Homesteading Confessions of a Steward — Chicken Familiarity Guest Post, November 3, 2023 Share this: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 chickens, and it all stems from chicken psychology. Like all… Continue Reading
Homemaking Start-Up Farm — Confessions of a Steward Guest Post, July 27, 2023 Share this: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 the 1960s often have a hard time appreciating the land… Continue Reading
Homesteading Time for What’s Important — The Healing Land Guest Post, June 9, 2023June 9, 2023 Share this:by Shawn & Beth Dougherty, Plain Values A Child comes in the back door with a full milk can; the screen door slaps shut behind him. There is the sound of a bucket being set on the bench, the clang of a bail handle against the side of the milk… Continue Reading
Homesteading Spring on a Traditional Family Farm — The Healing Land Guest Post, May 8, 2023June 9, 2023 Share this:By Shawn and Beth Dougherty, Plain Values There’s no time like spring for seeing how bountifully God provides for His creatures, and that’s especially true here in central Appalachia, where young, green grass and blossoming fruit trees are everywhere we look. Our seven dairy cows put gallons of rich, creamy… Continue Reading
Parallel Economy Confessions of a Steward Guest Post, February 27, 2023February 27, 2023 Share this:The Creator’s Pattern By Joel Salatin, Plain Values In 1961 as our family looked out over this newly-acquired farm property with its rocks, gullies, and weeds, we needed a roadmap to healing. In our imagination, we could see fertile fields, filled-in gullies, and soil-covered rocks, but how to get there… Continue Reading
Go And Build Confessions of a Steward—Beginnings Guest Post, February 6, 2023 Share this:By Joel Salatin, Plain Values Does God Care How I Farm? That question defines my life’s work and vision because it moves the visceral, practical decisions I make in my farming vocation to a place of sacredness and godly living. If God cares about physical and practical things in my… Continue Reading
Bold Christian Writing Lessons from Livestock, Part Three Guest Post, January 21, 2023January 23, 2023 Share this:When the Lion Lies Down with the Bug by David Treebeard Read Part OneRead Part Two The other day I was hauling a couple of cows to the slaughterhouse when a new-model truck with blacked-out windows blazed past me on the left. Big block letters on the rear window read:… Continue Reading
Christian Living Lessons from Livestock, Part Two Guest Post, January 17, 2023January 25, 2023 Share this:To Be or not to Bug by David Treebeard Read Part OneRead Part Three When animals become numbers, human numbers are not far behind. For the past several hundred years since the imaginations of Descartes and other enlighteners permeated our power structures, people have been treated as machines or numbers… Continue Reading
Christian Living Lessons from Livestock, Part One Guest Post, January 6, 2023January 25, 2023 Share this:The Living Scripture of Creation by David Treebeard Read Part TwoRead Part Three Nature is under God’s control, and all the parts of nature are part of His symbolic language. This means that all of creation offers spiritual lessons. To farm, log, or fish is to interact with an animated… Continue Reading
Christian Living Putting Down Roots: The XXIst Century Revival of the Catholic Land Movement Guest Post, April 5, 2022January 23, 2023 Share this:by Maggie Zapp | Synergy Central FL Homestead When Fr. McNabb published The Catholic Land Movement pamphlet in 1932, I have no doubt he had some inkling that something wicked this way comes. The Luddite riots first established a formal resistance to the inevitable march of technological progress and in… Continue Reading