Dave Perozzi

Ducks love water when it is liquid but they seem to feel betrayed when it freezes.  When moving through deep powder they use a swimming stroke to propel themselves, floating their breast out over the snow in front of them and half walking, half paddling with their feet.  They usually get disgusted with the whole thing […]

Well, I’ve gone and done it:  signed on the dotted line for a new tractor. It is a 2014 Farmall 65A (same as New Holland Workmaster 65, just different red paint instead of blue).  It is out of state at a different dealer’s lot, so it should be here in a couple of weeks. For now

The North American Meat Institute (NAMI) is a lobbyist organization representing most of the major meatpacking organizations in the United States.  Their website explains that their “history dates back to Chicago in 1906 when the Institute was created in response to the passage of the Federal Meat Inspection Act.”  These are the folks who protected the

We tend to view phrenology and the larger idea of physiognomy as quaint curiosities, worn out ancient concepts akin to geocentrism or flat-earth theories.  But evidence keeps cropping up that there might be something to it after all, at least for livestock.  The original reasoning behind physiognomy is totally insupportable, but there is a body of evidence that suggests that physical

We had the misfortune of placing one temporary fence on the north side of the bale grazing pasture in the perfect area for both snow drifts and ice accumulation.  The fence in question is picketed on 36″ plastic stakes, with polywire strung at the top clip.  The field adjacent to the fence is usually wet

Our pigs love to eat the ashes from our wood burning (after they cool a bit of course).  We don’t have any pig husbandry books from the 18th century or earlier, but wood ash and charcoal are commonly recommended in many old farming references.  Wood ash seems to have been used as a cure for

Around these here parts, the prevalent pronunciation for sumac is shoo’-mak.  We’ve also encountered that pronunciation among some Midwesterners.  A few dictionaries list shoo’-mak as an secondary pronunciation and soo’-mak as the primary, but it is curious that the sh supplanted the s locally.  The Amish around here also “shoo”, so I wondered if this was a German

This week I received an unexpected email asking if I’d be interested in “grazing herbivores, pasturing chickens, and/or growing vegetables” on a long unused 85 acre property in the next town over.  This land is about a 6 mile drive from home, 15 minutes away.  We aren’t planning on doing market gardening any time soon, so the vegetables were

If the brain really is a terrible thing to waste, then we must be terrible.  There are lots of wasted brains from our farm.  If you have the craving for a breakfast of scrambled brains, we’re sorry to say you can’t buy them from us.  If you’ve just gotta have ’em, you can get a four