The value of being greener
Boston Globe - 8/22/2011. By Kathleen Pierce – There was a time when farm life was impossible without a big, beefy truck. Carting bales of hay and hauling equipment took a burly gas-guzzler. At Otter River Farm, David Smith’s utility vehicle uses no gas at all. Zipping around his dairy in Winchendon, home to Smith’s Country Cheese, on a zero-emissions golf cart, Smith is blazing a path for greener and cleaner times in agriculture. |
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Harvesting all that the August garden has to offer
Bangor Daily News - 8/20/2011. By Reeser Manley – For this gardener August means ripe blueberries and ripening tomatoes, fresh cucumbers every day, the first basil harvest, a river of orange and yellow self-sown calendulas flowing through the vegetable garden. August is stepping gingerly over elephant-ear leaves of winter squash, broccoli seedlings growing on the porch rail, goldfinches pecking at sunflower heads, the fragrance of summersweet blossoms, oak trees with moth-eaten leaves, ripe acorns in the grass. |
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Plants, animals migrating upward as climate changes
Bangor Daily News - 8/19/2011.By Brian Vastag – Across the globe, plants and animals are creeping, crawling, slithering and winging to higher altitudes and higher latitudes as global temperatures climb. Moreover, the greater the warming in any given region, the farther its plants and animals have migrated, according to the largest analysis to date of the rapidly shifting ranges of species in Europe, North America, Chile and Malaysia. |
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Only thing consistent about Maine weather is its inconsistency
Kennebec Journal - 8/19/2011.By Denis Thoet – All farmers seem to do, besides farming, is complain about the weather. In 2009, we had 20-plus inches of rain during that June and July, and the moaning was as loud as the highway noise on Interstate 295 when the wind is right. "You can't do anything about the weather," is the typical whine. So, after the initial braying, it's time to think about what to do, then do it: Irrigate in drought and shelter your crops in stretches of wet weather. |
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