We bought our new (used) pasteurizer last fall, never thinking that it didn’t come with a manual. After weeks of internet searches, emails, and phone calls, we finally found someone who knows how it works. It turns out the hot water (yes, thankfully it’s designed for hot water, not steam) is delivered under pressure, sprays [...]
Posts under ‘Farming’
Farming (and shopping) as environmental indicator
(Image source) “[F]armers in 1941 wanted high-value grains like wheat and corn that they could sell off the farm, [but] they didn’t yet have the mined and manufactured fertilizers needed to get high yields from those crops. Instead, they colected nutrients from large areas of land using low-value crops like grass and alfalfa, fed them [...]
Absentee Farmers in Chile
Another glimpse into the past, this time to the fundos of Chile in 1949. “Almost all of Chile’s arable land is in single great land holdings of 5,000 to 50,000 acres, in vivid contrast to the small farms of North America where the owner and his family do most of the work.” True perhaps [...]
The Chicken of Today
Made in 1948, this film discusses the post-war program to develop “The Chicken of Tomorrow”– the chickens we buy in stores today. I doubt they realized at the time that the chicken industry would be completely changed, based on mono-crops raised in confined spaces. Already, the methods displayed in the film show chickens confined, unable to [...]
Solar Dairying
The United Nations FAO offers this analysis of solar-powered dairy projects. Their conclusion: It’s feasible, but not cheap. Note that, in 1981 dollars, a cheese facility of the size we’re building would cost over $150,000. That’s over $355,000 in 2008 dollars. Using innovation, used equipment, comparison shopping, and just plain Yankee frugality, we’re putting ours [...]
Rural electrification
Made in 1951, this short film produced by the Farm Journal reminds us how different agriculture was just 50 years ago. It shows the bias of its time: that electricity would solve all our problems when in fact gas is much more efficient for heating. Bigger was presumed to be better. And I’m amazed at [...]
Farm Blessings
(Cindy47452 photo.) (Robert Bloomfield, Good Tidings, or News from the Farm, 1804.)
How to grow an English herb garden
Another resource from Google Books: A Garden of Herbs: Being A Practical Handbook To The Making Of An Old English Herb Garden Together With Numerous Receipts From Contemporary Authorities. By Eleanour Sinclair Rohde (1920). This fascinating book discusses the hows and whys of creating an intricately designed herb garden of the traditional English style. It [...]
Buying Milk Isn’t Easy
As part of our expansion, we want to buy milk from a local dairy farm. That’s not as easy as it sounds. Almost all the farmers in this area contract with the local dairy co-op, and their contract says they can’t sell to anyone else. So even though they’re losing money because the wholesale milk [...]
Chard: Last Vegetable Standing
Several weeks after our first frost, with many nights dipping into the low teens, only the hardiest of vegetables are still standing. In our garden, that means chard, our last surviving crop. We planted five-color chard for the second year this year and found it not only tasty, but sturdy as well. We like it [...]
