Gene Logsdon's Blog, page 19

Corn Growing Everywhere

From GENE LOGSDON As you can see from the photo, a blade of corn is growing in my old pickup truck. Over the years, a hole wore into the bed, enough for a kernel to lodge in, along with a bit of the manure I’d been hauling. When I left the truck out in the […]

Organic GMOs?

From GENE LOGSDON A very challenging disease is occurring in the plant world that is making the debate over genetically modified organisms also very challenging. A bacterium that infects orange trees prevents the fruit from ripening properly and eventually can kill the tree. It is fittingly called “greening disease.” It is spread by winged insects, […]

Still Negative About No-Till

From GENE LOGSDON I surely wish our agricultural salvation was being assured with what is called no-till farming, like the experts promise. But I’m not yet convinced. For me to doubt the efficacy of modern farming methods right now requires an amazing blindness because around me there arises high into the sky the most magnificent […]

Backlash On Backyard Chickens

​ From GENE LOGSDON Anyone who studies cultural history should have seen this coming. The popularity of keeping chickens in city or village backyards, which my grandmother was doing almost a hundred years ago, has brought with it a problem in some places that my grandmother never had to worry about. The New Age farmers […]

Defining Freshness

From GENE LOGSDON In the world of food, no word is used and abused more than the adjective ‘fresh.’ Food purveyors want us to believe everything is fresh, including food “fresh” from the can or bottle. The only thing not extolled as fresh is wine. Old wine is better which always puzzles me because I […]

The Virtues of Virgin Soil

From GENE LOGSDON My wife’s mother followed an annual ritual of going to the woods and bringing back a bushel of dirt to use for potting soil. Carol, as a little girl, went with her to help carry the heavy basket back. Others tell me of similar memories, the woods soil being used not just […]

Humble Beginnings Humbug

From GENE LOGSDON Nothing annoys me like news stories and biographies that refer to the “humble beginnings” of famous people who grew up on the farm. This kind of talk is meant to sound faintly praiseworthy, intimating that only by superhuman effort could a person pull himself or herself out of the clodhopper and hick […]

Uprooting Independent Garden Farmers

From GENE LOGSDON Millions, yes millions, of Chinese rural people (by definition, small scale farmers) are being uprooted from their land and moved to high-rise apartments. The smallholders are being paid to move and supposedly provision is being made to supply them with jobs and security in future years but when I see pictures of […]

Too Much Food?

From GENE LOGSDON We talked a couple of weeks ago about how civilizations collapse when agriculture can’t produce enough food to keep up with population growth. There might be another way that collapse could occur even with population decline. This is just mind-stretching now— don’t take me too seriously. A very interesting news report from […]

Hay Doodles

From GENE LOGSDON I did a pasture walk, as it is now called, at Stratford Ecological Center near Delaware, Ohio, a couple of weeks ago.  Farmers and people thinking about becoming farmers go on pasture walks to learn more about how to raise milk, meat, and eggs by grazing their farm animals rather than penning […]