It’s April, folks! That magical time of year devoted almost entirely to getting your shit together. For starters, it’s tax day today, the cornerstone of April togetherness. April is also for spring cleaning, to which I’ve devoted myself for these two weeks at my parents’ house. On the farm, April brings hours and hours in the greenhouse hunched over seed trays, and in the northern climes, a never-ending game of cat and mouse with the weather (case in point: yesterday’s snow showers). Anyways, as we all prepare for the real coming of spring, and gear up for the start of the farming season, I’d like to do a quick year in review here on the blog. Leaving aside the weekly “Farm Week” posts, here’s a look back at some of the things I’ve blabbed on about over the past year:
Farm-related musings:
- A reflection on being a planner
- A long reflection on young farmers dealing with climate change and a uncertain future
- A rumination on Joel Salatin and other “prophet-farmers”
- Holistic Financial Planning, the online course through Cornell Cooperative Extension
Food-related musings:
- An appreciation of the well-tended cheese counter
- An appreciation of MFK Fisher, followed by some quick tips on thrifty delicious cooking
- A dispatch from Ann Arbor, and a rumination on waitressing in the age of the foodie
Books I read, then wrote about:
- Thoughts on 1951’s A Practical Guide for the Beginning Farmer
- Kelly Klober’s Dirt Hog
- Mark Shepard’s Restoration Agriculture
- Jonathan Safran Foer’s Eating Animals
- Wendell Berry’s The Unsettling of America
Things other people wrote and I liked:
- Two beautifully written nuggets from real writers
- A long quote from Wendell Berry on what constitutes a healthy farm
Random things I wrote:
- A dramatic rendering of conversations with Argentine family about farming
- A special Farm Week post, consisting of a poem inspired by the soggy season
Conferences I went to:
- A dispatch from the 2014 MOSES New Farmers Summit
- A recap of the 2013 National Young Farmers Conference
- The 2013 MOSES conference and the genesis of the website
Other fun things I did:
- An exciting weekend with a country fair and the most delicious pork I’ve ever dug out of the ground
- A captioned slideshow from the Greenhorns solstice mixer up in Keeseville, NY
