The corn is planted first, followed by beans, then squash between the rows.They are called the Three Sisters. They sustain each other, the earth, and us. But the Big Ones do not know that. They...

Wine is a gateway drug to environmentalism.

Like my grandpa, who dropped out of school to farm, I have a 4th grade education. Of course, I have a college degree, too. Both require the same reading level.

What to wear on a Minnesota farm? The older farmers I know wear brown polyester jumpsuits, like factory workers. The younger ones wear jeans, but the forecast was for ninety-five degrees with heavy humidity. The...

Grow up, Bailey.””That is precisely what I’m doing,” Bailey says. “I don’t care if you don’t understand that. Staying here won’t make me happy. It will make you happy because you’re insipid and boring, and...

We got a saying around here about our corn, ‘it grows knee-high by the Fourth of July.

A determined Yankee book drummer once told a Southerner that ‘a set of books on scientific agriculture’ would teach him to ‘farm twice as good as you do.’ To which the Southerner replied: ‘Hell, son,...

It is a rule in paleontology that ornamentation and complication precede extinction. And our mutation, of which the assembly line, the collective farm, the mechanized army, and the mass production of food are evidences or...

I’m a farmer of love. Just add water.

Raw ingredients trump recipes every time; farmers and ranchers who coax the best from the earth can make any of us appear to be a great cook.

As a working definition of art, I lean toward Tolstoy’s: “Art is a human activity having for it’s purpose the transmission to other of the highest and best feelings to which mankind has risen.” It...

As Gill says, “every man is called to give love to the work of his hands. Every man is called to be an artist.” The small family farm is one of the last places –...

Writing is conscience, scruple, and the farming of our ancestors.

It’s not the deprivations of winter that get you, or the damp of spring, but the no-man’s land between.

I like to wear a suit and tie and say things like, Well, I’d better be getting back to the farm. The crop’s not going to grow without my encouragement.

I do not particularly like the word ‘work.’ Human beings are the only animals who have to work, and I think that is the most ridiculous thing in the world. Other animals make their livings...

It is not as if farming brought a great improvement in living standards either. A typical hunter-gatherer enjoyed a more varied diet and consumed more protein and calories than settled people, and took in five...

Why does no one speak of the cultural advantages of the country? For example, is a well groomed, ecologically kept, sustainably fertile farm any less cultural, any less artful, than paintings of fat angels on...

Why do farmers farm, given their economic adversities on top of the many frustrations and difficulties normal to farming? And always the answer is: “Love. They must do it for love.” Farmers farm for the...

Check your environment and be sure that it is supportive. Some environments do not support progress. Hiroshima and Nagasaki are not fertile lands for a farmer’s dream seeds. Change location.

More grass means less forest; more forest less grass. But either-or is a construction more deeply woven into our culture than into nature, where even antagonists depend on one another and the liveliest places are...

Men are not so much the keepers of herds as herds are the keepers of men.

If 22 bushels (1,300 pounds) of rice and 22 bushels of winter grain are harvested from a quarter acre field, then the field will support five to ten people each investing an average of less...

There are two spiritual dangers in not owning a farm. One is the danger of supposing that breakfast comes from the grocery, and the other that heat comes from the furnace.

Someone told me once, ‘It’s time to get you a pair of overalls, boy.’ But I don’t believe in summing up nothin’ – I let my experiences speak for themselves – and even if I...

Through my history’s despiteand ruin, I have cometo its remainder, and herehave made the beginningof a farm intended to becomemy art of being here.By it I would instructmy wants: they should belongto each other and...

I am a fisherman among farmers, and as a farmer what I grow is tired of waiting for her to love me.

Studying wine taught me that there was a very big difference between soil and dirt: dirt is to soul what zombies are to humans. Soil is full of life, while dirt is devoid of it.

Your corn is ripe today; mine will be so tomorrow. ‘Tis profitable for us both, that I should labour with you today, and that you should aid me tomorrow. I have no kindness for you,...

In my opinion, if 100% of the people were farming it would be ideal. If each person were given one quarter-acre, that is 1 1/4 acres to a family of five, that would be more...

This whole effort to rebuild and stabilize a countryside is not without its disappointments and mistakes… What matter though these temporary growing pains when one can cast his eye upon the hills and see hard-boiled...

…no matter how rhapsodic one waxes about the process of wresting edible plants and tamed animals from the sprawling vagaries of nature, there’s a timeless, unwavering truth espoused by those who worked the land for...

A farmer, as one of his farmer correspondents once wrote to Liberty Hyde Bailey, is “a dispenser of the ‘Mysteries of God.'”The husband, unlike the “manager” or the would-be objective scientist, belongs inherently to the...

I planted a plastic plant, but nothing grew but political hope. I watered it with the tears of the voters.

A farm includes the passion of the farmer’s heart, the interest of the farm’s customers, the biological activity in the soil, the pleasantness of the air about the farm — it’s everything touching, emanating from,...

Organic farming appealed to me because it involved searching for and discovering nature’s pathways, as opposed to the formulaic approach of chemical farming. The appeal of organic farming is boundless; this mountain has no top,...

When it is understood that one loses joy and happiness in the attempt to possess them, the essence of natural farming will be realized. The ultimate goal of farming is not the growing of crops,...

We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect.

I flera hundra år hade hans förfäder sått säd. Det var en handling av andakt en tyst och mild, vindlös kväll, helst i ett litet beskedligt duggregn, helst så snart som möjligt efter det grågässen...

The cost to reconnect animals to live in natural settings without human support is a debt that many animals in transition must honor with their lives.

Whole trees are good fishing nets. I fish like I farm.

A farm regulated to production of raw commodities is not a farm at all. It is a temporary blip until the land is used up, the water polluted, the neighbors nauseated, and the air unbreathable....

The only truly dependable production technologies are those that are sustainable over the long term. By that very definition, they must avoid erosion, pollution, environmental degradation, and resource waste. Any rational food-production system will emphasize...

The ultimate goal of farming is not the growing of crops, but the cultivation and perfection of human beings.

Teaching kids how to feed themselves and how to live in a community responsibly is the center of an education.

Of course, chaos can lead to failure and extinction. But so can order. Far more nations, people, and ideas die of atrophy than die from revolution. Both order and chaos are necessary ingredients for long...

A robust regional food system that benefits eaters and farmers cannot be achieved in a marketplace that is controlled, top to bottom, by a few firms and that rewards only scale, not innovation, quality, or...

I like hunting trees, because they don’t run away. I call it hunting, but others might call it farming.

A farmer friend of mine told me recently about a busload of middle school children who came to his farm for a tour. The first two boys off the bus asked, “Where is the salsa...

Farmers grow on the land. I suppose farmers grow farmers, rather than using sex to reproduce.