Mother Earth News gave me the opportunity to write the cover article for this month’s magazine topic “Chickens in Organic Pastures.” The article was all about how I manage the balance between perennial and annual plants for livestock grazing and how I use the chickens to help me plant seeds. For now the article is […]
Our Chickens in Mother Earth News Read More »
Chef Katy sent me the following note along with this recipe: The inspiration for this dish came from my thriving basil plant this past summer. Thefragrance of the basil made me think immediately of my favorite condiment, Tapenade,which is usually an olive oil-based spread but here I fold it into local grass fed butter tomelt
Recipe: Grilled Ribeye with Tapenade Butter Read More »
This week I’m excited to announce some new breakfast sausage options. Both of these recipes are ones that I’ve worked on in our home kitchen, running lots of trials and tweaking the recipes until they’re just right. Instead of using commercial sausage mixes, which usually contain suspect ingredients, I prefer to develop my own recipes
Breakfast with Wrong Direction Farm Read More »
This fall I’ve been working through my paperwork and inspections for our farm’s annual organic recertification. And the process is always unsettling. Fundamentally, I really do stand behind the foundational tenets of organic farming. The definition of organic from the USDA is: “These methods integrate cultural, biological and mechanical practices that foster cycling of resources,
Well, it took long enough. But we finally got our first killing frost along with a light snowfall. So fall is here. The conditions this year created an unusually warm October. Apparently the trees were confused by the weather, since they made a disorderly retreat from leaves to bare branches, each one seeming to turn
This week Rachel and I were herding turkeys out of their pasture onto the farm lane when we came under attack by helicopters. Or at least that’s how the turkeys would tell the story. We were working with the flock and had them all moving in the same general direction when four slow-moving, evenly-spaced sorties
Turkeys and Helicopters Read More »
Last year we started an experimental project using our chickens to help us plant crop seeds. The idea came from the observation that sometimes seeds from spilled chicken feed would germinate in the pasture a week or two after the chickens moved on to a new spot. So we’ve been broadcasting seeds as we move
Chickens Planting Crops Read More »
I was in the garage welding angle iron when a neighbor pulled up to tell me he was missing six calves. He’d gone out to check on them and, not finding them, looked across the fence to see his little red guys hanging out in the middle of my mostly black herd. Rachel had been
The title of this week’s post comes from one of the shorter works by Wallace Stegner, an author who wrote a number of books that have lodged themselves individually into my memory. Among other themes in All the Little Live Things, there’s a clash of outlooks between an embittered gardener fighting diseases, insects, gophers, and
All the Little Live Things Read More »
Turkeys are surprisingly dedicated diggers. I’ve written before about how they need to eat pebbles to maintain their digestive system, so it makes sense that they have this instinct to excavate. In dry weather, they also wallow in loose dirt after scratching up a divot to make a dust bath. A powdering of dust sifted
