AGRICULTURE

I used to be a regular reader of the CDC’S Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, back in the early AIDS epidemic years. Every seven days, a cold, clinical gut punch which at that time almost always confirmed your worst fears... Read More ›

Writers tend to return to a few themes repeatedly . Maybe it’s because preoccupation with an idea is what drives someone to write, or maybe each person just has room for a few big concepts, the prism through which they... Read More ›

This will be a brief bulletin, as befits the life of its subject , the young doe who died next to the driveway yesterday. Death happens on the farm with some regularity, whether planned or not, and I am therefore... Read More ›

It didn’t take long yesterday, after I closed the north door and locked the sheep in, for the barn to get a cozy, comfortable feeling. This is not, generally, the feeling you strive for in a barn on the eve... Read More ›

For the last 15 months we’ve all learned much more science than most of us ever wanted to know – from microbiology (messenger RNA) to epidemiology (herd immunity) to aerodynamics (how far does your spit fly when you chat at... Read More ›

It’s the little things that get you. The pebble in your shoe. The thorn under your fingernail. The sentence in that document you missed on first reading that changes the meaning of everything. On those nights when I awake and... Read More ›

The prematurely warm, dry spring we’ve enjoyed, worrisome to farmers and gardeners as much of New York state has teetered on the edge of draught, has had one spectacular positive effect. The slow succession of bloom we see in most... Read More ›

We all have habitual thought patterns that we use to make sense of the chaos of the life around us. One of mine, which started as soon as I started cohabiting with farm animals, is a tendency to perceive universal... Read More ›

I am pleased to announce that Turkana Farms has officially entered a new phase. Today we become the Turkana Farms Livestock Education and Protection Fund (TFLEPF). Now that the legalities have been finalized, I can explain how we evolved to... Read More ›

This weekend many people will, at various truncated Zoom seders and gatherings diminished to COVID safe numbers, tell the story of the Exodus of the Hebrews from Egypt. The emphasis of the Passover story as we tell it at the... Read More ›

It has been a tough couple of weeks. Four days of post-vaccination malaise, followed by a routine maintenance visit for my car that became a $1600 bill, in turn followed by juggling writing of a trial brief in my law... Read More ›

With my legs still sore from the slopes and my arm throbbing after my second COVID vaccination shot, my friend Steve looked me in the eye and demanded we commit a murder: “We have to kill Vernon!” I had just... Read More ›

Last Spring folks reacted very strongly to my description of the delivery of newly hatched chicks by the U.S. Postal Service. Many were surprised to hear that not only chicks but even considerably larger animals like horses were sent in... Read More ›

The news is understandably still full of stories about the January 6 insurrection at the Capitol. Investigators want to know how much was planned ahead and orchestrated by leaders, and how much resulted from spontaneous combustion of the crowd. Historians... Read More ›

The sun rose January 23, at 7:16 a.m., and set at 4:58 p.m., giving us 9 hours and 43 minutes of daylight. It’s not a dramatically different amount from the day before, or from last week, but this week I... Read More ›

I’m not sure if it’s accurate to describe the beginning of 2021 as an unsettling time. We’ve had nearly a year to adjust to the myriad ways in which COVID-19 has upended the way we live and interact with one... Read More ›

“You farm like a gay boy from the City.” These words once would have appeared in a nightmare in which I was exposed as an imitation farmer, a Marie Antoinette in a shepherd costume. But shockingly, it was me uttering... Read More ›

During a recent drive to the supermarket , I was struck by an NPR story about a contact tracer: A young mother kept apologizing to the caller for her child’s insistent crying in the background. The baby, she said, was... Read More ›

Remember that episode of I Love Lucy in which Lucy and Ethel take jobs at a chocolate factory, ultimately to be done in by their inability to keep up with wrapping the bon-bons rolling down the assembly line? Welcome to... Read More ›

I return to this bulletin after a brief break. It is the season when I feel comfortable in communicating less than weekly because there is virtually nothing being harvested in need of immediate sale. Not that that there’s nothing still... Read More ›

For most of the last twenty years, what has struck me most about the change of seasons on the farm at this time of year has been the sudden transition from cacophony to quiet. The principle cause of the transition... Read More ›

If you have any doubt about how much of our heritage derives from our pastoral, agrarian past you might think about how much of our vocabulary descends from it. This week, as we endured the agonizing wait to know who... Read More ›

For the last several days the weather forecasts have made apparent that the really significant freeze, the one where the air temperature goes way under the freezing mark and we were at risk for accumulating snow, was imminent. Just like... Read More ›

As part of my fall leek seeding project, I have tried to clear some trenches that I left fallow all season. That effort has involved removing one of the most prolific and stubborn weedy invaders on the farm, mugwort. Mugwort... Read More ›

It seems almost everyone I chat with of late is gripped by a high level of anxiety. Many friends report disrupted sleep. I have it too. I find myself wakened by dreams in which my world is disordered. People come... Read More ›