The Chicken and the Egg

...ntails more risk (mainly from predators such as hawks and loose dogs) than confining them to a cage. It’s definitely easier and more economical for commercial producers to confine chickens. But consider the consequences of the economic and quality race to the bottom of factory farming’s economy of scale–an abundance of cheap, tasteless and nutritionally deficient eggs that like the endless flood of shipping containers full of plastic crap from Chi...

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Modern Farmer Magazine

...I haven’t seen a print copy of this magazine, but they sure have a great blog going. The blog has an interesting article on citrus greening as well as evidence that modern farmer’s writers have a sense of humor. And it’s nice to see farming connected with good graphic design....

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Extension Service Webinars on Organic Agriculture

...just discovered a treasure trove of Extension Service webinars on organic farming practices that you can watch here: http://www.extension.org/pages/25242/webinars-by-eorganic. You can watch archived sessions or sign up to participate live. While the webinars are aimed at small farmers, there’s a lot that gardeners can learn. Having co-founded a bread baking club, the Los Angeles Bread Bakers, I was particularly excited to watch the webinar on anc...

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What To Do With Old Vegetable Seeds

...to see what comes up. Fukuoka has some tips in his book The Natural Way of Farming for creating a semi-wild vegetable garden: Include nitrogen fixers (in my case some clover seeds) Use daikon and other radishes to break up hard soil Sow before weeds emerge Scott Kleinrock has used the same strategy at the Huntington Gardens. Here’s what his semi-wild vegetable garden, growing in the understory of some small fruit trees, looked like in January of t...

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Saturday Tweets: Bike Rants, Super Monster Wolf and Marginalia

...enForkTV) March 4, 2018 BBC News – ‘Super Monster Wolf’ a success in Japan farming trials https://t.co/QjOF7Wkwj7 — Root Simple (@rootsimple) March 8, 2018 Why Manhattan Beach is forcing this beekeeper — and her hives — out of town https://t.co/dS8Amp7E6p — Root Simple (@rootsimple) March 7, 2018 Of Mice and Men [Hieronymus Bosch, Garden of Earthly Delights] pic.twitter.com/nFHhZhoqu3 — Damien Kempf (@DamienKempf) March 5, 2018 The Beast of the Ap...

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