“It’s a jungle out there.” That’s what I was thinking as I prepared to cut down the vegetation between the last two rows of my vineyard. Purple Vetch was draped from one side to another. Yellow Sweet clover grew taller than my head. My feet were tangled in everything underneath. This very wet spring has… (read more)
The Grass is Greener With this very wet Spring everything looks especially green. The green color is from chlorophyll, the molecule critical to photosynthesis, which turns sunlight into plant energy, specifically sugars. Looking at the chest-high grass and purple vetch which has taken over the aisles between my rows of grape vines, I had to… (read more)
The nearly endless month of Farch is upon us. This winter feels like a little ice age. But hope springs eternal… Spring being the key word. With Spring planting and growing in mind, it is time to take advantage of our disadvantages. The ground around here is still protected by snow and ice. No growing… (read more)
Start with For the Love of Soil by Nicole Masters. It was certainly both the most inspirational and educational book I read last year. The main chapters of the book include story after story of farms that underwent almost miraculous transformations by the application of biological and sometimes chemical/mineral treatments as well as management practices. … (read more)
Since I have been writing about microbial life in the soil for a couple of years now, I thought it was high time that I bear down on it and get a digital microscope. I was very excited to find one as a gift for my birthday but have to admit that setting it up… (read more)
Farming and gardening have been key components of human life for thousands of years. They produce food but they also create a huge market for goods and services from companies aiming to farm the farmers. In taking on the production of food and maintaining the independence necessary to realize a profit, farmers often find themselves… (read more)
A while back we watched Shang-Chi, a Marvel Series blockbuster with lots of digital effects showing scenes set in Shanghai and a hidden village deep in a bamboo forest. Truthfully there was a lot of FX involved in the forest but they must have started with images of the real thing. The real thing showed… (read more)
It’s September while I’m writing this. It’s raining pine needles. After a stressful summer for most plants, you can see pine trees with lots of brown needles ready to drop. Ironically, you can also see grasses that have suddenly become green again after some heavy rain. Mother nature is preparing for winter. A good question… (read more)
In Frank Herbert’s book, Dune, giant sandworms produce a drug called “melange” (known colloquially as “the spice”), which is highly prized across the universe for its medicinal and mystical properties. (wikipedia.org) Although wildly fictional, some truths linger in that account. Melange is created when excretions of the sandworms’ larvae react with water and sunlight. At… (read more)
When I was younger, not very studious and there was no Internet, I decided to add pigs to our menagerie of goats, chickens and a donkey. We had extra milk from the goats and I could supplement the pig diet with culled potatoes from the Doukhobors in Grand Forks, British Columbia. The pigs didn’t put… (read more)
