Raspberry plants are abundantly productive and take only a small amount of work in the home garden. English photo Calendula is easy to grow, produces sunny bouquets and is used in medicinal salves and other skin-care products. English photo Pots of basil set on a deck are readily available for snipping. English photo By Joyce
By Roberta Bailey We have arrived at full summer. The days are long. The air is scented with hay and warm leaves. Bees buzz from flower to flower. Bumble bees roll inside squash blossoms. Tree swallows swoop and chortle, catching insects to bring back to their nests. Dragonflies gather and dance in the air, their
2017 tractor safety course students at Hall’s Implement Co. in Windham with instructors Jason Lilley (UMaine Cooperative Extension, Cumberland County) and George Hall. Photo courtesy of Jason Lilley By Ellen S. Gibson, Farm Education Specialist, Maine AgrAbility How did you learn to drive a tractor? As a woman who began farming in her 40s, I know that training
Yanna Mohan Muriel is helping plan a farmer to farmer conference in Puerto Rico. Photo courtesy of Alexandra May. A work brigade organized by Organización Boricuá for Samnyasin La Finca, the farm where Muriel was raised. Photo courtesy of Yanna Mohan Muriel. Muriel and her daughter found earthstar fungi on Finca Marisol while observing soil
The author’s third high tunnel with a fourth shown under construction. Photo by David McDaniel By David McDaniel Maine commercial farmers are addicted to plastic. Whether we farm organically or conventionally, the economics of modern farming drive our dependence on petroleum-based plastic products. We use acres of black plastic mulch to warm our cold northern soil and
Michele Carmel and Albie Barden at their Norridgewock home. One aspect of “living with the corn.” A Benjamin & Co. model corn sheller made in Winthrop in the 1800s By Jean English Photos by the author “We live with the corn, in all of its manifestations.” Michele Carmel’s understatement amuses me as I sit with Albie Barden
A blight-resistant American chestnut tree growing at MOFGA’s Common Ground Education Center. Butternuts shown in the Exhibition Hall of the Common Ground Country Fair by Claudette Nadeau. Aronia melanocarpa growing at MOFGA’s Common Ground Education Center. Permaculture with a native twist By Heather McCargo Agroforestry is the practice of adding trees and shrubs to
Terraces at Sataf in the Jerusalem Corridor. Photo courtesy of the photo archive of the Jewish National Fund. Spring water at Sataf flowing into the second plot. Photo by Deborah Rubin Fields Patch cultivation or box fields in the Modin area. Photo courtesy of Dr. Rafael Lewis, from a 2017 article co-authored with Prof. Shimon
Photo 1 – A complete, two-queen, side-by-side hive. Each side is a stack of three four-frame medium boxes. Entrances to the hives are on opposite ends, minimizing drift of bees from one box to its neighbor. Photo 2 – Hive components specific to a two-queen, side-by-side, four-frame hive shown from front to back: an inner
Snow pea flowers. From https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Snow_pea_flowers.jpg#/media/File:Snow_pea_flowers.jpg Snow pea. By JS – JS, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10690536 Super Sugar Snap peas. Photo courtesy of Johnny’s Selected Seeds By Will Bonsall When I was a kid, “peas” meant either the fresh (or canned or frozen) “garden peas” we enjoyed in early summer, or the “field peas” we ate as split
