MOTHER EARTH NEWS April - May 2014

Seeds sown are just the start of the adventure! Let our Garden Know-How series be your trusty companion all season long as you navigate the parade of post-planting endeavors necessary to cultivating healthy, tremendous-tasting food. In this online guide, browsable by topic, you’ll find comprehensive, authoritative information on watering, weeding, mulching, crop rotation, season extension and dozens of other tasks, all with an eye toward sustainability and efficiency. Explore the ins and outs of new skills and strategies, including making your own fertilizers and coaching climbing crops into vertical spaces. Glean gardener-to-gardener, tried-and-true tips for troubleshooting peak-season challenges, such as relentless heat, pernicious plant diseases and even keeping up with overabundant harvests. You’ll also learn how to enlist the services of other inhabitants of the natural world to benefit your…

Every day, we hear from you about how Mother Earth News has helped you change your life. Now, we’d like to help you assist your friends in changing theirs. Some of you write about planting your very first garden. Some report on raising your first flock of chickens or hive of bees. Many of you describe how you’ve found new common ground with your neighbors as you share skills and work on projects together. You tell us how excited you are to have discovered Mother Earth News — and you tell us you feel empowered and happier as your lives become more sustainable and self-reliant. We share your lifestyle and we know the joy it brings. Wouldn’t it be rewarding to share some of that joy with people you care…

Pickin’ Heritage Chicken Seeing the cross section of breeds featured in your story about heritage chickens (“Heritage Backyard Chickens,” February/March 2014) was terrific! I was amazed to realize that, at one time or another, I’ve owned practically every fowl profiled in the article. Raising poultry can become addictive, and it’s an addiction that is practical and so satisfying and fun. I’d like to add, though, that some of the breeds highlighted, while being great-looking novelty breeds, are just that — a novelty. Campines, Dorkings, Hamburgs, Minorcas and Polish aren’t traditionally raised for high egg production, and — if feed prices are a concern — these breeds may not be practical for homesteaders looking to cost-effectively maximize their supply of farm-fresh eggs. Carolyn Schuster Port Orchard, Washington Ready to dive into…

As we celebrate Earth Day this April, we salute some of our favorite environmental nonprofit organizations protecting the health of people, wildlife and our planet. 350.org (www.350.org). An international campaign dedicated to fighting climate change, 350.org gets its name from the maximum level of atmospheric carbon dioxide — 350 parts per million (ppm) — that climate scientists agree will maintain our planet’s long-term ecological health. Now, the level is 400 ppm, and it’s rising by 2 ppm each year. This group organizes in 188 countries and strives to revolutionize the climate movement. Cornucopia Institute (www.Cornucopia.org). This plucky nonprofit, headquartered in Cornucopia, Wis., supports sustainable agriculture and often challenges Big Ag and even the USDA — and wins. On Cornucopia’s website, you’ll find the latest updates regarding toxic pesticides, genetically modified…

Grant Wood’s iconic American Gothic painting portrays an austere farming couple, the man with pitchfork in hand as the woman gazes on. But as current trends in farm ownership reveal, we need a revised painting wherein the wife wields a wheel hoe. A 2013 report by the U.S. Department of Agriculture shows the percentage of farms and ranches where a woman fulfills the role of “principal operator” has nearly tripled over the past three decades — from 5 percent up to nearly 14 percent of all U.S. farms. In 1982, women-operated farms totaled 121,600; by 2007, that number had climbed to 306,200 farms. (Read the full report at http://goo.gl/hV6DKX.) If you add in the women who are “secondary operators,” the sum of female farmers reaches beyond 1 million. This growth…

How can one not be enthralled by a fluttering flock of monarch butterflies landing in a hedgerow full of flowering milkweeds nestled on the edge of a farm or garden? But these butterflies’ annual migration — one of the greatest spectacles in nature — has become an endangered phenomenon. The number of monarchs reaching their overwintering grounds high in the oyamel fir forests of central Mexico has hit a record low. One of several factors that has contributed to the monarch’s steep, decade-long population plummet is the loss of milkweeds — the monarch’s host plant — as a result of herbicides used on fields of genetically modified crops. Some scientists suspect the largest contributor to the milkweed die-off is the herbicide glyphosate (the active ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup brand, among…