Water scarcity is a growing concern. Lack of water from long, recurring droughts is increasingly dominating the food and agriculture world. It’s driven up the cost of groceries and put a dent in ...

As she walks amongst the sea of green, yellow and orange leaves of a chestnut tree orchard, carefully collecting chestnut burrs from the trees, Sara Fitzsimmons, director of restoration for the ...

Double digging is an alternative approach, one that capitalizes on the soil’s inherent ecological processes, while making it loose enough to plant in right away. The basic premise of double digging is ...

What is graywater, exactly? Household wastewater from washing machines, bathroom sinks, showers, and bathtubs is considered “gray” because it is only lightly soiled and poses a minimal health risk. As ...

In the spring of 1987 in Tulelake, a tiny California farming town four miles from the Oregon border, a small band of scientists wearing yellow Tyvek suits and respirators paced across a field spraying ...

Oaxacan engineer Martha Jimenez Cardoso comes from a farming family. “For us, corn is like gold,” she says. Her mother still plants this ancient crop with a stick and a few kernels, the way the people ...

For much of the U.S., the phrase “winter crops” brings to mind only a few options: daikon radishes, Jerusalem artichokes, turnips, maybe some of the hardier brassicas, like cabbage or broccoli. But ...

Crickets and other insects, as you may have heard, are a vastly more sustainable form of protein than livestock. They are also an ideal protein source for urban homesteaders: unlike creatures that ...

Let’s get this out of the way: Cow tipping, at least as popularly imagined, does not exist. Drunk young men do not, on any regular basis, sneak into cow pastures and put a hard shoulder into a cow ...

Tim Smith has a story to tell, but it’s stuck way down in his throat. Typically, this fourth-generation Iowa farmer is chatty and warm, but sitting at the kitchen table with his wife, Tina, his face ...

1. A shepherd’s life is most humble (the oldest profession) From the beginning of time, shepherds have been the proverbial “ditch diggers,” the down-trodden, the disrespected. Hence, even the angels ...

There are five key rules to follow when making bourbon whiskey. First, it must be distilled in the United States, and it must be a grain mixture with at least 51 percent corn mash. There can be no ...