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Sowing the Seeds of Food Justice
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A Guide for Farmers Who Want to Supply Low-Income Communities While Maintaining Financial Sustainability This manual offers strategies and insights to help you run a small farm business that supports the needs of low-income communities. As much as farmers want to support the community, the community needs our solidarity. About 50 million Americans are food insecure, with half…
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Building Healthy Pasture Soils
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The following article is an excerpt from the factsheet “Building Healthy Pasture Soils” available in full at www.ATTRA.org and can be downloaded as a free PDF at the website, along with many other guides and resources. Let’s consider the agricultural practices that help build healthy soil. In essence, we want to increase aggregation, contribute soil organic matter, increase biodiversity,…
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Managing Small Woodlot Parcels
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In New York and most of the Eastern states, the greatest proportion of woodland owners have relatively small parcels. A “small” parcel size is not defined, but often considered to be less than 10 acres, or less than 50 acres. The USDA National Woodland Owner Survey (NWOS) offers a feature to make tables and charts about owner attributes and…
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Focusing on What’s Important at North Country Creamery
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Ashlee Kleinhammer became involved with Clover Mead Farm in 2012, when she approached its then owner, Sam Hendren, about buying the business. In 2013, a third-party foundation purchased the farm from Sam and established a 5-year lease-purchase agreement for Kleinhammer, who recently closed on the property. In reflection, Ashlee points out that Sam set-up both…
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Nuts for Nuts: Seeding a Nut Industry in the Northeast
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In the Spring of 2017, 35 people gathered at Back the Lane Farm in Stephentown, New York, for a workshop with Mark Shepard, author of Restoration Agriculture, to witness the design and implementation of a permaculture inspired chestnut and hazelnut orchard. As the founder of New Forest Farm in Viola, Wisconsin — a commercial scale, perennial agricultural ecosystem that mimics the native…
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Quality of Winter Forage for Grass-fed Sheep
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Feeding hay in the winter is in many parts a reality in the Northeast. You will hear often these days that the best way to deal with hay in a grass-fed operation is to rid yourself of hay feeding and graze stockpiled forage instead. In my view it is true that extending the grazing season is a good and desirable goal…
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The Power of Quitting
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Farming is family. Rarely have I encountered a group of people who are more motivated, dedicated, innovative and tenacious as farmers. Whether you are tending apples in Orange County or herding sheep in Oregon, we as farmers hold these truths to be self-evident that all farmers will work hard, be good stewards to the…
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An Indigenous Corn Makes a Comeback
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Inside an antique farmhouse at the Ganondagan State Historic Site just east of Rochester, New York, a stainless steel coffee roaster hums as it parches Iroquois White Corn with heat, increasing its digestibility. Once the process is complete, after about 20 minutes, Iroquois Corn Project volunteers and staff will use a stone grinder to create corn…
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Six Key Principles for a Successful Silvopasture
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Within the practice of agroforestry, or mixing trees with agricultural production, the concept of silvopasture has some of the broadest appeal. Many farms already work with livestock, and making good use of forested land for multiple yields is highly beneficial to the farmer. Whether you choose to graze sheep in a Christmas tree farm, move cows…
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Operation Mountain Grown: Veterans Growing Food, Jobs and Futures in Coal Country
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For a remote, mountainous area in West Virginia, McDowell County has gotten a lot of attention lately. The late celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain filmed a segment of his television show there, and West Virginia native Elaine McMillion Sheldon, filmed her Peabody Award winning documentary “Hollow” there (her recent documentary short “Heroin(e),” also based in West…
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