Bought an old tractor that hasn't been started in 10 years and we try to get her back running again.
A leaky injector, a runaway diesel, and an engine saved by smothering the air intake with a can of brake fluid. Oh an just a bull trying to mount a donkey. So a totally boring video.
We’re used to thinking of escalating rents as an urban problem, something suffered mostly by the citizens of booming cities. So when city people look out over a farm—whether they see corn stalks, or long rows of fruit bushes, or cattle herds roving across wild grasses—the price of real estate is probably the last thing that’s going to come to mind. But the soil under farmers’ feet has become much more valuable in the past decade. While urban commercial real estate has skyrocketed in places like New York, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C., powerful investors have also sought to turn a profit by investing in the most valuable rural real estate: farmland. It’s a trend that’s driving up costs up for the people who grow our food, and—slowly—it’s started to change the economics of American agriculture.
Fecal samples from the subjects showed the children raised on a farm had a much healthier, more diverse gut microbiome than urban dwelling ones. The urban samples were found to dominantly have Atinobacteria and Bacteroidetes phyla, whereas the Amish ones were primarily Firmicutes. The differences in these two biomes could potentially mean development of stronger, more robust and healthy immune systems, especially concerning the respiratory tract.
Researchers credit much of these findings to livestock exposure and living in an overall less sanitary environment. This is in line with other studies from multiple countries suggesting the same thing — babies and children living in rural, not-too-sanitized environments tend to have more vigorous immune systems. Studies have also shown a link between rural environments with a decrease in asthma and allergies among residents because of this.
This information is certainly intriguing and quite relevant to urbanites and rural citizens. But the study didn’t stop there — researchers went a step further to test their findings. This was conducted using piglets as a model for humans.
Forget the days of perfectly white shiplap walls. They sailed years ago when dusting became less of a priority compared to caring for the family, land, and stock. As farmers, we aren’t home much; maybe to sleep, catch up on the news, or change clothes, so a change in the weather may not justify you decorating for fall, but what you [accidentally] drag in the house may say otherwise.
The term “farmhouse” is being used in a more broader term than ever. Known for its white siding, wrap-around porch and simplicity, it seems as though we have all been sitting on a retail goldmine in the interior/exterior decorating world.
We weren’t aware that dirty boots piled up with oil-stained Wranglers, and smelly shirts were a sign of a well-put-together home. We weren’t aware that recently born animals brought in from the cold laying by the fireplace still covered in less-than-pleasant afterbirth were the style. We weren’t aware that hay and grain strew out among the house gave us charm. All we know is our way of life.
Consider the goat. Known for its wide-set eyes and head-butting tendencies, it’s a hard-working, low-maintenance, plant-eating, fertilizing machine. So when a property owner is looking to clear large or unruly swaths of land without costly labor, potentially harmful chemicals, and outside environmental impact, they may consider goatscaping, a method that, while not so new, is growing more popular by the day.
Using a herd of goats to clear a property through browsing, foraging, and fertilizing is a centuries-old tradition. Goatscaping takes advantage of the herd’s most natural talents: eating nearly anything and everything in its path. For those concerned about the risk of toxins seeping into the ground from chemical weed killers, as well as accessing steep, narrow, or rough terrain that modern machinery cannot handle, the agile and hardy goat may be a top-choice solution.
Additionally, goatscaping isn’t a natural fix for just weeds and overgrown brush. Dangerous plants like poison ivy, poison sumac, and invasive species like kudzu, which grow rapidly and can smother native plants, are no match for a goat’s appetite.
Agricultural producers reported they were not able to plant crops on roughly 19.4 million acres in 2019, according to a new reportreleased by the USDA. This marks the most prevented plant acres reported since USDA’s Farm Service Agency began releasing the report in 2007 and 17.49 million acres more than reported at this time last year.
Of those prevented plant acres, more than 73 percent were in 12 Midwestern states, where heavy rainfall and flooding this year has prevented many producers from planting mostly corn, soybeans and wheat.
About 75% to 80% of grass-fed beef sold in the U.S. is grown abroad, from Australia, New Zealand and parts of South America, according to a 2017 report from the Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture. Those countries have the advantage of "vast expanses of grassland, low-input beef that is not finished to a high level, and is very inexpensive," says Rowntree — even with the cost of shipping it halfway around the world. Most of what comes from Australia is ground beef, not steaks, because the end result of their finishing process tends to be tough.
Many U.S. customers who want to support local food are likely unaware of the foreign origin of most grass-fed beef. By law, if meat is "processed," or passes through a USDA-inspected plant (a requirement for all imported beef), it can be labeled as a product of the U.S.
