Gene Logsdon's Blog, page 15

Sitting Your Way To Success

From GENE LOGSDON My mind lurches around uncomfortably whenever I consider the subject of farm work. I worry that, as a writer, I gloss over the reality of it and overly glorify the ideal of it. I personally prefer a life that means many hot summer days bucking hay bales into the barn over one […]

Easter Lambs

From GENE LOGSDON The black lamb in the photo is a single. The white lamb is one from a quintuplet birth, a rare event in a shepherd’s life. The guy is Brad, my brother-in-law, the shepherd involved. Note the much larger size of the single lamb which underscores the opinion of many shepherds that singles […]

Hemp Is Coming Back As A Farm Crop

From GENE LOGSDON One bit of news lately has not received much fanfare but probably should. State by state, hemp farming is becoming legal. The latest state, I think, is Ohio, which is a surprise to those who think the Buckeye State leans heavily toward the conservative side which generally takes a dim view of […]

Home Places

From GENE LOGSDON The word, home, has the most comforting sound to it for me, probably because I am a confirmed homebody after living an earlier part of my life in seventeen different places in six different states. Even then, I tried to make a home out of every place I lived. As I like […]

Human Society Is Losing Touch With Wild Nature

From GENE LOGSDON A major issue of the future will be how we resolve the conflict between people who want to protect the lives of every raccoon in Christendom and those who want to kill at least half of them. From the responses to this blog’s posts, I know that many of you are aware […]

Why Will Livestock Eat “Bad” Hay?

From GENE LOGSDON One of the mysteries of husbandry that baffles me is how cows will sometimes take a notion to eat stuff that I wouldn’t think a starving goat would touch. I don’t know how often I have observed livestock forsake good, green clover hay and start gnawing on straw bedding. My son told […]

More Evidence of Nature’s Resilience

From GENE LOGSDON I’m always amazed at how I continually gain new information from land that I have walked over for three-fourths of a century now. On the first warmish March day of this beastly cold year, I strolled out over the pasture field by the pond. The ground was still frozen hard to the very […]

A Conversation with Gene Logsdon

From Chelsea Green Author Gene Logsdon appears to be picking up steam as he rolls into his ninth decade. He has developed a prolific body of work as a writer, novelist, and journalist on topics ranging from a philosophical look at woodlands (A Sanctuary of Trees) to the higher calling of manure (Holy Shit), and his ever-popular […]

Hot Opportunities For Innovative Farmers

From GENE LOGSDON Unless you’ve seen the ad yourself, you will think I am making this up. Not only is a ten ounce bag of timothy hay selling for $4.50 for pet food as I wrote about recently, but dried lawn grass is going for three dollars an ounce for Easter basket lining. I kid […]

Wendell Berry: A Strong Voice For Local Farming and the Land…

From Yale Environment 360 For six decades, writer Wendell Berry has spoken out in defense of local agriculture, rural communities, and the importance of caring for the land. In an interview with Yale Environment 360, he talks about his Kentucky farm, his activism, and why he remains hopeful for the future. Wendell Berry wrote about and […]