose this question in the past 20, 30, or 40 years, but for some reason this year, at this time, it seems like the cards are stacked against the small farmer and [...]
Podchef | January 7, 2009
I was reading the other day when I came across the phrase “producers attempt to make up their losses “on volume”” and it struck me that so much of the current mess we are in comes from this notion that overproduction–that “more”–is needed in order to make a gain;¬† to make things right in the [...]
Podchef | December 31, 2008
Why, indeed. I think there is within each one of us a budding agrarian.1 Whether we admit it or not we yearn for contact with the sun, the soil, the foods that feed us. While I agree it is a difficult thing to contemplate in the middle of a snow-bound winter day, or on cold, [...]
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