Small Farms Quarterly
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How long should my pasture rest before I graze it again? After a pasture cell has been grazed it should rest that the plants in it can regrow, restore nutrients, and stay viable. How long the pasture rest should be, depends on the time of year. Pasture rest in humid climate like in New England,…
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Dairy farmer and Cooperative Extension Educator Fay Benson shares the results of a three-year study testing his Pasture Compaction Ratio hypothesis. He describes best management practices and how to measure compaction on the farm. In my work, first as a grazing dairy farmer and now as a Cornell University Cooperative Extension educator working with graziers…
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CSA Farm experiments to minimize inputs, mechanization and soil disturbance in their market-scale potato growing operation. By Bob Tuori, Ryan Maher, and Michael Salzl A major concern on our highly intensive organic farm is how to grow potatoes on a scale that supplies our diverse and abundant CSA shares yet in way that minimizes labor…
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Woodland owners have different styles of management, from fairly casual to fairly regimented. All different strategies can work, but there are annual maintenance, management and practical activities that are enjoyable, useful and support the objectives of many owners. An owner who develops a list of annual or regular activities, some that may require a short…
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New laws, supported by Cornell Research, will help New York farmers adapt to the effects of climate change by implementing sustainable management practices on their farms. They will also expand current programs aimed at training farmers in these practices. When winter melts into the upcoming agricultural planting season, New York growers will get a boost…
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In part eight of our “What’s Your Beef?” series on raising cattle on small farms, we share why you need to be paying strict attention to the quality of feed that your late gestation beef cows receive just prior to calving season. This article is the eighth installment on raising and managing beef cattle in…
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The Cornell Small Farms Program’s veterans in agriculture project is working with local Cornell Cooperative Extensions to in-person workshops. For the first time since March 2020, when the COVID pandemic swept across NYS, the Cornell Small Farms Program’s Farm Ops project brought military veterans together for three in-person workshops beginning in October 2021. Although still…
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The pandemic has hindered farm visits and peer-to-peer learning between farmers, which were already difficult to arrange. A new Virtual Reality urban farm tour aims to change that. One way farmers learn best practices is through their peers, but the pandemic has limited in-person meetings. And when it comes to urban farming, a growing practice…
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The Cornell Small Farms Program is excited to announce the expansion of our team with three new additions! In our growing efforts to serve the Spanish-speaking farmer community, we have Mildred Alvarado and Hannah Rae Warren joining our LatinX farmer project. Mildred grew up on a small subsistence farm in western Honduras and has followed…
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Incidents of insect-borne diseases in wild animals, like deer, are becoming increasingly common, which can then lead to outbreaks in domestic animals. The Wildlife Health Program is tasked with tracking these outbreaks and translating them into policy, which benefits everyone. The storm in fall 2020 brought more than just torrents of wind and rain. Biting…
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