The New Pioneer

Watching events unfold during the past six months has brought back memories of working on the first issue of The New Pioneer as the Great Recession was hitting bottom. Although the causes of that severe jolt to the economy were very different, the last few months have felt as if we were entering another sharp downturn, but this time the country’s mood is darker. Gas and food prices are soaring; current events are violent and frightening; people are confused and angry, wondering why life is not better now that COVID appears to be under control. “How do we cope?” they ask. For the go-getters featured in this issue, the answer is the same as it was when TNP first appeared in 2010: practice self-reliance by growing as much of your…

Cold weather is quickly approaching, but there are still plenty of gardening projects perfect for fall and winter. For those who might be a little burned out from tending plants and harvesting their bounty, fall and winter are a good time to treat beehives for varroa mites, plant fruit trees and make it easier for ice anglers to bolt down their tents. LEAVE A MESSY GARDEN AT THE END OF THE SEASON, not everyone has the interest or the energy to clean up the garden. The good news is that you don’t have to. Let plants stand that are going dormant or dying so they can provide winter habitat for beneficial insects and wild birds. Echinacea and sunflowers offer seeds for chickadees, cardinals and many other birds during cold months. In addition,…

“I was about 8,” Sara Hunter told me when I asked her how old she and her sister were when they began helping their dad, Greg Lutovsky, at his farm, Irish Eyes Garden Seeds, in Ellensburg, Washington. “He would give me a field to irrigate by turning the valves on and off and say, ‘I’ll be back for you in about an hour.’ Alexa is two and a half years younger than I am, and she joined me when she was about 10.” Both girls kept helping Greg through high school and college. Alexa remembers Greg taking her out of high school for a couple of days to drive the tractor pulling the seeder when she was 14. Today, she is the ownder of Irish Eyes, LLC, and Sara runs a…

If you want to grow potatoes, buy only certified seed potatoes. For one thing, those in the grocery story are at the end of their life cycle, and their yields will be much lower than those from seed potatoes. Most potatoes sold in markets, even organic ones, are sprayed with an inhibitor to prevent them from sprouting. Potatoes are susceptible to diseases that can infect soil and other crops for years to come. Seed potatoes are grown specifically for seed and go through rigorous certification by seed-potato boards to ensure they are disease-free. Don’t let the words “pre-nuclear” and “nuclear” scare you if you see them used when referring to seed potatoes. Nuclear seed potatoes are potatoes that have been produced from disease-free tissue culture plantlets called “pre-nuclears” under controlled environmental…

We focus on raising sustainable beef finished on recycled by-products that are fed to cattle in the field. Grass fed on pastures at both our ranch and Kyler Beard’s, the cattle are rotationally grazed. Movable hot-wire fences keep them in one area until they graze it down and are moved into a fresh field the old-fashioned way—with horses and dogs—which is less stressful on the cattle. Before being butchered, the cattle are fed in the field with a mixture of used grain from a local brewery, bakery by-products, hay dust, hay chaff and trace minerals suspended in molasses. The feed line acts as a manure spreader because it is moved toward fresh pasture as the cattle munch away and nourish the soil while they eat. The entire process reduces our…

Birthing baby pigs doesn’t come with an instruction book or a step-by-step YouTube video, and finding the right crops to grow on a new homestead isn’t always easy. Yet, escaping suburbia and building a small farm using sustainable agriculture that pays for itself is the dream of many 30- to 50-something victims of corporate America. Going from city slicker to successful homesteader is more than getting a piece of land and watching things grow. Creating a sustainable small farm often has a harsh learning curve that takes lots of work, misery, trial and error. The problem is finding the information, equipment and skills to make farming and raising livestock work. Getting Started Lana and Gary Loyd visited the Ozarks several years ago and shortly after that bought a 25-acre homestead in rural Peel,…