Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
“Metabolical”, a book by a medical researcher and physician, tell us that the relationship between our diet (heavy on processed foods) and chronic disease is far more profound than we’ve been told.
While the Catskills have always produced juicy burgers and classic American fare, today there are restaurants serving up everything from Korean to French to Albanian cuisines, making these rural parts an unlikely nexus for urban foodies, farm-to-table enthusiasts, diner denizens and craft beer aficionados.
What’s clear is that the Colorado River can no longer be relied upon to meet the water needs of an increasing population. If we continue asking so much of it, we have to start easing those pressures. Water reuse is imperative if the driest parts of the world continue growing without destroying the environment that relies as much on water as we do.
All Hallow’s Eve is the mid-point between the autumn equinox and the winter solstice. In many ways it marks the end of the farmers year as well as the beginning of the next.
Having other income streams than farming is not only because you can’t live on small scale farming (you can’t) but also a way to allow you to run the farm according to your ideals rather than to the dictates of the market, banks or the government. A “day job” can in that way strengthen the autonomy or at least the feeling of autonomy
There are plenty of books and websites telling you how forest gardens should work. I am more interested in how they do (and sometimes don’t) work, and in the people who are working in and with them.
It didn’t take long before I realized that the social component of being a smallholder was more important to understand their situation than various economic theories, and that the way they farmed often was quite rational if one considered their total situation and not looked at farming as an isolated commercial enterprise.
Farming is a science but it is also an art. There is no one book, one philosophy, one six-week course which can teach that.
The water from our well is fresh and invigorating to drink. It does not have the chemical taste of mains tap water nor its ‘flatness’. Also, we are fortunate that we live in a region of high ground, and the surrounding soil has not been subject to modern farming (chemical treatment) for many decades.
Vermont is proof that humans can localize food, as well as most of our other basic needs, and still live very well.
There is nowhere in the industrialised world where food is produced sustainably. The only place where that happens is the non-industrialised world where the main 2 energy inputs are forms of renewable energy – human and animal muscle power.
An appeal by the Founding Farmers of EARA to join us in our journey to farm for regeneration and advocate together to re-root Europe towards a prosperous future.
