The sun rose January 23, at 7:16 a.m., and set at 4:58 p.m., giving us 9 hours and 43 minutes of daylight. It’s not a dramatically different amount from the day before, or from last week, but this week I… Read More ›
Archives
AgriCulture: Settling Things in Unsettling Times
I’m not sure if it’s accurate to describe the beginning of 2021 as an unsettling time. We’ve had nearly a year to adjust to the myriad ways in which COVID-19 has upended the way we live and interact with one… Read More ›
AgriCulture: Farming Like a Gay Boy From the City
“You farm like a gay boy from the City.” These words once would have appeared in a nightmare in which I was exposed as an imitation farmer, a Marie Antoinette in a shepherd costume. But shockingly, it was me uttering… Read More ›
AgriCulture: Fields and Dreams
During a recent drive to the supermarket , I was struck by an NPR story about a contact tracer: A young mother kept apologizing to the caller for her child’s insistent crying in the background. The baby, she said, was… Read More ›
AgriCulture: Lucy, Ethel, and Me
Remember that episode of I Love Lucy in which Lucy and Ethel take jobs at a chocolate factory, ultimately to be done in by their inability to keep up with wrapping the bon-bons rolling down the assembly line? Welcome to… Read More ›
AgriCulture: With a Little Help From My Friends
I return to this bulletin after a brief break. It is the season when I feel comfortable in communicating less than weekly because there is virtually nothing being harvested in need of immediate sale. Not that that there’s nothing still… Read More ›
AgriCulture-Darkness, Darkness, Be my Pillow
For most of the last twenty years, what has struck me most about the change of seasons on the farm at this time of year has been the sudden transition from cacophony to quiet. The principle cause of the transition… Read More ›
AgriCulture: Bellwethers on Tenterhooks
If you have any doubt about how much of our heritage derives from our pastoral, agrarian past you might think about how much of our vocabulary descends from it. This week, as we endured the agonizing wait to know who… Read More ›
Agriculture: Turnip and Vote
For the last several days the weather forecasts have made apparent that the really significant freeze, the one where the air temperature goes way under the freezing mark and we were at risk for accumulating snow, was imminent. Just like… Read More ›
AgriCulture-Moxibustion
As part of my fall leek seeding project, I have tried to clear some trenches that I left fallow all season. That effort has involved removing one of the most prolific and stubborn weedy invaders on the farm, mugwort. Mugwort… Read More ›