Acute interstitial pneumonia (AIP) is a respiratory disease characterized by lung inflammation, edema and emphysema in cattle. According to Josh Szasz, DVM, with Five Rivers Cattle Feeding , it primarily used to describe a sporadic respiratory disease. Recognized as a health issue for quite a long t...

“Just two kids with a dream” is how Deep Roots Produce ’s Liv McDaniels captioned the post. “We started our journey back in 2019 when we converted an old hay barn that sat on my family’s property into an open-air produce market. We quickly were overwhelmed by the support this community showed us and...

During Memorial Day weekend, my wife and I spent a half day with my son Peter’s family in Columbia County. I can’t drive anywhere without looking at other people’s crops. After crossing the Hudson River, I was hoping to see distinctly formed green rows of nicely emerged corn seedlings compared to th...

Hello, farm family! When I was a kid, we had a couple of old beam balance scales in our barn. A single scale could weigh large pumpkins during our annual Pumpkin Festival and farm kids the rest of the year. When we started growing cabbage and butternut for processing, we would place the two scales f...

What is it? A tick bite can be more than an annoyance. For some people, checking hay for dryness, hand-weeding vegetable crops or taking a hike in the woods is the first step in acquiring a life-changing allergy to meat and any products with mammalian ingredients. The allergy and all that’s associat...

They say “ignorance is bliss,” which essentially describes a state of being carefree because one doesn’t know about something potentially being problematic. It suggests that avoiding knowledge of something can lead to a happier, less stressful life. And I like low stress. But when someone suggests y...

“The Americans with Disabilities Act, or the ADA, is a civil rights law that prohibits discrimination based on disability,” explained Bonita Croyle, the communications manager at Farm Commons. Croyle and Chloe Johnson, a Farm Commons staff attorney, explained the legal obligations that employers hav...

Before delving into the big four fertilizer macro-nutrients – nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), potassium (K) and sulfur (S) – I’ll address a trace element that often gets under-publicized: zinc. In his “Eco-farm,” Charles Walters wrote, “Zinc is only now [1996] joining the crowd of elements required fo...

Biosecurity is important on any farm, as it helps control what enters the property and what moves throughout the property. Dr. Carolyn Hurwitz, a Maine veterinarian, described biosecurity as “a security system that’s designed to protect against biological threats.” There are many levels of biosecuri...