Gene Logsdon's Blog, page 8

Backyard Hay Too

From GENE LOGSDON Demand for new and used machinery for grain farming is down alarmingly because of the uncertainty in the corn and bean market, but haying equipment is on the upswing. The experts say this demand is because beef prices are climbing but that means to me that livestock farming needs hay more than […]

Wild About Wild Black Raspberry Pie

From GENE LOGSDON If I believed there was such a thing as an aphrodisiac, I’d put my money on Carol’s wild black raspberry pie. Something about the look and taste of those shiny little beady-eyed berries really turns me on and once baked into a pie, their seediness is not so noticeable. Being encased in […]

I Live In A FarmUNtopia

From GENE LOGSDON A great article in the May, 2015 Smithsonian magazine, “Welcome To Farmtopia” by Franz Lidz, gives yet another example of the legitimacy of the local food, backyard farm movement. I should be overjoyed since this sort of thing is what I’ve preached and predicted for 50 years. Farmtopia in this article features […]

Gene Logsdon Finalist in Book Awards

See complete list of finalists here… ~~

Farming Starts In Cities

From GENE LOGSDON Farm commentators are remarking somewhat in surprise that the new move towards local food production and backyard farming are much more in evidence in and around cities than out where the big tractors lumber over the landscape. But, as most historians and economists have attested, this has always been true. Odd as […]

Financial Discretion Equals Happy Farming

From GENE LOGSDON A most provocative article in the latest Draft Horse Journal  (full disclosure: I write for this magazine regularly) argues that an Amish farm with gross sales of $50,000 has more money to spend after necessary living expenses are paid out than a conventional farm with gross sales of $300,000 (Farming From the […]

First Strawberries

From GENE LOGSDON I was bent over a book in the office when Carol waltzed in and stuck a berry basket under my nose. I almost jumped out of my chair. I was staring at some of the nicest strawberries I’ve ever laid eyes on—  the ones in the photo. No sight is more glorious […]

Farming: A Not-For-Profit Enterprise?

From GENE LOGSDON I am just musing now, as in a-muse, not advocating and criticizing. What if the economics of money profit and loss, under capitalism, or socialism, or a monarchy or any other system, doesn’t really work for farming. Maybe growing food is supposed to be a not-for-profit enterprise, a part of our personal […]

Dead-End Work

From GENE LOGSDON In a news story from a third world country recently, the reporter referred to farm chores, butchering and street cleaning as “dead end” work. The inference was that progress involved convincing young people to go to school and avoid low-paying manual labor. Never once did the report mention that a good way […]

Soil Science Spelled It Out A Whole Century Ago

From GENE LOGSDON An organic farm marketer brought me a strange book to read and I can’t get it out of my mind. It was written by Cyril Hopkins, an agronomist at the University of Illinois in 1911. Already a century ago, science had committed the wisdom of the ages about maintaining soil fertility (Hopkins […]