The American way of eating has become the elephant in the room in the debate over health care. The president has made a few notable allusions to it, and, by planting her vegetable garden on the South Lawn, Michelle Obama has tried to focus our attention on it. Just last month, Mr. Obama talked about [...]
Every once in awhile, farmers go to town. Saturday, it was both literally and figuratively for us. The literal town was San Francisco for the premier of the new film, Food Inc. And figuratively, we joined a whole theater of people "going to town" about the food crisis.What food crisis, you ask? I'm not surprised, [...]
Where have I been, where have I been?Planting, of course! Those 6 1/2 acres don't plant themselves you know. (Actually, they do - with weeds. But that's another story.)So what are we planting this year? All the usual suspects - then some very unusual ones. I love experimenting with new things to see if a) [...]
Might seem like an easy thing . . . gliding past tents and tables laden with the fresh bounty of local farms, straw hat at a jaunty angle, hemp basket in hand, gathering bundles of greens, handfuls of root veggies, an orange or apple or two. And of course that bouquet of sunflowers or lavender [...]
The title of one of my favorite books on farming is The Soul of the Soil. I first read it during a month I spent in the rainforest in Ecuador. I wanted to understand why you can't grow vegetables in the rainforest's soil, which is a foot or more deep in what we would call [...]
What's a nice girl like me doing in the blogosphere?Well, seems a few people have forgotten that food comes from dirt. And I grow dirt. In other words, I'm a farmer. But it wasn't always so. I used to be a regular kinda person, living in the burbs, working long hours, eating out a lot, [...]