What the Squash Field Wouldn’t Say
The spaghetti squash rotted on the vine. A birthing-class checklist for a fussy baby turned out to be the same list I run on a failing field.
She Picked Up the Worm
A teenager screamed at an earthworm. The next session she held one out in her hand. A Roots Rising story from Red Shirt Farm in Lanesborough, MA.
It’s not the cow, it’s the how
What pasture-raised beef costs and why, as the White House works to make hamburger cheaper. From a regenerative farm in Lanesborough, MA.
Racing the Daylight
We pulled the tomatoes out of a greenhouse and put the winter greens in behind them. Here’s why, and what’s next.
Seven Pigs, Two Acres, and One Cottonwood Tree
Seven piglets, a two-acre wagon wheel of pasture, and the one tree that anchors it. What a pig gets here that most never do.
When the Strait Closes, the Grocery Store Feels It
Fertilizer is made from natural gas, so a shipping crisis half a world away reaches the grocery bill. There is another way to feed a crop.
The Good Life of a Pig
Today is the pigs’ last day. They came as 25-pound piglets in May and weigh about 250 now. How they lived, and why we do it this way.
The Farm Never Sleeps
People ask when we close for the season. We don’t. How a buried heat battery and a blanket of row cover keep spinach growing in January.
This Climate Week, Look Closer to Home
A flash flood in the chicken house, three dry months, then two inches of rain in a day. What a changing climate looks like on a Berkshire farm.
What Rain Can’t Wash Away
An older farmer told me the rain washes the spray off. What a tidy field doesn’t show, and four ways to get weeds out of a home garden without a jug.