Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Erin’s work with Fertile Ground, and Carrie’s with Black Family Land Trust, are part of the multidimensional aspect of regenerative agriculture. Regenerative agriculture renews both urban and rural communities, and it nourishes both human bodies and the planet.
From 1999-2024, Dark Mountain’s Mark Watson taught and demonstrated the art of holding a dialogue with (mostly) wild plants. Part-manual, part-memoir, this small book is a distillation of his hands-on practice, ‘hanging out’ with twelve flowers and a tree over a year: from a conversation with burdock in a community garden, to lying alongside sea kale on the Suffolk shore, to foraging for mallow leaf fritters and flower teas.
Anyway, as I’ve often said here, I don’t think renewal is going to come from the centre. So while I genuinely mourn the misery to come for people who, unlike me, are going to be in the frontline, I guess I’m finding it hard to get invested in the politics of the centre.
Ocean enthusiasts and random passersby alike came together in Seattle this past August to explore and celebrate their connection to the deep sea.
This year, the especially dry conditions also mean that the Hudson Valley faces a heightened risk of wildfires — something typically unheard of in the area. Parts of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut have all seen wildfires in early November, with a massive fire on the New Jersey-New York state border still raging as of Monday.
The Flores González brothers’ revolutionary innovation has been to turn a heretofore indigestible, but massive and accessible, source of fiber, biomass, water, and protein—the agave leaves or pencas—into a valuable animal feed, utilizing the natural process of anaerobic fermentation to transform the plant leaves’ relatively indigestible saponin compounds into digestible carbohydrates and sugar.
The failure of the Danish climate tax on agriculture is a result of a siloed science and policy with no consideration of the realities of agro-ecosystems. Landscape management need to be multi-faceted and not directed towards just one objective, be it climate regulation, maximum harvest, profit, bio-diversity or tourism.
Our food system is linked to an economic system fundamentally biased against what’s good for people and the planet.
“Metabolical”, a book by a medical researcher and physician, tell us that the relationship between our diet (heavy on processed foods) and chronic disease is far more profound than we’ve been told.
While the Catskills have always produced juicy burgers and classic American fare, today there are restaurants serving up everything from Korean to French to Albanian cuisines, making these rural parts an unlikely nexus for urban foodies, farm-to-table enthusiasts, diner denizens and craft beer aficionados.
What’s clear is that the Colorado River can no longer be relied upon to meet the water needs of an increasing population. If we continue asking so much of it, we have to start easing those pressures. Water reuse is imperative if the driest parts of the world continue growing without destroying the environment that relies as much on water as we do.
All Hallow’s Eve is the mid-point between the autumn equinox and the winter solstice. In many ways it marks the end of the farmers year as well as the beginning of the next.
