Woodlots Will Become the Most Valuable Farm Land     —Gene Logsdon

?Snuggling up to my woodstove in the depths of winter, I am already prepared to believe that trees are my most precious crop. I believe it even more when the electric goes off during a blizzard. As a matter of fact, one of my woodlots, ten acres in size, has already proved to be the best investment I ever made. We bought it 25 years ago for the then outrageous sum of $20,000 and I was told that I was making a big mistake. As with so many of my mistakes in life, this one turned out to be smart enough. We have sold $10,000 worth of logs from it, made use of $3000 of dimensional lumber cut with a bandsaw mill onsite, and burned about $300 worth of stove wood per year for another $7500. So the woodlot has paid back its cost and is in better shape for future lumber sales than when we bought it.
According to those who strain gnats and swallow camels in the financial world, a ten-acre cornfield during those 25 years might have averaged $30 an acre in annual profit if you didn’t count the subsidies. I figure we’ve saved more than that with the wood. Yes, the gnat strainers would say I have to figure in the total hundred years or so that some of those logs were growing, but by the same token the corn grower should have to figure in the hundreds of years during which fertility was building in his cornfield before it was cleared and plowed up. And the cornfield would not have produced hickory nuts, black walnuts, morel mushrooms, good squirrel and deer hunting, bird-watching, and wildflower delights.                        ...Read Article

Feathered "Short Lines"     —Kelly Klober

?Stop by many farm implement dealerships and you will find them offering many implement “short lines” along with their regular inventory of red or green or orange farming iron. These “short lines” may include a small grouping of implements for special usages such as grading, mowing, or feeding equipment.
In a similar vein many small farm poultry producers are now finding feathered short lines that fit well with and complement the sales from their egg and/or broiler ventures. They can draw from a myriad of poultry species to have something new or different to sell to regular customers or to draw new buyers to their farms or market stands.
At our local farmers’ market we have a father and son team that are the “pigeon guys,” the “duck lady,” several folks with different varieties of heirloom turkeys, others with guineas in numerous colors, the peafowl man, the old-time breeds guy (me), and several more supplying modest niches with limited numbers of breeding, meat, or other birds.                 ...Read Article

The GMO Issue...

?In the third chapter of Genesis we read about the fall of man and the consequences that we have had to bear ever since. While all people are subject to the curse that was bestowed upon man that day, I believe we as farmers and gardeners are much more aware of the part that was doled upon the male in verses 17 through 19. Verse 23 of that third chapter sums it all up by saying, “Therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the Garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken.”
For the last six thousand years this is what our forefathers have been doing. If we study history, especially the last one to two hundred years, we see where there has been much done to improve on the way we handle this curse. We have seen much progress in the way the “thorns and thistles” are handled, and I am very appreciative of some of these. But I strongly believe that too often when we see progress, we automatically label it as an improvement even though it actually isn’t. This last statement will bring me to the basis of what I want to write about in this article. GMOs. [GMOs, or “genetically modified organisms,” are plants or animals created through the gene splicing techniques of biotechnology (also called genetic engineering, or GE). This technology merges DNA from different species, creating unstable combinations of plant, animal, bacterial, and viral genes that cannot occur in nature or in traditional crossbreeding. Ed.] Are they progress or are they an improvement? I will give you my opinion on why I think that although they may be progress, it is totally in the wrong direction. ...Read Article

The Makers Mark Part III
"Refined Tastes"
                               —Sara M. Leonard

?There is a fine white powder in a sealed plastic bag sitting on the table before me. But what is it? The possibilities flit through my mind. It might be as ominous as cocaine or heroin, and then again it might merely be powdered sugar or flour. Then I shrug my shoulders and throw it away, because no matter which of these it truly is, I hold them all in equal distaste.
This is but a hypothetical illustration to begin my argument. Two of the above-mentioned substances are illegal, and two of them are not, but all of them are dangerous. They have the same origin, the same birth in the avaricious minds of those who would harm others for gain. All four substances are addictive, extracted perversions of natural plants, and all of them ought to be illegal. 
It might seem sensationalist to compare our ‘food’ staples flour and sugar with commonly loathed street drugs. But the truth is that they all originate in the same philosophy that prizes extraction as the hallmark of ‘purity’ and worth. And, as we all know, there was a time when both cocaine and heroin were perfectly legal. Is it too much to dream that we will finally come to our senses and ban the equally harmful flour and sugar which are today America’s legal drugs?
I fear that it is indeed a dream without hope, for while the deleterious effects of cocaine and heroin become apparent rather quickly, the consequences of refined flour and sugar are more universal and subtle. We can’t recognize real health in this country anymore, because we scarcely meet anyone who truly possesses it. Through the long years that the Allopathic system has held dominance, we have been trained to accept sickness as normal and health as impossible—or at least impossible without drugs.
But let us take a closer look at how these drugs are produced, through the example of cocaine and heroin, two of Allopathy’s oldest achievements.

                                                                        ...Read Article