#farming

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Tess of the D’Ubervilles. By Thomas Hardy.

You are an educated, pretty peasant girl with foolish parents and higher class suitors, unfortunately even the less evil of these seem to only consider their own relationship to the social order…yours, not so much.

3 of 5 library cats 🐈 🐈 🐈.
CW: sexual assault

@bookstodon

Book cover featuring a farm girl laying in some straw.

Beans are such a powerful food crop. Being nitrogen fixers, they do not require a soil rich in organic material like most vegetables, since they can get nitrogen from the air and enrich the soil for themselves and the plants around them. Well it is actually not them, but microorganisms that live in their roots. And nitrogen fixers are also more resistant to drought. Beans in general are anual plants, meaning that they need to be planted again every year. Not the guand beans though. Those grow big bushes and will keep producing for a few years. By the time they die, they will have produced offspring already. They can compete well with wild weeds and only require minimal care when they are being first established. They have some kind of resin in their leaves and specially in their seed pods which makes them more resistant to bugs. The leaf-cutter …

Question for gardeners: I want to create a blackberry bed that keeps the things *contained*. Am reading that digging a 2-3 foot deep trench and lining the sides with plastic or metal would keep them from taking over the way they currently are doing.

I do not like using plastic in the garden if I can avoid it.

So, was thinking galvanized steel roof panels. BUT, does anyone who actually works in agriculture or farming know if this would be safe? From what I'm reading online, leaching isn't a big deal for the raised galvanized steel beds, but would it be an issue if those steel panels are mostly in the ground?

Had a lovely visit with my cousin in his nursing home this morning, followed by a drive a bit further south to renew my fishing license, then to the feed store for 300lbs of duck and goose feed. Can't unload the car yet as it's pouring rain!

Two goats stare out of their apartments at a steady downpour.

Our next newsletter will discuss something that maybe you've been thinking about (but probably not): raising chickens in a dryland environment. What aspects of care are different? How do chickens fit into a regenerative project? What alternatives to chickens are there and what differences are there in the niche they fill?

If your land is not arid or dryland, but you are concerned about increasing temperatures and more frequent droughts, some of the care information in this post may be useful as your environment changes in the near future.

I hope to release this early this week, but don't forget to subscribe so that you don't miss it in your inbox.

And please consider subscribing at our supporter tier for fun gifts twice a year and access to additional information - this month I'll be releasing a delightful recipe for paid subscribers only. We could use your …

A classically tawny/orange chicken with a featherless neck perches in the branch of a creosote bush, posing with her head facing the right of the photo, her beak tucked up against her wing. The fluffy butt feathers of another chicken of the same color are visible down below the low branches of the bush on the ground atop some straw mulch.

Question for the and folks out here- who do you buy seeds from? Looking for new sources beyond Jelitto, Ball and Johnny's. US based, ideally flowering, herbs, cut, perennial or bedding. Small sellers are cool as long as you can give me solid experience. I work for a non-profit historic and want to add some diversity to our plant shows, greenhouses and gardens.

At its peak in the 1700s, the 25-square-mile Kōhala Field System on the northern tip of the Big Island of Hawai'i fed between 30,000 and 120,000 people. Then came the Europeans, bringing disease that decimated the Hawaiian population and destroyed the traditional knowledge of how to cultivate the 50 or 60 varieties of sugarcane and 50 types of sweet potato that once grew there. A non-profit, Ulu Mau Puanui, is now researching the system, guided by culturally centered science, with the goal of restoring that lost knowledge. Atlas Obscura's Sarah Lohman spoke to Ulu Mau Puanui's Kehaulani Marshall about the work she and her team are doing, and the question she wishes she could answer: What would the land have looked like without colonization? "We wonder, what the heck was coming up next in their plans. Because we know all ancestors plan for generations ahead,” she says.

https://flip.it/i0ggsk

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Had a lovely visit with my cousin in his nursing home this morning, then loaded up the tractor and went and mowed his lawn. Then it was off to the feed store for peanut hay for the goats. I'm tired now but it's been a productive day!

The Netherlands delays its nitrogen emissions target, defying its own judges and the EU.

The Dutch government confirmed it will push back its deadline to halve nitrogen emissions from 2030 to 2035, defying a recent court order.

With its high-density farming, the Netherlands has long been ground zero for Europe’s nitrogen crisis. The country ranks among the EU's worst for nitrogen pollution per hectare.

https://mediafaro.org/article/20250425-the-netherlands-delays-its-nitrogen-emissions-target-defying-its-own-judges-and-the-eu?mf_channel=mastodon&action=forward

Busy morning, and now nursing sore muscles. Picked up several hundred pounds of feed for the fowl, then went to a neighbor's house and shoveled up 2 yards of maple tree mulch that I ground up after last years hurricanes. I'll be using the mulch in the gardens.

Missing a hen as I put the chickens away from free ranging this afternoon. Not seen in any adjacent yard or anywhere on the property. I'll be keeping them all in their pen for a few days in case a fox is about!