by Joel Salatin, Plain Values I don’t own a horse. I don’t keep a horse. That’s precisely why I’m qualified to address the issue—I don’t have preconceived notions about keeping horses. I have thought and yakked about it quite a…
by Shawn and Beth Dougherty, Plain Values A PLENTIFUL HARVEST The new apple trees in the orchard are bearing well this year, with russet and yellow-green fruit studding the young branches. In the convent orchard, some of the older trees…
By Joel Salatin, Plain Values Thinking like an animal is not always easy, especially if you’re trying to think like a chicken. In this article, I want to dive into one of the single biggest tensions in raising farmstead egg-laying…
by Joel Salatin, Plain Values Last month I introduced two unorthodox concepts regarding water. The first is the difference between surface runoff and the inventory of the commons (like streams, springs, and aquifers). The second is the notion that we as caretakers…
By Joel Salatin, Plain Values Water is the prerequisite to life. Some living things don’t need sunlight, some don’t even need soil, but all living things need water. Certainly, when we think about water, the first source that comes to…
by J. Pilgrim I think of myself more as a late Gen-X kid, rather than a millennial, because that’s the movies and music I liked, but regardless, I’m an 80s kid. We’re the Nostalgia Generation. I had a Zoomer on…
By Shawn & Beth Dougherty, Plain Values Sometimes keeping milk cows isn’t about the cows; sometimes, it’s about weddings, cancer, and love. For example: One morning almost exactly four years ago, a girl arrived on our farm. She came with…
By Joel Salatin, Plain Values For decades, I’ve been direct marketing our farm’s production directly to retail customers as a direct-marketed, branded product. That means our farm embraces the role of middle-man and we have a logo. We practice craft…
By: Emily Hershberger, Plain Values This Month’s Question:Springtime is a busy time of the year for homesteaders. How do you keep such large families seemingly so organized during busy seasons? Answered by: Emily Hershberger Emily: “Out with the cold and…
By Joel Salatin, Plain Values Last month I laid the foundation for the patterns and whys of animal movement. Failure to systematically and routinely move domestic livestock is perhaps the single biggest failure in animal agriculture. But how? Fortunately, we…
By Joel Salatin, Plain Values The single biggest cost—and hurdle—in starting a farm of any size is the land cost. Our own nation has gone from free land to extremely expensive land. Old farmers today who acquired their land in…
By Shawn & Beth Dougherty, Plain Values The corn in the garden is already more than knee-high, and the first planting of green beans has been gracing the supper table for more than a week, so summer must really be…
