husbandry
sastyk | February 6, 2013A lot of readers asked me to comment on Chrysler's "God Made a Farmer" ad, but I've been reluctant to do so. Sure, farmers work their butts off, and it is one of the hardest jobs in the world, but I'm not all that excited to see it being used to sell cars. On the other hand, I was pleased to see Isaac Cubillos' tribute to Latino farmers, one more step in the hard and necessary work of us recognizing the reality that those in America who till, plant, tend, nurture and harvest aren't "laborers" or "illegals" but farmers, and that farming is not the ownership of land by giant agribusiness, but…
sastyk | August 9, 2010Wendell Berry has an essay in which he argues that the greatest single evidence for the merits of British culture is that they developed sixty-five breeds of sheep:
What does it mean that an island not much bigger than Kansas or more than twice the size of Kentucky should have developed sixty or so breeds of sheep? It means that many thousands of farmers were paying the most discriminating attention, not only to their sheep, but also to the nature of their local landscapes and economies, for a long time. They were responding intelligently to the requirement of local adaptation. The result…
sastyk | February 11, 2010
You'd be surprised at how warm our barn is on winter nights. A few nights ago, the thermometer read -10 as I headed out the door, and the wind was howling, but inside the barn it was below freezing, but surprisingly tolerable. Close down a comparatively small space, insulate the floors with dry bedding and fill it with warm life, and the combined body heats make it surprisingly pleasant.
Up in the rafters, some of the chickens and the turkeys are nested for the night, and they snuggle together. In the rest of the barn, they also nest in a heap. The goats snuggle together for warmth,…