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HOMESTEAD TSUNAMI

The Lunatic Farmer

In 2020, seed companies sold out. We’ll offer havens of protection and nourishment to lead our culture into stable families, fertile soil, nourishing food, working faith, and overall health. They don’t watch TV all evening; they can tomatoes and chase fireflies in the meadow. Canning lid inventories vanished.

Ruralism 103
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Changing How We Farm Might Protect Wild Mammals—and Fight Climate Change

Civil Eats

They disperse seeds, pollinate, and transfer nutrients across landscapes, supporting healthy plant populations, and they alter their environments in ways that enhance biodiversity. Deer, for example, help cycle nutrients and fertilize soil. In addition to every species’ inherent value, mammals are vital in the natural order.

Farming 95
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Can Seaweed Save American Shellfish?

Civil Eats

She points out that most of the shellfish she harvests these days have been seeded manually by the town of Southampton and local universities, “almost like a science project,” she says. Rich in minerals, kelp grows quickly and doesn’t require fertilizer. Now, she says, “it takes us a while to even get a couple of dozen clams.

Farming 101
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How Crop Insurance Prevents Some Farmers From Adapting to Climate Change

Civil Eats

He planted wheat and other grains directly into the meadows and relied solely on rainfall for much of his acreage. Farmers can be penalized for under-fertilizing, under-watering, keeping a cover crop in the ground for too long, and not growing in distinct rows, according to interviews with farmers and insurance experts.

Crop 116
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Measuring and valuing: Nature

Sustainable Food Trust

At the same time, productive land as well as field margins and natural areas can be of great value to nature – a traditionally managed hay meadow or unsprayed crop can harbour and support a range of biodiversity and facilitate the movement of species through the landscape. Or is it too little? At what level do we move from good to bad?

Farming 52
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Fifty years of nurturing nature

Sustainable Food Trust

We reseed with herbal leys in our arable rotation, which is a seven-year rotation moving around about half of our fields: combinable cereals for two years, then a year of oats/peas/barley cut as an arable silage in July and undersown with an herbal ley, which will be fertility building for the next five to six years.

Farming 52