Putting cows, sheep and other livestock into forests to graze could prove to be a valuable tool for New York woodland management, say Cornell Cooperative Extension (CCE) agriculture educators and colleagues in the Cornell Forestry Program. ...
The overall pattern is clear, though - Vermont maple producers on average sugar a full month ahead of the starting point 100 years ago. In my region those on south-facing slopes sometimes start as early as January. And it is pretty clear that sap runs will get shorter over time.
I found this article from this post, which further emboldens me:But talk is cheap and while there is an overwhelming embrace of local food and agriculture, there is an enormous chasm between those who eat well and locally and can afford to do so, and those who cannot. The nutritional divide has never been greater, the number of hungry people in the world growing at staggering rates.
How is it possible that there is such an uprising of people who are passionate and enthusiastic and inspired by the new food movement and yet so few whose hands are actually in the soil doing the work?
In the end there is not so much a food crisis as there is a crisis in participation.
The real shift we need cannot take place when only two percent of us is doing the work to grow the food for the rest, while everyone else is cheering us on. We love the attention, but farming is not a spectator sport.
even if we didn't have energy and environmental issues to contend with, we have a gigantic demographic crisis in agriculture - the average farmer is nearly 60 years old, and their children and grandchildren have already left the land to do other work. Who will grow our food in the future? For the very first time in human history, it will be grown by people not raised to the work.
During the past 60 years, the number of sheep and lamb in the United States haveAlso popping up in my Reader this morning...the newest collection of yummy, yummy patterns from Brooklyn Tweed. Brooklyn Tweed also has yarn lines that are US grown wool spun in a US factory - and his yummy, yummy patterns all use that wool. I'm not sure how rare the US grown and spun wool is, but the sheep report says "from 1995 to 2005, wool accounted for only about 0.6 percent of all fiber use in the U.S. mills," and that doesn't sound like much. I haven't tried his yarn yet (pricey, very pricey), but it's on my list. It is spun woolen, so it's fluffier, warmer, and a bit more prickly than most yarn I typically use or spin.been declining, a fact that has been attributed to a confluence of forces. Despite the downward trend, the domestic sheep industry has taken steps toward transforming itself into a more efficient and competitive industry. This report examines the current and future challenges and opportunities that the sheep industry faces and concludes that, with a concerted industry effort and focus on new technologies, products, and markets, the downward trend can be stopped and possibly reversed.
The results are in, according to the Australia based Cooperative Research Center for Sheep Industry Innovation (Sheep CRC), and wool is the winner. Objective testing has shown ultrafine wool garments can outperform 100 percent cashmere and high quality cotton for comfort and softness.more here.
Sheep CRC commissioned the manufacture of select ultrafine wool fabrics to provide a set of benchmarks for the measurement of next to skin comfort and handle.
"It is the first time that ultrafine wool knitwear has been shown, using objective testing, to be superior to other natural fibers in terms of functional qualities valued by consumers," Sheep CRC chief executive officer professor James Rowe said. "Wools in the ultrafine micron category, used for the manufacture of these test garments, represent about two percent of the Australian wool clip and, therefore, constitute a very rare and valuable fiber resource."
