Gene Logsdon's Blog, page 9

Speed Farming

From GENE LOGSDON The farm news (DTN/Progressive Farmer) reports that Finland is boasting a farm tractor that can go 80 mph on snow. How’s that for technological progress? As far as I can tell, the speed is not meant for farming— crops won’t grow on snow.  However, farm machinery companies in both Europe and the […]

“Stop Mowing and Start Growing”

From GENE LOGSDON [Today is the 7th Anniversary of The Contrary Farmer Blog!] That’s the motto and battle cry of a fairly new (2011) organization called Urban Shepherds. Its purpose is to encourage grazing sheep on�� urban and suburban vacant lots, larger lawns, and other grassy areas like school campuses and the acreages surrounding historic […]

The News Is Blind To Farming

From GENE LOGSDON Staying with relatives recently, I spied a big coffee table book on a shelf titled Britain On Country Roads published in 1991. I love pictures of farming landscapes, especially in the British Isles, so I paged through the book. There were gobs of photos of seashores, village streets, old castles, quiet roads, […]

What Truly Is Progress In Farming

From GENE LOGSDON Now that glyphosate (Roundup) doesn’t work so well, the chemical industry is using the old Agent Orange in various new herbicide admixtures. When the general public learns about this, there is going to be an uproar. But what if the only other alternative is for farms to “go back” to mechanical cultivation […]

Watching The Basketballs Float By

From GENE LOGSDON There’s always something new headed your way, especially if you live beside a river. I visited Wendell Berry recently and we had the most marvelous time just sitting on his porch watching the Kentucky River flow by. The whole state had been experiencing serious flooding at that time and the river was […]

Bravo The Bloody Local Butcher Shop

From GENE LOGSDON Our butcher retired recently and in the process of finding another, it seems clear that there’s a great opportunity opening up in local meat marketing if you can stand the work. Nobody wants to do it but most people want to enjoy its fruits. I have done my share of butchering hogs, […]

The Happiest Farmers

From GENE LOGSDON Carol and I attended the first annual Organic Farming Conference in Mt. Hope, Ohio, recently, and were struck by how happy the attending farmers appeared to be. Unlike typical agricultural meetings this spring, I heard no handwringing discussions over which kind of government insurance to apply for to keep from going broke […]

Corn Lover Delights

From GENE LOGSDON I get carried away sometimes with my misgivings about corn farming, so I have to balance that out occasionally with praise for one of my favorite foods. A reader, I think it was Ken, recently asked me to write about our experiences with cornbread and so I will, although I know many […]

Village Farming

From GENE LOGSDON A lot of attention is being given to urban farming and that is certainly good. But there is a somewhat broader view emerging under the impetus of garden farming. I call it the ascendancy of ��village farming. As far as I can find in history and archeology, as the hunting and gathering […]

Same Land, Same Crops For 2000 Years

From GENE LOGSDON I think this will blow your mind as much as it did mine. A book I am working on prompted me to wonder who all farmed my land before me. So I looked into the history. The first pioneer I can verify was a rancher, R.N. Taylor, who ran sheep and cattle […]