MOTHER EARTH NEWS April - May - 2017

Lambs have been dropping at my place for going on a month now, and with around half the ewes finished, we’ve got only one bottle baby (a triplet runt) and only one new mom that lost her little one to a crushing injury. The bottle baby is doing great and loves his hay, his bottle, and us. The new mom mourned her baby’s loss for a short while, until she reluctantly agreed to allow other triplet lambs to poach her good supply of milk. There’s a lot to learn from the social dynamic of a sheep flock when it comes to protecting their young from predators and sharing some of the feeding duties. In years past, we’ve had bottle lambs, orphans, and hungry triplets to contend with. More often than not,…

Community Support I was very interested to read your article “Aging Gracefully on the Homestead” (February/March 2017). I’ve spent the past several years working with others to create a senior community in rural North Carolina called Elderberry, which has 18 small and tiny homes. It’s a place where we can continue to do the things we love as we age, such as gardening, keeping animals, hiking, heating with wood, etc., but do so with the help and companionship of others. For those of us who love country life but are becoming unable to manage our large farms, this is a creative alternative. Sharing your farm with others, or converting it into a small community, can provide support for the daily work and other needs, as well as foster deep friendships and…

“I decided to write to say ‘thank you’ for the December 2016/January 2017 issue. It has great articles, practical recommendations (I like stuff I can use!), and is just plain encouraging.” Just Plain Encouraging I started reading MOTHER EARTH NEWS back in the early 1970s, so I guess I’m a longtimer now. I always find something of interest in each issue, but I decided to write to say “thank you” for the December 2016/ January 2017 issue in particular. It has great articles, practical recommendations (I like stuff I can use!), and is overall just plain encouraging. I’ve been baking bread for more than 40 years, but I’m still learning new techniques all the time, so I’ll be trying Wendy Akin’s recipes (“Daily Breads: Potato, Oatmeal, White, and Rye with a Starter”). I…

Many vegetable seed companies are serving up more organic options in response to gardener demand, and some even offer an exclusively organic line. Johnny’s Selected Seeds has a few new organic tomato cultivars that caught our eye. ‘Carbon’ is a productive, purplish-black heirloom that resists cracking and catfacing. If you’re looking for an early tomato, determinate ‘Glacier’ produces small, flavorful, red fruits and is especially tolerant of cool spring temperatures. It’s well-adapted to northern regions. ‘Skyway’ is a reliable beefsteak hybrid with broad disease resistance that’s newly available as an organic option. New this year from High Mowing Organic Seeds, an allorganic seed company, is ‘Matador’ spinach, an open-pollinated cultivar that’s especially cold-tolerant. It was among the three top-yielding cultivars out of 19 in the company’s trials. Also check out ‘Dolciva’ carrot,…

The Herbal Academy is an online school that provides expertly written and beautifully designed course material to budding herbalists worldwide. Environmental stewardship is an integral part of the school’s mission, and tips about sustainable foraging and ethical sourcing are ingrained throughout the course material. Each course includes multiple units divided into individual lessons with downloadable course material, recipes, DIY projects, quizzes, videos, reputable resources, and herbal monographs. Renowned herbalists have contributed to the Academy’s curriculum. Steven Foster is on the Board of Trustees for the American Botanical Council, Matthew Wood is the author of The Earthwise Herbal series, and Maria Noël Groves is a clinical herbalist and author of the holistic health care guide Body Into Balance. Founder and Director Marlene Adelmann has been very intentional about keeping the curriculum affordable in…

John and Esther Atwell — along with their children, Benya, 20; Jordan, 18; Nathaniel, 16; and Sophia, 12 — live on 10 acres in Kurtistown, Hawaii, growing fruit and spice trees, multiple permaculture beds, a taro patch, and an experimental garden bed. The Atwells, one of three families designated as our 2016 Homesteaders of the Year, perform an inspiring patchwork of jobs, including freelance writing and consulting; working early mornings at the airport; babysitting; mucking out horse stalls; landscaping; waiting tables; and selling homemade baked goods, heirloom seeds, saplings, and seedlings at a local market. John and Esther grow some of their own food, run a small nursery operation that focuses on tropical fruit trees, and are local distributors for heirloom and organic seeds. The family is working to secure funding…