Why organic?

I’ve been learning Organic growing practices on my farms these last two seasons.  I thought I should go into Organic a little bit and explain why I think  it’s important.  Many people I talk to seem to have a poor opinion of organic or don’t understand why one would want to use organic practices.  I [...]

A series of unfortunate events

Hey there blog world, it’s been a while since I wrote.  I had a wild few weeks and I needed time to let it all sink in before posting, as it turns out.  Let me begin by sharing what I had started writing on October 8th. I don’t even want to write this post.  But in fairness [...]

The wisdom of Wendell and a struggle toward sustainable eating

I found myself on a four hour plane ride recently, feeling kind of down in the dumps about some things.  Seeking solace, I remembered that I had Wendell Berry’s The Unsettling of America: On Culture and Agriculture in my backpack.  I opened it up at random, and read what Wendell had to say to me. “Until [...]

Eat good meat: An anti-vegetarian argument.

  Vegetarianism and then veganism have been increasing trends in our culture in the past few decades.  I recently heard an opinion that we are now entering a “post-vegetarian” culture where eating meat is now cool again, as long as it’s “sustainable” and “grass-fed” and (etc, other buzzwords).  I believe this is true, and I [...]

Food preservation: Reviving a lost art (Part 1 of 2)

The following magazine clipping hung on the door of our kitchen cabinet at the apprentice house all season. The caption reads, “In 1939, Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal administration assigned photographer Dorothea Lange to travel around Oregon documenting agricultural communities at the height of the Great Depression.   Here we see Mrs. Botner of Nyssa Heights in [...]

A city season

I’m on the Seattle light-rail train, rumbling through the industrial area south of the city on my way to the airport. There is snow on the ground and more falling from the sky. I’ve been in Seattle for the past week, catching up with friends and taking care of errands in between moving off the [...]

Thoughts on being done

So, October is over and the end of the season has come. It’s been a good fall as it was a good summer and a good spring. Looking back over the whole seven months, it’s one of those things where somehow all at the same time it feels like it’s been forever and it has [...]

A visit to StartNow Gardens.

Bremerton, WA. The house next door: Jean and Glenn’s house: Betsey took us on an awesome field trip a couple weeks ago, to visit StartNow Gardens in Bremerton.  This is an urban farm built since 2003 by an amazing couple named Jean and Glenn.  They have taken two city lots (they own two houses next [...]

Home

Monday, May 24, 2010 – there I was on the ferry to Bainbridge after a weekend in Michigan… Thinking, thinking, thinking. People keep asking me, and I keep asking myself, what are you going to do after this summer, Becky? Certainly that decision doesn’t have to be made for a few months yet. But right [...]

Trip to the Small Farmers Journal Auction

Our second week on the job, and we get to take a vacation! We all headed down to Madras, OR for four days to attend an event I would have never known existed: the Small Farmers Journal Horsedrawn Auction and Swap. Betsey gets sooo excited about this event! It’s a special thing she does every [...]