Help Save the Hillside Project at JMU: America’s Obsession With Manicured Lawns
Scroll down to see the pictures of James Madison University’s “Hillside Project.” The native prairie is now in full bloom. You can see it from I-81. Some think it looks terrible and want it put back in manicured lawn. Help save this wonderful outdoor classroom by posting your comment...
Earth Day and the 50th Anniversary of Silent Spring
Rachel Carson…she’s one of my heroes. This year for Earth Day (April 22, 2012) it is fitting to honor the 50th anniversary of Rachael Carson’s book, Silent Spring.
Why Don’t Farmers Just Do It?
Why don’t farmers just do it? I mean fence their cattle out of the streams. If farmers would do this one practice, at least in the Shenandoah River watershed, agriculture would probably be finished with its part of the Chesapeake Bay TMDL. Excluding livestock from streams is possibly the single...
Baled Corn Stalks: Symbol of Agricultural Waste and Poverty
I drove onto a farm in Northern Virginia this week and noticed a row of baled up corn stalks. That’s a red flag for me…I have learned over the past 30 some years as a conservationist that when I am on a farm and see rolled up – baled, corn...
“T” Stands For Tolerance
There has been a lot of talk about “T” these days because of the Chesapeake Bay TMDL. I hate jargon so here’s a quickie on these two terms. The TMDL is the agreed-upon pollution diet for the Bay; it stands for Total Maximum Daily Load. It’s the maximum amount of...
Bare Ground in Dayton
Yesterday I was called out on a job in the Dayton area of Rockingham County, Virginia. This area is intensively farmed with livestock and crops. I was totally amazed at two things: the amount of bare ground and the number of fields farmed up and down the slope of the...
Our Pot of Gold…Is Our Water
If a one-gallon jug filled with water represented all the water in the world the amount of available freshwater would equal just over a tablespoon – less than one half of one percent of the total. The rest is salt water or unavailable such as the freshwater frozen in the...
Cover Crops a Must
Here in the Bay states and across the temperate zone of the world farmers are busy planting cover crops on fields that were used to produce their summer crops such as corn. The purpose of a cover crop is to “cover” or protect the land during the winter so that...
Owning Land Should Come With Responsibility.
Yesterday I went to a farm in Northwest Augusta County to talk to the manager of a farm about fencing his cattle out of the most polluted river in the county – Middle River. The farmer was very receptive and expressed a need to fence them out not only to...
