http://www.newagrarian.com The New Agrarian includes essays, information, and research about sustainable and small-scale agriculture. Topics include urban agriculture, rural culture, sustainable communities, homesteading, and backyard poultry. Wed, 28 Jan 2009 01:35:35 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Here in the upper South we don't have winter so much as three months of T. S. Eliot's April, vaccilating between cold and cold comfort. Deep self-confident winter permits acclimation, the body and soul to put on layers of fat and wool against the cruelty without, but the occasional dip ... http://www.newagrarian.com/2009/01/27/midwinters-lament/ I wrote this essay in 2003 and for various reasons am only now (January 2009) publishing it. Much has changed in six years: The market for organic food has grown tremendously, and alongside it the idea of "eating local." Much also has been written, and some of the ideas here ... http://www.newagrarian.com/2009/01/19/standards-and-stewards/ Before Christmas I received an email from someone who seemed to be quite angry with my whole "new agrarian" idea. I won't embarrass him by quoting extensively (it wasn't a particularly nice email), but he made this point: All the agrarians I know... became agrarian so that they could get away ... http://www.newagrarian.com/2009/01/09/the-lap-of-luxury/ My daughter, who is five now, has been interested lately in helping me in the workshop. This is good because it means I can spend time woodworking without abandoning her all Sunday afternoon, but it also limits the complexity of my work, because a woodworking shop is, obviously, no place ... http://www.newagrarian.com/2009/01/02/a-childs-workbench/ New Year's Eve winds knocked down another big old loblolly pine across the nature trail, and so I had to start the year by playing lumberjack. This pine was just big enough to make a lot of work with the bow saw and just far enough from a power supply ... http://www.newagrarian.com/2009/01/01/431/ I try to avoid politics on this website, but there has been so much hand-wringing this week in the sustainable agriculture community about Barack Obama's agriculture choice for Secretary of Agriculture that I feel compelled to respond. I can't find much good to say about Tom Vilsack, but I have ... http://www.newagrarian.com/2009/01/01/forget-the-usda/ The weekend's storm tore the remaining leaves from the trees: in great clouds fluttering like blackbirds taking wing, were the world turned upside-down. Lonely survivors cling to their branches while the bodies of their brothers, summer's corpses, lay strewn on my windshield. I should put dimes on their eyes to ... http://www.newagrarian.com/2008/11/19/monday-morning/ Originally published in the Northern Agrarian, September 2008. In June a black swallowtail butterfly laid a single egg in the windowbox of parsley on our front porch. Several days later an almost microscopic caterpillar emerged and did what caterpillars famously do. When it left its patch of parsley to become a ... http://www.newagrarian.com/2008/09/06/life-cycles/ Originally published in the Northern Agrarian, July/August 2008. My back yard has never been in danger of winning any awards from glossy design magazines. Plantain rules a few patches where I let the ducks graze too freely. The old garden bed the dogs use for naps is grown up in weeds ... http://www.newagrarian.com/2008/07/19/on-grass/ When I was in high school (warning: long back story follows; actual upholstery project after the jump) my grandmother gave me an old wingback chair she no longer had room for in her apartment. It had a hideous circa-1960 red and orange floral pattern, but it was a great chair ... http://www.newagrarian.com/2008/07/14/upholstery-project-part-1/