The author’s mother in a field of buckwheat at the author’s grandfather’s farm in Canaan in the early 1900s. Photo courtesy of Joyce White Buckwheat grown as an alley crop in a young orchard at MOFGA’s Common Ground Education Center. English photo By Joyce White When a neighbor extolled the health benefits of buckwheat, I
By the time these Orlando’s beans have ripened, the leaves of the supporting amaranth will have dropped to expose the dry pods. Photo by Will Bonsall By Will Bonsall Ordinarily I advise people with limited garden space not to focus on growing staple crops such as grain and oilseeds that are less expensive to buy
Toki Oshima drawing By Diane Schivera, M.A.T. This is my annual wrap-up of meetings I attended in 2015, beginning with the Northeast Pasture Consortium meeting in Morgantown, W. Virginia. Using a conservation planning computer tool created in response to concerns expressed last year at the Northeast Pasture Consortium, Peter Kleinman demonstrated effects of grazing
Photo 1. Pole and crossbars used to trellis beans, peas and cucumbers Photo 2. A spike inserted through two holes where crossbar ends overlap holds crossbars together. By Tom Vigue Photos by the author A number of common garden crops benefit greatly from trellising. Crops that do not directly contact the soil and that have vastly improved
Fresh asparagus – a top reason for mucking about in the garden.English photo By Roberta Bailey Last summer my husband and I spent seven days a week building a post-and-beam house. Our old house had burned the February before, and we were under a tight timeline with the insurance company. It all worked out well
Rice and azolla growing at Wild Folks Farm in Benton. Ben Rooney photo Rooney harvests rice with a scythe. Corallina Breuer photo By Ben Rooney Wild Folks Farm is entering its fourth season of lowland integrated rice production in Benton, Maine. Lowland refers to paddies. We have nine, with a gravity-fed water system. The paddies comprise about
Farming Fiddleheads? Raspberries and Fiddleheads Grow Together in Camden Garden Fiddlehead croziers emerging in spring. English photo A fiddlehead fern in late spring, with fertile fronds from the previous year. English photo By David Fuller Agriculture/non-timber forest products professional, UMaine Cooperative Extension, Franklin County Ostrich ferns, an herbaceous perennial that can reach five feet in height, die
Banatka wheat (8- x 8-inch spacing) with a Dutch white clover understory to the right of the range pole; Warthog on the left. Sowing Dutch white immediately after planting Banatka produced a beautiful, weed-free understory, but frost seeding Warthog was not so good. In a subsequent sowing of Banatka in both plots, the right side
Organic Seed Alliance Seed Internship Program Micaela Colley, executive director of Organic Seed Alliance, spoke of seeds as a “public, natural resource that we all know demands careful stewardship.” Photo courtesy of OSA The eighth Organic Seed Growers Conference was convened in February 2016 by Organic Seed Alliance (OSA) in Corvallis, Oregon. Micaela Colley, executive
A farmer shows his seed-saving garden. By John Bliss Photos by the author Last November, as the farming season in Maine was winding down, I had the opportunity to travel to Ethiopia. Our harvest at MOFGA-certified organic Broadturn Farm was tucked away in our storage coolers, and the crew was preparing for winter. Tractors and implements were
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