Author
When is ‘local’ produce really local?
I was in the grocery store in Oskaloosa, Iowa, this past week and saw “local” apples on sale from Sparta, Michigan. “Local” was from 480 miles away, a 7 hour and 30-minute drive from said store, on land east and north of Chicago. This, my friends, is not local. Especially because there are local apples […]
Goats are bullies. Can’t we be better?
The goats are mean. Not to us, and not even to the dog (although I feel certain they would kick her ass if they felt they needed to). But to each other, especially to the weakest in the bunch. Currently, the lowest goat on the totem pole is Mabel, or sometimes we lovingly refer to […]
Farm life teaches lessons I didn’t want to learn
I started writing this post from the comfort of a coffee shop, my mug steaming over with warming liquid, the fancy acai bowl with peanut butter I ordered filling my belly. It’s a scene I was once familiar with as a city dweller and one I gravitate to when I want to write. Coffee shops […]
Talking trash: We don’t have to treat our farms like landfills
Here’s something I think about all the time while working on our farm: trash. Not “trash” as in how much manure is generated by animals (there is a lot, but we move our cattle and goats many times a week and they are on pasture 365 days a year, so there is no one spot […]
Who decides how your meat is grown?
Way back when in 2018, in that quaint time before the world seemed to get oh-so-much-more complicated, I lived in California. I was there for 12 years, which meant more than six election cycles In California, a state where voting is no joke. It is serious work to head to the polls, not only because […]