I looked up and saw smoke rising from a field far upstream. I stopped in wonder. It can’t be smoke, I thought, because it’s brown. Then I realized it was a giant cloud of windblown soil reaching over a hundred feet into the air. Then I saw the tractor. The...
Note: This was written by a real person . . . me. There are no popups, no ads, no AI. All photos were taken by me. In January, Jeanne and I traveled to Portugal and visited three of its many wine regions: the Douro, the Alentejo, and the Algarve. The...
Our farm in Virginia’s legendary Shenandoah Valley affects the waters of America’s largest estuary over three-hundred miles away—the Chesapeake Bay. How we manage our land profoundly and inextricably affects groundwater and surface water. In other words, our turf affects what’s in the surf. Surf and Turf It was a special...
A farm in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia was going to be the storage site for millions of gallons of industrial food waste and other sludges until the community rose up to fight the project. Industrial food residuals, poultry slaughter rendering residuals, and bio-solids from other counties and perhaps other...
This is a sifting of writings and ruminations for the year 2017:
Note: The News Leader of Staunton, Virginia published an op-ed version of this piece on 8/15/2017. It can be found here. Mayhem of Construction Dominion’s Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP), if allowed to be built, will be the largest disturbance of land and water in the Commonwealth of Virginia since the...
While we often hear of new technology to address climate change, it is important to remember that farmers have been keeping carbon out of the atmosphere for countless generations. In what is sometimes called “carbon farming,” carbon dioxide is captured by plants and stored in the soil.
The downstream and upstream pictures in this post were published by the Bay Journal in William Funk’s article “Virginia Faulted for Handling of Cattle Pollution in Shenandoah“. Cattle Destroy Streams and the Aquatic Ecosystem. Livestock that have access to streams and rivers pollute the water with their manure and urine....
Shandong Tranlin, a Chinese company, wants to buy crop residues to make paper products. Farmers may be selling the most important ingredient for soil health to Shandong Tranlin.
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