The maize of peace
By avocation, I am an historian with a strong interest in global geopolitics, so it feels odd to be a subsistence farmer. I spend much of my time just meeting my daily needs, while hearing about wars in Ukraine, Gaza and elsewhere. Does my life ignore others’ pain? Could I do more? I constantly seek…
Consider the roots
Over the past two months, our household has spent a lot of time preparing root crops for storage: digging, trimming the tops and packing them in boxes of dry leaves to go in the cellar. As we’ve worked with the autumnal flood of garlic, onions, potatoes, beets, kohlrabi, turnips, rutabagas, winter radishes, carrots, parsnips, leeks…
A cycle of practical love
My memories of high school are largely a featureless blur—I did graduate 40 years ago—but one incident that stands out in detail is a lecture in my vocational agriculture class. Mr. Upp drew an illustration of nutrient cycling on the chalkboard, complete with stick-figure cows. His point was that the talk of organic agriculture relying…
