MOTHER EARTH NEWS April - May 2018

It’s winter here in Kansas, and this season has been a wild ride; 70-degree temperature swings have become almost routine. With the short days and reduced outdoor chores, I’ve managed to study some of my favorite topics, including what makes people tick — particularly, how people identify with specific schools of thought. My recent focus has been on the nuances in the worlds of sustainable ag, regenerative ag, organic ag, clean food, environment, pollinator protection, and related arenas. I don’t have a particularly rosy outlook when it comes to our food, agriculture, and environmental poisoning issues — all of which directly impact our health issues. Part of my despair comes from seeing various schools of thought so deeply invested in some fix that they spend significant energy discrediting other suggestions put…

Finding Your Homestead I want to thank everyone involved in this magazine. I’ve been reading MOTHER EARTH NEWS for a year now, and I’ve been inspired to start my own homestead. I’m a 29-year-old U.S. Army veteran with problems related to post-traumatic stress disorder. I think this lifestyle change will help me cope with my problems and grow into a better man. I’ll be moving to Ohio in a few months, and I’d like to know whether there are any schools that teach homesteading skills, such as organic gardening, food preservation and cooking, raising livestock, herbal medicine, woodworking, and blacksmithing. I’d like to learn all I can in order to decide what kind of homestead to build in the future. Derek Williams Shell Knob, Missouri Readers, If you’re looking for a homesteading resource hub…

I’ve recently moved to a new area, and in the process, purchased some rural acreage to begin my small home-based permaculture business, which I’m calling Orchard Heights Homestead and Permaculture. As a new subscriber to MOTHER EARTH NEWS, I wanted to share my successful homestead discovery. I decided to plant a dwarf fruit tree orchard at the bottom of a knoll on my property. My soil is comprised largely of rock and clay, so I chose an old German permaculture technique for planting called “hugelkultur.” Using the neighbor’s backhoe, I dug a 20-foot-long, 2-foot-wide, 3-foot-deep trench. After gathering fallen rotted trees and early-spring pruning branches, I threw them into the trench. On top of the debris, I backfilled a layer of straw, compost, mulch, and straw again until the trench was a…

“To be successful, I had to adapt my gardening methods.” Ever-Changing Garden Practices Several years ago, I transplanted myself from snowy New York to a 1-acre homestead in humid, subtropical Florida. To be successful, I had to adapt my gardening practices quite a bit. Here are a few suggestions for gardeners who share a similar problem of having to buffer temperatures from both extremes. Greenhouses are great for keeping plants warm when the cold weather hits. Having a greenhouse, even in Florida, allows me to kick-start my warm crops for an early March planting. In fall, I extend the season for warm-weather crops planted in the ground, such as peppers and tomatoes. I may cover them with a blanket, add mulch, or wrap lights around hardy stems to provide an overnight heat source.…

Nutrient deficiencies might not be the result of poor diet. A landmark study from 2004 revealed that many fruits and vegetables contain less protein, iron, calcium, and vitamin C than they did in the 1950s, though carbohydrate levels have increased over the same time span. While some researchers think this discrepancy is explained by farmers growing sweeter cultivars, others believe a bigger factor is at play — Earth’s changing atmosphere. Earth’s atmospheric carbon dioxide levels are rising. Within the next 50 years, CO2 concentrations are expected to reach 550 parts per million, which is approximately double the amount measured before the mid-19th century. Farming will be profoundly affected: Research shows that elevated CO2 levels will affect 95 percent of plant species — including staple crops, such as wheat, rice, and potatoes…

While many people rely on a cup (or four) of coffee to get going in the morning, they may not realize that their favorite brew contains far more than the caffeine that kick-starts their days. Dozens of chemicals long banned in the United States, such as chlorpyrifos, disulfoton, and methyl parathion, are still used in nonorganic coffee production, putting both farms and field workers at risk of toxic contamination. In light of coffee’s potential adverse environmental effects, some Americans are turning to a more local source instead: yaupon. This increasingly popular drink is native to the southeast United States and contains a caffeine level that falls between black tea and coffee. Many southeastern Native American tribes valued yaupon as a ceremonial drink, and the brew, similar in taste and texture to…