Yearly Archives: 2010

I hadn’t heard of this, but Joel Salatin’s in it. It seems timely to post this here, as I recently sent my comments to the layer subcommittee of the Ohio Livestock Care Standards Board on their proposed layer standards. In a nutshell, they’ve got it set up to penalize anyone […]

A representative from OEFFA asked me to take a look at the new Ohio Livestock Care Standards Board’s proposed standards for egg layers. I’ve finally gotten around to it, just a couple weeks before the meeting and a couple days before OEFFA wants my response. Digging into it, I’m finding […]

Winter can be a dangerous time for farmers. It affords us more time than usual for thinking up harebrained schemes. It doesn’t take much at all to set off such scheming. Earlier today, I found myself reading a blog entry about European reports on the decline of the middle class […]

A formerly vegan blogger shares a (lengthy) tale of how she came to start eating meat again. The story starts with health problems she encountered, not due to “doing veganism wrong,” but simply because of the idiosyncrasies of her unique physiology. In Part 2, she gushes about how much better […]

I missed them. 🙁 I checked our pawpaw grove a week ago, and the fruits were big, but still all green and pretty hard. Yesterday, I went back to check. It was getting dark, so I couldn’t see any fruits in the trees, but I shook a tree, and one […]

Now I’ve been accused of abandoning my chickens. Friday around midday, just before the rain started, I went to our new location to tend the chickens and to unload the feed so it didn’t get wet sitting in the back of our truck. I was there maybe an hour, then […]

Given the long stretch of rainless days in the 80s and 90s, my 4-year-old son Noah and I watered the gardens last night. I like to involve the kids in any age-appropriate way I can, so that they grow up with a sense of ownership in the farm and the […]

Someone just called me asking if I could take some chicks she has as a result of a school project. There are 3 chicks, one week old, unknown breeds. One is black, one is black and gold, and one is all gold. If you’d like to take these little birds […]

Thanks to Greener Grocer’s contribution to the hens’ diet, last year’s hen run is now a jungle of volunteer tomatoes. There are a couple mystery squashes growing in there, too. I thought about moving them to one of the gardens where they could get more sun, but clearly, they’re happy […]

Last week as I was loading the tiller into the back of the truck, it fell off the ramp onto its side. The broke the carburetor. I took it in to get fixed. It was supposed to have been ready yesterday, but the repair shop received the wrong parts, so […]

Starting fresh: since I had a new batch of chickens processed last week, I took the unsold parts that have been piling up in the freezer since last summer and gave them to the Mid-Ohio Foodbank on Tuesday. It came out to 315 lbs. of backs, wings, gizzards, and legs. […]

I just came across this story about a town in Wisconsin that voted against allowing chickens. “Janesville City Council denies request for backyard chickens.” Following is a comment I left there:

I just got off the phone with a high school student who’s hatching some chicken eggs for a school project. She’s expecting three chicks and wants to find homes for them. She doesn’t know what breed(s) they are, and after my experience mixing Rhode Island Reds with Cornish-Rock crosses a […]

I wanted to share this article with you. Detroit and Flint have been the canaries in the coal mine with regard to industrial collapse and de-urbanization. I’ve been watching with interest what role urban agriculture will play. Mayda and I have talked about how cool it would be if the […]

Growing food in the city isn’t just a trendy thing to do. Our very survival depends on it. If there are to be cities in the years to come, they must start pulling more of their own weight where resource production is concerned, and food is one of the most […]