You probably already know since I am too excited about it to keep it to myself, but I just got a dairy cow! She is a Guernsey named Gertrude. She started out really angry. I took her away from her last calf and moved her here to the farm. She screamed all day for…
The following is a blog post written by Jeff Poppen in response to the question “Why?” after Kristina’s post about a day spent scooping brains out of a cow’s skull. An open grown white oak tree can attain a magnificent crown, rounded and easily as wide as it is tall. When you burn the bark,…
Dear Facebook Friends, I have chosen not to look at computers for a variety of reasons. My time is spent outside during daylight, tending plants, animals and farming equipment, or shooting the breeze with neighbors and friends. I value computers and all they offer, and if I’d been born later I’m sure I’d be using…
The old carvings in the cave where we store our potatoes have finally been deciphered. They were carbon-dated at about 30,000 years ago, and resemble carvings in Swiss lake caves and one up in the Himalayan mountains. It reads something like this: To advance from wondering nomads to permanent agriculturalists requires little else than land,…
There are many reasons to grow a fall garden and cover crops, poetic as well as practical. “Don’t ever let a weed grow up and go to seed”, “your garden won’t harden with plenty of carbon”, “give back to the land and you’ll have plenty on hand”, “keep the garden growing by cover crop sowing”….
Have you ever seen a hellbender? It is a two-foot long salamander that lives in the creeks that flow up to the Barren River. I’ve seen them twice, about 25 years ago, in the Long Hungry Creek. The state biologist and the curator of the Nashville Zoo at Grassmere is looking for signs of hellbenders. We…
I don’t have to tell anyone that this has been an unusual summer. The unusually cool weather has extended green bean season, while parsley has suffered. This kind of give and take is expected when the weather does strange things. I count us lucky that tomatoes have been coming in well, since they really like it hot and…
A slow wet spring delayed garden work for a few weeks, but June found us busy as bees. The weeds are growing like weeds, and the vegetables are right behind them. It’s been a great growing season as long as you ignore the calendar. Monday deliveries of fresh produce have been lettuce, radish, onion, beet,…
If you are on Facebook, or if you received an email containing a message from Jeff, you may have seen the picture of Jeff’s house and the smaller tract of land that makes up Long Hungry Creek Farm, next to and dwarfed by the Cobb chicken houses just a few hundred feet up the hill…