Gretchen Kruesi
Eating healthy doesn’t always taste the best, but combining your favorite treats with nutritious foods is the perfect balance! Though strawberries and beets may not seem like a good mix, combined with vanilla and cinnamon, they create a smoothie that’s not only healthy, but tastes delicious as well. The following is an excerpt from The…
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Summer is a time for taking hikes, walks, going camping, or sitting under a tree enjoying the outdoors. You might think that your biggest enemy is the sun, but there’s another one crawling around–ticks. These parasites can infect you and cause a wide variety of symptoms that interfere with how you live your life, and…
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Emmet Van Driesche and his wife, Cecilia, operate the Pieropan Christmas Tree Farm in Western Massachusetts. When he’s not working on the tree farm or editing scientific manuscripts, he spends his time carving wooden spoons and teaching others to do the same. You can learn more about him at www.emmetvandriesche.com. The following is an interview…
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Expert okra enthusiast Chris Smith writes regularly for The Heirloom Gardener, the Mother Earth News blog, and the Farmers’ Almanac blog. His presentations on the versatility of okra have delighted audiences at food and farming festivals and fairs throughout the Southeast. He is the Communications Manager for Sow True Seed in Asheville, North Carolina, and…
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“An important and entirely brilliant book. It’s a love letter to gulls and their charged relationship with humans, but it’s also a deep meditation on difficulty and waste, on the beauty of the disregarded, and on what we make of matter out of place. There’s love and death here, fear, fascination, hope, and the breaking…
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Did you know that the apple traveled to North America the same way the Pilgrims did in the 1600s? Though apple trees are abundant all across the country, they aren’t native to these lands. Apples have a fascinating and complex history that lead them to become an American symbol. The following is an excerpt from…
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Ever think about eating fries that aren’t made out of potatoes? Why not try okra fries! These easy to make and fun to eat treats are the perfect side to your meal, or you might be tempted to have a whole bowl full. Author Chris Smith pulls this fabulous recipe from Chef Viviane Howard. The…
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Feeding your animals is a daily and time-consuming activity on a farm. You need to take into consideration the types of animals and their individual needs, along with general best practices. This can seem like a big task to take on, but let’s start with feeding the pigs first! The following is an excerpt from…
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Your thyroid is responsible for controlling many of your body’s functions including metabolism, temperature, and controls some hormones. Hyperthyroidism occurs when your thyroid overproduces hormones, which can lead to a variety of diseases including Graves’ disease. Though there are many different medications to relieve the symptoms of hyperthyroidism, there are also more natural options that…
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Buying a new property is exciting. You might have hundreds of ideas running through your head about where you want to put buildings or clear away trees or start planting. Immediately starting these projects may not be in your farm’s best interest, though, and can drastically impact the landscape. Often, features like meadows or ponds…
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Tourism, infrastructure, electricity. What do all these have in common? They’re impacted by global warming. We like to think of global warming as ocean temperatures rising and more carbon dioxide in the air. That isn’t the whole truth. Our changing climate is at the root of many large issues, though the connection might have been…
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Okra, slime is gold! This pod-producing vegetable is a nutritional powerhouse and has been used throughout history for medicinal, culinary and cosmetics purposes. Discover the benefits of okra when eaten or use the slime from okra for glowing skin, thick shiny hair and strong nails, among others. The following is an excerpt from The Whole…
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Minerals from soil and outside water sources find themselves in irrigation systems. When you water your land, these minerals infiltrate the soil and change its composition. Your plants are more impacted by their presence than meets the eye, but what exactly is the relationship? The following is an excerpt from Water in Plain Sight by…
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Groups of piglets running around a farm or homestead seems like a dream come true. When it comes to making sure each one is healthy and growing properly, it can get chaotic trying to figure out which pig is which. Using identification strategies to keep them organized is not only in your best interest but…
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Unhealthy diets, poor exercise habits, and environmental factors have led to a rise in metabolic conditions in the younger generations–a trend that is only increasing. Some of the food we eat contains high amounts of sugars with low nutrition, and when consumed over a long period of time, can be very harmful to your health,…
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We don’t often think about how, long ago, the towering and strong trees we see around us in communities and the rows of Christmas trees on farms began as tiny seeds. Much less often, do we think about the people who dedicate their lives to planting and caring for these tress. The first important step…
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Living a healthy lifestyle can be challenging, especially when it comes to buying and sourcing food. You want to keep a budget but don’t want to sacrifice good quality or you’re not sure where to get the best products? The first step is to take the time and see what you have access to– farmer’s…
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In the past decade, there’s been more time and research dedicated to understanding athlete’s health and working to implement safety measures to ensure their well being on and off the field. Accomplishing any athletic goal is more work than just working out and eating right. No longer can we look at sports and nutrition apart.…
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The list of issues impacting Earth’s rapid decline continues to grow at a highly alarming rate. Environmental concerns are entering the world of politics and business. Our quality of life will not be the same five years or ten years in the future; we are nearing the point of having to think about simply surviving…
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Water is always changing and impacting the environment around it; storms form, droughts occur, and floods damage. It seems that the level of water on Earth is bouncing between extremes. These shifts are tied to the state of our climate. In the past, climate change seemed like a far-off concept; now it’s becoming more present…
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As the rate of chronic illness skyrockets, more and more parents are faced with the sobering reality of restrictive diets. And because everyone is busy, many families come to rely on store-bought “healthy” products to make life simpler, but many of these are loaded with sugar and hidden toxins. When faced with her own family…
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The American chestnut may well be the greatest and most useful forest tree to ever grow on this Earth. Its decline is considered by many ecologists to be one of the greatest ecological disasters to strike the US since European contact. But how did it happen? And are we on track to bring back this…
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Far before the release of her book Farming While Black, Leah Penniman had been helping countless Black and Brown farmers reclaim their right to the land. For years, Leah has been educating, inspiring, and working alongside so many individuals to make sure they truly understand the customs and traditions of their African farming ancestors and help…
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Nowadays gulls are trash birds, the subnatural inhabitants of drosscapes. Their coming among us has lowered their sea-bird status. Today they are seen as déclassé and mongrelizing in their habits. Some have also been demoted from whatever former taxonomic security they had. All have become in-between birds in an in-between world. By moving towards us,…
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We’ve always known that if you sit around all day eating candy, you will get fat. Conversely, cutting down on sugar, which is a carbohydrate, will contribute to weight loss and other benefits of a low-carbohydrate diet. However, the extent to which sugar, that is, sucrose, or its component fructose, contributes to obesity and other…
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