Meet an Eco-Farmer: Feral Heart Farm Aaron Dinwoodie, Feral Heart Farm Why did you begin farming? To learn how to grow my own food and share that skill with others. Have you always been an ecofarmer, or did you make a change? Yes, I’ve always been an ecofarmer since I started farming. What was the biggest hurdle you have overcome? Accessing quality farmland and water. What do you enjoy most about farming? That’s hard; there are so many things, I don’t like to play favorites. The thing I enjoy most about farming is growing seed to seed, seeing plant crops live out their full life cycles. In other words, seed saving. (more…)
View from the Country: “Borrowing Dulls the Edge of Husbandry” Ben Franklin, a favorite founder around this office as he was a writer, a publisher and a printer, is often quoted as saying “neither a borrower nor a lender be.” He did speak this wisdom, but didn’t coin the phrase. He was quoting Shakespeare who wrote these words as fatherly advice dispensed in Hamlet. The full quote is, “Neither a borrower nor a lender be, for loan oft loses both itself and friend, and borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.” We were digging around the quote bin because the thought came to us of another major divide — between the goals and actions of modern eco-agriculture and what has become conventional farming. Eco-farming seeks to remain debt-free, giving back to the soil what it consumes, or more, and not foisting hazardous wastes onto others. (more…)