Befriending Bacteria
Can something too small to be seen enlarge a worldview? From humble origins like household dust and showerhead slime, new insights are emerging into a vital and overlooked player in human health, agriculture and...
Category: Food
A Gardening Manifesto — in Six Words
“Be the kind of person who takes supplements – then skip the supplements.” Michael Pollan, “Food Rules An Eater’s Manual” The rules Michael Pollan devised to guide eating could apply just as well to...
Cover Crops: A Living Blanket
It’s late September and my garden is literally humming. Whenever I go to harvest vegetables, I hear the pulsing drone of bees, flies and wasps amid buckwheat blossoms. To me, the flowers don’t look...
Bagging Use of Disposable Plastics
“Just because plastic is disposable doesn’t mean it goes away. After all, where is away? There is no away.” — Jeb Berrier in the documentary “Bag It” It’s easy these days to feel as...
Smell the Coffee!
With all due respect to poet William Carlos Williams, so much depends not on a “red wheelbarrow glazed with rain water” but on a steaming mug of coffee. There may be metaphoric value in...
Three Ways to Green Your Household
“It’s not easy being green,” Kermit the Frog bemoaned back in 1970. What was, for a Muppet, a whimsical play on words has become code for the challenge of trying to live with a...
An Apple Proposition
“Pick your way through these piles of colorful orbs… and you will get a sense of the many things an apple can be, the many roles it can play in our lives. If there...
Sustainability Certification or Simply Marketing?
Certifying farms for sustainability is an appealing idea. The bureaucrats in Augusta who hatched this plan for Maine undoubtedly envisioned nothing but positive outcomes. A state seal of approval for sound agricultural practices could...
