On this particular afternoon, Cameron Rentsch is pedaling an e-bike through Missoula’s University District. Hitched to the back of the bike is a narrow trailer, holding three tall receptacles for collecting food scraps. They won’t all get filled today as this route is quick—only eight stops. Rentsch follows a map marked with the addresses and, at each house, picks up a small white bucket filled with organic waste—apple cores, coffee grounds, wilted roses—and dumps the bucket into one of the receptacles on the back of the trailer. 

Rentsch does this work for Soil Cycle, a compost-based nonprofit. Monday through Friday, Soil Cycle sends its cyclists out on the road, picking up food scraps from houses and businesses and taking them back to its facility. Not only do Soil Cycle’s staff pick up the food scraps, but a few times a year, its customers can pick up the end result: compost for their home gardens. What’s more, they do it all on bicycles, keeping the transportation sustainable. In 2023, Soil Cycle diverted more than 49,680 pounds of food scraps from the landfill. It’s a circular, closed-loop system. 

Meeting a need

When Caitlyn Lewis was in graduate school at the University of Montana, there was no municipal food waste collection system in Missoula. So, after graduation, she decided that’s where she wanted to focus her energy. As a result, she founded Soil Cycle.

“I was sick of throwing my veggies away when I was cooking, and I was adulting a little bit more and cooking with more fresh produce and thinking about my waste stream a little bit more than maybe I did when I was in high school. And there was nowhere to put it.”

Missoula is far from the only city to have a community compost program, but Soil Cycle stands out for its focus on sustainable transportation. There are a handful of other communities that also have bike-powered food scraps collection, such as BK Rot in New York City and Peels & Wheels in New Haven, Connecticut. Soil Cycle has gone through several different mission shifts since its founding, but the bicycle transport has remained one of the core values, says Lewis. 

“We figured we can meet as many issues in our city with one organization…soil health, food waste, carbon sequestration and sustainable transportation,” says Lewis. “It really is an example of how to do business in a different way.”

A few times a year, Soil Cycle is able to give the actual compost back to the customers.

“We’re creating this fertilizer that you can use on your houseplants and in your garden, and they can see firsthand how they’re making a difference,” says Elisabeth Davidson, executive director of Soil Cycle. “And I think that’s probably the biggest part in closing that loop. It’s people seeing the product that’s created by the food waste.”

Even a few years ago, the mindset around composting felt different in Missoula, says Lewis. When she started Soil Cycle, there were about 10 people who signed up right away. But others took some convincing.

“The rest were like, well, why do I need to compost? Why should I pay a service a fee to collect it? Why do you make compost?” says Lewis.

Left: Rentsch approaches the bike receptacles. Right: Aerial view of food scraps in the receptacle. (Photos by Lena Beck)

While limiting food waste is best for the environment, redirecting wasted food away from landfills is the next best option. Research from the EPA in 2023 found that 58 percent of landfill-produced methane came from wasted food. Methane is a greenhouse gas that contributes to climate change. Composting integrates oxygen into the equation, minimizing the methane produced when done correctly.

As more municipalities have created food scrap pick-ups and compost services, the directionality is often one-way. People let their food scraps be collected at the curb, says Davidson, and then their involvement ends. She hopes more people will start to wonder where those food scraps end up. 

“I wish folks just knew more about where their food was going after they threw it in the compost bin,” says Davidson. “It gets sent off and then [people are] like, ‘OK, I did my part.’ And that’s true, they did do their part. But looking throughout the system, you need to think down the line of OK, where’s my food waste going after this? How is it being processed? And how is it being distributed?”

Beyond Soil Cycle and Missoula, many cities have programs where you can purchase or get compost for free, making the process more full circle. In Bozeman, Montana, Happy Trash Can Compost collects food scraps and sells the finished compost back to the community. In Los Angeles, LA Compost provides several options for obtaining free compost, through farmers markets, co-ops or community hubs. Even some of the food scraps collected through the municipal program in Portland, Oregon are processed by Recology Organics, which will sell its compost products retail.

What’s next

A little before 4 pm, Rentsch finishes the route and pulls the e-bike to a stop in front of the gate surrounding Soil Cycle’s headquarters. Dropping off the food scraps and cleaning out the receptacles is the only thing left to do today.

“We can’t save every piece of fruit—organic materials are organic and they will decompose,” says Lewis. “But we should honor them and we should make the best-quality fertilizer we can.” 

Meanwhile, Lewis, who in recent years has also started a flower farm called Blue Mountain Flowers, has realized that there are some additional challenges to composting at the farm level—for example, an abundance of organic material can be hard to “turn,” a critical part of composting, if you don’t have heavy equipment. One of her goals for the coming year is to design a composting system that is easy to manage for farmers and is replicable across small farms.

“It’s a passion project of mine to create a composting system that can be replicated for small farmers,” she says. “And there’s ways to do it, without putting [in] a ton of time. You just have to be creative.”

Left: Rentsch bikes through Missoula picking up food scraps. Right: The bike parked at a customer’s house. (Photos by Lena Beck)

Since Soil Cycle is hyperlocal, there’s no competition with nearby municipalities. A company or initiative doing the same thing in the next town over is a collaborator, not a rival. 

“It doesn’t necessarily have to be bicycle-powered and identical to what we’re doing,” says Davidson. “But I’d say a lot of local communities are interested in creating some sort of composting service.”

And Soil Cycle’s connections stretch far beyond Montana, as more communities try to pick up the idea.

“I have a meeting with someone tomorrow, who I believe is from Ireland, [who says] ‘I want to do what you’re doing, here,’” says Davidson. “OK, let’s talk about it.”

The post Meet the Modern Composters on Wheels appeared first on Modern Farmer.

Kiawah River is an “agrihood”—a planned community with a working farm at its center. Residents may work or volunteer at the farm, or they may participate in a residents CSA program or visit their own farmer’s market. Kiawah River worked with established farms to begin its agrihood, building a community around preexisting farmland. Its farm partners include fourth-generation Freeman Farms and second-generation Rosebank Farms, along with several others.

Other agrihoods establish farms as central hubs when planning the community. Chickahominy Falls is located outside of Richmond, VA, in what is known as the French hay district, an area that has traditionally been farmland. The agrihood there is for residents 55 and over, and 10-acre Woodside Farms provides a gathering space, volunteer and working opportunities and a CSA.

Tiny Timbers is a small agrihood in St. Croix Falls, WI, a small city on the border near Minneapolis, MN. Its agrihood model uses tiny homes as the residences, with 11 families currently sharing the responsibilities of gardening and caring for the chickens, honey bees and orchards. The community was started by a husband-and-wife team, inspired by a passion for tiny homes and good food. They broke ground on their first houses in the spring of 2023, and they will complete their agrihood with 16 homes.

“Unlike many agrihoods that have a farmer on the edge of the development, ours is all resident operated,” says Melissa Jones, founder of Tiny Timbers. “So, they are personally getting their hands dirty.”

The Tiny Timbers agrihood model uses “tiny homes” as the residences. (Photo courtesy of Tiny Timbers)

Agrihoods are not a new phenomenon, but their presence has grown in the United States in recent years. According to a report by the Urban Land Institute, in 2018, there were more than 200 agrihoods in 28 states. The concept may seem similar to a commune, but agrihoods are not based around shared politics or religion but focus on fresh food and strong communities. Participation requirements on the farms vary. Many agrihoods offer volunteer opportunities on the farm for residents, but they do not require any participation in farming.

The Urban Land Institute considers agrihoods a valuable trend, helping to solve several issues within the US housing market. With 73 percent of Americans considering access to fresh and healthy food a priority, agrihood living puts residents in the middle of healthy food production. An agrihood’s investment in farmland can help save a family farm and keep more farmland in production. Revenue from the sales of agrihood properties can directly support farms when an agrihood is established, and even working farms near agrihoods that are not involved in the communities can see the value of their farmland rise when an agrihood is built nearby. Building a community around a farm will also save farmers shipping costs and reduce greenhouse gas emissions as produce no longer needs to be transported over long distances.

The agrihood model may harken back to communes or even colonial villages, but if you find yourself wondering “why now?”—the answer may be as simple as reliable access to great food.

“The people here are so kind and fun,” says Danna Berg, a resident of Kiawah River who moved to the agrihood from St. Petersburg, FL in 2021. “I had heard of an agrihood before, but I wasn’t really familiar with the concept. When I stepped foot on the property, I knew it was for me.”

Berg volunteers in the gardens and on the farm at Kiawah River. Every resident we spoke to indicated that the fresh produce was a huge part of the appeal of Kiawah River, from the honey and eggs to the fresh produce and goat’s milk. 

Kiawah River worked with established farms to begin its agrihood outside Charleston, South Carolina. (Photo courtesy of Kiawah River)

In some ways, agrihood living is an idealized version of farm life. At many agrihoods, you won’t have to shovel waste or dig in the dirt if you don’t want to, but you can still enjoy the benefits of local, organic produce grown right outside your door. Even when the residents are involved in the running of the farm, an agrihood can still present a more appealing option than beginning a farm on your own.

Those interested in growing their own food to any scale need to invest in farmland, and access to suitable and affordable farmland is the greatest barrier to young farmers getting started. In an agrihood, access to the land is guaranteed and does not come with the risks of beginning a new family farm.

“A lot of people want to live a healthier lifestyle and be involved with where their food comes from,” says Jones. “But farming can be a lonely, overwhelming task. So, having a community where people can learn from each other, tackle the areas of the agrihood they are skilled in, it helps everyone have a healthier, more fulfilling existence—and make friendships along the way.”

“The eggs are simply amazing,” says Lindsay Cobb. She and her husband Charlie moved to Kiawah River in 2021. When they moved, they had not heard of an agrihood, but they loved the idea of living near a farm and being part of the community events that Kiawah River hosts. 

“Access to the fresh vegetables is so unique,” Cobb adds. For farmers, access to fresh vegetables may be a given. But for many Americans, the opportunity to enjoy fresh produce is indeed unique. According to the Urban Land Institute report, 16 percent of Americans say that fresh food is not available in their communities.

The majority of agrihoods in the US today are marketed towards a more affluent demographic, with the average home price in an agrihood around $400,000. However, the model can be applied to lower-income housing and more urban developments. Agrihoods opening in Santa Clara, CA and Denver, CO are committed to offering affordable housing as part of their planned community. At Tiny Timbers, the tiny house model allows most residents to own their homes debt free.

Eleven families currently share the responsibilities of gardening and caring for chickens and honeybees at Tiny Timbers in St. Croix Falls, WI. (Photo courtesy of Tiny Timbers)

The farms around which agrihoods center face the same challenges as any other agricultural establishment. They can be adversely affected by weather, pests and predators, impacting their ability to supply the community. Some agrihood farms choose to focus on vegetable production to avoid the smells and noises of livestock, which can limit diversity of agrihood-produced goods. 

As they address housing needs in a local area, provide healthy food to residents and foster a connection between people and food production, agrihoods seem to offer solutions to numerous challenges. And while a healthy diet often brings residents to an agrihood, residents say that community is what makes them love agrihood living.

“The community here is top notch,” explains Barbara Viverito, who has lived at Kiawah River agrihood since August of 2020. “I have never seen a group of people so friendly.”

While they come in all shapes and sizes, the future of agrihoods may be with individuals like Melissa and Shane Jones at Tiny Timbers. Five years after purchasing a plot of land in 2017, they decided to do something more than just homestead for themselves.

“We have a tiny cabin that we love,” says Melissa Jones, “and my husband has a passion for homesteading—so why not combine those things and create a place where people can live lightly, often debt free, and have the ability to grow healthy, organic food? They can live a healthier lifestyle and be around people that have similar interests.”

The post Moving into the Agrihood appeared first on Modern Farmer.

But things got complicated, and quickly. As schools went virtual, little Hudson had to start her kindergarten classes online. “It was impossible. She could not connect, even with the hotspot device, because we get terrible reception. Nothing worked,” Stroup recalls. By the third day of school, the girl was crying, worried that the rest of her classmates would learn to read while she was left behind. 

Stroup closed the laptop. She packed a lunch, took her granddaughter by the hand and walked down to the nearby creek. Together, the pair went through sets of picture books, until Hudson was able to sound out the words by herself. 

Unfortunately, most issues caused by Stroup’s slow internet connection are not so easily solved. Stroup and her husband farm about 200 acres near Bessemer City, NC. They raise beef cattle and plant wheat and soybeans. But they have been consistently stymied when it comes to internet access on their farm. The issue became even more apparent during COVID. With no reliable internet connection, the Stroups were stuck selling person to person, in a time when that sort of business was the most dangerous option. “It crippled us, especially then,” says Stroup. 

Even now, the lack of internet keeps the farm lagging behind. Most new farming equipment relies on an internet connection for GPS or other services. Even if the machine itself is not connected, you need the internet to fix it. “If you buy something new, they no longer give you a printed manual. As far as fixes and repairs and whatnot, you have to be able to download [a manual] off the internet.” So, Stroup is stuck with vehicles and equipment from the 1970s. “We can’t modernize,” she says. “We’re cut off.”

The Stroup farm is a classic example of those impacted by the middle mile effect. In an urban area, if an internet service provider (ISP) lays a mile of cable for broadband internet, it will be able to connect hundreds, if not thousands, of customers because the area is densely populated. In a rural area, that same mile of cable might connect a single family, so ISPs aren’t financially incentivized to run cable in those regions. What ends up happening is a lot of high-volume areas, surrounded by dead zones. 

In fact, Stroup says she was told by one ISP that it would not run cable connecting her farm with a new housing development being built at the edge of her property line unless the Stroups paid  for it themselves at a cost of more than $15,000. Stroup was shocked. “Are you crazy?” she thought. “Why am I paying for it?”

She sent a letter to her senator, who responded in 2021. He said there could be funding available for her through the Infrastructure Bill but that the decision of how and when to allocate those funds was down to the local level. He encouraged her to contact her governor. Stroup did. The governor’s response was to send her a fundraising letter. 

“You hear on the news that there’s new funding available and billions of dollars pumped in to specifically connect the middle mile,” says Stroup. “Where is that funding?” 

Lisa Stroup and her granddaughter. Photography by Lisa Stroup.

Mapping broadband’s dead zones

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) defines broadband as having download speeds of at least 25 megabits per second (MBPS) and upload speeds of at least three MBPS. The commission is in charge of keeping track of who is connected, what their speeds are and what needs to be done to get more Americans connected. It collects data, which gets compiled into the National Broadband Map. But the numbers on how many people are without broadband are anything but concrete. Some government figures put it at one in five US households, which would be 24 million households without access. The FCC’s 2020 report estimated that there were only 21 million individuals without access. But research from BroadbandNow, an independent firm, puts that number closer to 42 million Americans. 

The data is all over the place because the FCC’s mapping system is not verified. “They rely solely on information provided by ISPs,” says Sascha Meinrath, the Palmer Chair in telecommunications at Penn State University. “Every ISP is providing these hyperbolically rosy estimates of where they serve and the speeds that are available in those locations. And there’s no meaningful verification, much less any accountability.”

Meinrath says when you get down into the data, you find that the majority of people who aren’t connected to the internet are rural Americans and the poorest in the country. “Neither of those constituencies have a whole lot of wealth to squander,” he says. But that’s exactly what’s happening, as they often have to pay more for worse service. In the Cost of Connectivity report, researchers found that Americans pay more for internet services than most other countries in the global north, and the gap in service disproportionately affects people of color. 

Photography by Shutterstock.

Meinrath says a big part of the problem is that our ISPs don’t interoperate, meaning they don’t use each other’s equipment or infrastructure. And we’ve been here before. Picture an old black and white movie. There’s often a big boss, and they’ve got many different phones all sitting on their desk, each using a different telephone system. However, in 1934, the Communications Act passed with the mandate of universal service: the idea that everyone has the right to access communications services. The phone companies were forced to work together, and folks were able to have a single telephone for all of their needs. 

But now, says Meinrath, we’re right back where we started with ISPs. They don’t share infrastructure, which is why you’ll often see multiple cellular towers in the same area, because each provider uses their own. It’s expensive and goes against the proven success of a universal service mandate. 

So, what could the Farm Bill do about this? There are a few areas that we could start with, and Meinrath says the first one won’t cost the government a dime. “The Farm Bill could include a mandate that says anytime a provider reports to a federal agency that they provide service at an address, they must provide that service within 30 days or get fined $10,000 a day until they do,” says Meinrath. In other words, force the ISPs to show verification that they are doing what they claim. “You would spend nothing, and all of your maps would get super accurate, super quickly.” 

Beyond that, we could look to bring back the idea of common carriage. Up until 2005, we had common carriage in the US, just like the universal service with telephones. “If you had a telecommunications infrastructure, you had to carry the traffic of your competitors. For example, we all remember the dial-up modem days and all those CD-ROMs sent by AOL. The reason they could do that is because whoever your local phone provider was, they had to allow you to use their infrastructure,” says Meinrath. But the government got rid of common carriage in 2005, so ISPs started focusing on only the most profitable areas, leaving “nothing in other areas. And if you look, we have spent more on infrastructure than it would cost to provide universal service.” 

In the face of evidence and data, why have we set up a system that overbuilds in urban areas and nearly ignores rural spots? “The honest answer is because we’re idiots,” Meinrath says facetiously. “The opportunity cost to the country is an order of magnitude greater than the cost of just funding the build… It doesn’t make sense to the populace, not just rural, but the entire populace. And the only reason why we’ve done that is we have allowed ISPs to really dictate our policy, even when it is a vast detriment to society.”

Emily Haxby on her farm. Photography courtesy of Emily Haxby.

Struggling to connect

Emily Haxby, a fifth-generation farmer in Gage County, NE, has been vocal about what the lack of internet means for her and her neighbors. Or at least, she’s tried. 

“I was actually doing a Zoom call with the Farm Bureau, the state board, and we were talking about broadband and connecting people, and those 11,000 missing locations in our state. And I kept glitching out, because I didn’t have an internet hotspot.”

Haxby and her family farm corn and soybeans and raise cattle and goats. When folks outside of agriculture think about those tasks, they may not realize just how connected modern farmers need to be. But Haxby uses wifi-connected monitoring systems for her crops and animals, but needs to drive into town to upload her data. All of the pivots she irrigates with are monitored and connected to the internet. And without reliable broadband, things get pricey. “A lot of people are using cellular [data] because that’s all that’s available,” says Haxby.

While Haxby does have some internet service, the speeds are much slower than she needs. For instance, the camera that she keeps in the barn to watch over her animals isn’t the most reliable. “It’s very glitchy when I’m watching my critters. Have you ever seen a lagging goat walking around a barn? It’s really funny,” she says. On average, the speeds in Haxby’s area are about six MBPS to download and two MBPS to upload (far slower than the 25-three benchmark set by the FCC). Haxby says she’d like to install more cameras, especially in the calving season, but she can’t rely on them with her current connectivity. 

So, she tried to do something about it. She ran for supervisor in Gage County, and was elected on a platform that focused on internet access. She headed the Gage County Rural Broadband Project, with the aim of getting fiber internet out to at least 40 percent of the region. 

Now, after months of work, the project is moving forward with the ISP NextLink. Cables are going in the ground now and connecting more than 1,000 homes. “People are so excited to finally be connected with something more reliable. I get so many calls [asking] ‘when will it get to my place?’” says Haxby. The initial phase of the connection project will service about 40 percent of Gage County, but Haxby says that’s just not enough. Even with a goal of 99 percent of the state, that leaves out one percent of Nebraskans, or roughly 20,000 people. 

Haxby hopes these figures will finally compel ISPs to build out in rural areas. “I think for a long time providers have gotten complacent. There hasn’t been a push to get fiber to rural areas. I know there’s a cost barrier to that, but as a nation, we’re starting to see this is important,” she says. She hopes the Farm Bill comes with stipulations on its funding. “I hope the Farm Bill includes, at bare minimum, a requirement that any funding of broadband should be a minimum of 100/100 for speeds. We need to do what we can to make sure that the money that is being expended isn’t immediately outdated as we progress into the future.”

Broadband getting installed in Gage County. Photography by Emily Haxby.

Many legislators are promoting broadband. Georgia Senator Raphael Warnock and South Dakota Senator John Thune presented the bipartisan Promoting Precision Agriculture Act this spring, aiming to develop a national taskforce to determine connectivity standards for farm equipment. “Setting interconnectivity standards will help more agriculture devices, from a soil monitor in the ground to a drone overhead, talk to one another and transmit data efficiently, so that farmers can always have the latest information available to make decisions to improve efficiency, improve crop yields and lower costs,” a representative from Warnock’s office told Modern Farmer.

Senator Warnock, among other legislators, has also been vocal in pressuring the FCC to release broadband funding through the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund, and his representatives say he is working to include specific language relating to broadband internet and precision agriculture within the Farm Bill. 

At the state level, many government agencies are instituting grant policies to try and effectively distribute federal funding for broadband. In Minnesota, officials from Governor Tim Walz’s office say their data shows that roughly 180,000 households in rural areas are without broadband. So, they are distributing $100 million over the next two years through two programs: the Border to Border Broadband Development Grant and the Low Density Grant. The goal is to have all Minnesota homes and businesses connected to high speed internet by 2026. 

But that could be where the issues lie. It’s not that people aren’t invested in solving this problem. It’s that too many people in too many disparate agencies are working independently, says Emily Buckman, director of government affairs with the American Farm Bureau Federation. “We have been supportive of the ReConnect program, which has become the USDA premier broadband program over the last five years and the most funded,” says Buckman. “We also will be supportive of just streamlining the programs that are currently in place. There’s a rural broadband program over at USDA that’s pretty similar to ReConnect…There’s just so many programs out there that we would like to see as much streamlining as possible, so that it makes it easier for the providers to apply and get those networks deployed.”

Broadband has been a priority for the AFBF for years, says Buckman, but the conversation ramped up during COVID. It was then that the federation members recognized broadband access as a priority to push for within the Farm Bill. “Farmers and ranchers depend on broadband, just as they do highways, rails, waterways, to ship food and fuel across the country,” says Buckman. “We hear a lot about sustainability these days; our members are doing a lot more with less. And a lot of that is due to the technology advancements that have occurred over the last several decades. And many of those do require connection.”

Broadband getting installed in Gage County. Photography by Emily Haxby.

Disconnecting

Lisa Stroup in Gaston County is doubtful that she’ll ever see high-speed internet on her property. It’s doubly frustrating, as she watches the new housing development at the end of her property get fully wired. “The people who could make it happen don’t respond to you. Nobody is familiar with [the issue]. I’m like, OK, so what do I do with that? Who do you call?” 

Stoup eventually called her county office and was told they had no more funding to allocate to additional broadband, a fact that Justin Amos, the county manager’s chief of staff, confirmed. The county was able to participate in a grant program last year for the first time, partnering with the ISP Spectrum Southeast to leverage funds through the GREAT grant. Through that program, it connected 178 new locations in the county to high-speed internet. Amos also notes that the locations were picked by Spectrum, not the county.  

However, the funds for that grant are limited, and Amos says that while the county is looking at future funding opportunities, it does not have the funds right now. “We are happy to reach out to speak with Spectrum or another ISP partner to find out their broadband expansion plans. Unfortunately, for this resident and others in similar circumstances, the cost of providing high-speed broadband is expensive. For example, it can cost $50,000 per mile to expand broadband and that assumes perfect conditions,” says Amos. It’s not uncommon for some of that cost to fall to the residents in rural parts of North Carolina, he says, so Stroup isn’t alone in getting a sky-high quote from her ISP. 

It’s difficult to calculate what the lack of internet has cost Stroup. As the cost of fertilizer and seed continues to rise, just running the farm at a basic capacity is difficult. She can’t justify paying more for cellular data or hotspots. And driving into town to find internet service “cuts into your productivity and how much you can actually produce…Even though it’s looked at as a minor inconvenience to us, it has a major impact on the food supply,” says Stroup. So, she’s essentially given up the fight. 

Stroup says that, regardless of what legislation comes out or funding deployed in her area, she will be completely surprised if her farm is ever connected. “They’re not going to waste their money on us.” 

The post ‘We’re Cut Off’: Rural Farmers Are Desperate For Broadband Internet appeared first on Modern Farmer.

This is the story that guests at one haunted farm are told when they visit during the Halloween season. Another haunted farm attraction in Alabama promises to bring you closer to the “creatures and killers” of the farm. Another, in South Carolina, invites you to its “desolate farm” where the inhabitants are hoping “to make you this year’s harvest!”

Haunted farm attractions are not homogenous—some are real working farms that incorporate haunted attractions into their seasonal offerings as a way to supplement farm revenue and connect with the community. 

Other haunted farm attractions aren’t farms at all but haunted house businesses that use the idea of a haunted farm to inspire terror. The popularity of this concept is more than a fun seasonal activity, though. It also engages with longstanding narratives about rurality, performing them for a fearful audience.

Haunted houses and cultivating screams

Growing up a theater kid, it wasn’t hard for Betty Aquino to fall in love with farm haunted houses. After college, she found herself working for a haunted house attraction on a farm as a make-up artist. Aquino went on to do her graduate work at George Mason University and completed her thesis work on how haunted house attractions on farms rely on rural tropes that can be both empowering and problematic.

For small farms that face pressures from big agriculture and high land prices, using things such as haunted house attractions to supplement income is a way to adapt. But, in some cases, to make it work, haunted farmhouses often rely on the stereotypes of the rural “other”—the idea that whatever happens on a farm after dark is scary and unknown.

Haunted houses are more story driven than other farm attractions such as corn mazes or pumpkin picking, often relying on a pre-constructed narrative. Capitalism is a driving force in these narratives, says Aquino, informing depictions of gender, race and class and occasionally referencing a community’s own trauma. In one farm haunt she visited in Michigan, Aquino felt that what she saw was representative of the automobile industry’s history in the state. The villain in the story comes to the town and promises jobs, only to use dark magic against the town instead.

“One of their haunts has this narrative of a town that has lost its industry,” says Aquino. “And it is essentially this ghost town that’s very much a mirror of many towns in Michigan.”

The “ghost town” narrative was one Aquino saw a lot during her field research—as was “hillbilly horror.”

“I think those narratives are very reflective of their near-death experiences as farms,” says Aquino. “And they’ve had to pivot and rebuild their businesses.”

A haunted attraction that was once a farm. (Photography from Shutterstock)

The benefits of haunted houses

Although haunted houses existed in some form or another long before this, historian David Skal argues that the popularity of haunted houses in general grew significantly after Disney opened the Haunted Mansion attraction in 1969.

As we wrote a few years back, Halloween is a holiday with deep agricultural roots. It marks both the end of the harvest season and a time of year when the connection to the spirit world is the strongest. Opening haunted houses on farms is a natural extension of this connection.

Perhaps thanks to the associations between Halloween and agriculture, many farms have had success introducing haunted farm attractions into their business. According to the USDA, between 2002 and 2017, agritourism revenue more than tripled. This figure represents more than Halloween attractions, but the fall season is a big draw for a lot of farms.

Kevin McCall, managing partner of McCall’s Pumpkin Patch in Moriarty, New Mexico, says that adding haunted attractions to the farm’s offerings has been a helpful source of revenue. The farm started by introducing a haunted hayride, but “it’s hard to haunt on a hayride,” he says. Then it added a haunted corn maze with about 50 actors and props. In the 2000s, the farm converted its cattle barn into a haunted barn attraction. It’s woven all together with the fictional narrative of a farmer who, in response to an interstate being built through the farm, begins slaughtering tourists.

McCall’s Pumpkin Patch draws visitors from Albuquerque and Santa Fe, and this season, it sold out. This showcases the significant benefit that Halloween haunts can have for farms—McCall says the business it gets from haunting allows more freedom and security with the agricultural side of the business. 

“It’s allowed us to be a very different type of farmer,” says McCall. 

A person dressed up for Halloween on the farm. (Photography from Shutterstock)

The future of haunted farm attractions

In Rural Remix’s new podcast, “The Rural Horror Picture Show,” hosts Susannah Broun and Anya Petrone Slepyan talk about classic films in the folk horror genre and how depictions in horror films such as “Deliverance” and “The Hills Have Eyes” portray rural spaces as scary places where horrors are born. They point out that this narrative has old roots in popular culture. 

When it comes to the future of haunted house attractions on farms, Aquino concludes that these haunts are a space of evolving rural identity. 

As a genre, she says, horror has the ability to critique and interrogate many institutions and ideas. Rural communities are also capable of challenging the status quo—through things such as unions and initiatives such as the Black Appalachian Coalition, which works to fight the erasure of Black people from narratives about Appalachia. Rural haunts can be a space to question tropes about rurality.  

“I hope that there is a return to radical roots in rural spaces,” says Aquino, “and that we continue to see more diversity in the narratives and the people working at these places.” 

Halloween and agriculture have always been linked, and seasonal haunts give us the opportunity to understand that connection in today’s context.

The post The Haunting of the Farm appeared first on Modern Farmer.

In a recent peer-reviewed analysis published in the journal Science Advances, the authors warn that we have crossed six of nine planetary boundaries—including the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide and genetic diversity or the current extinction rate of species—imperiling our ability to live and thrive in functioning societies. 

Activists are calling on President Joe Biden to declare a climate emergency and demanding that the companies most responsible for climate change own up and change. But it is becoming increasingly clear that we all have to take personal action, be it reducing our reliance on transportation (the largest source of emissions in the US) to making more sustainable food and drinks choices.

But what does making sustainable drinks choices actually mean? There is no agreed-upon definition of “sustainable”, “eco-friendly”, “green” or “natural”. A bottle of wine declaring itself to be all of these things very well might be—or it might not be. 

While the Federal Trade Commission is responding to years of formal complaints and officially taking action on greenwashing and deceptive marketing around sustainability, it’s unclear how ironclad the new rules will be and when they’ll be put into place. 

While there are certain third-party certified labels that can clue you into what really went into the growing and production of a bottle of wine, beer or spirits, there are also other clues that will let you know if a producer is authentically sustainable or striking a pose. 

Canned wine can be a better option over bulky bottles. Photography courtesy of Sipwell.

Seek out lighter, alternative options 

As your mom always tells you, presentation is important. That is why, for decades, bigger and fancier bottles of wine, spirits and beer were used as shorthand for quality. There was no reason beyond aesthetics messaging for still wine producers to put their wares in heavy bottles. (Sparkling wine is a bit different; the built-up pressure of carbon dioxide in sparkling wine can cause lighter bottles to explode).  Surely, the thinking went, if this producer can afford to put their wares in a gilded and embossed bottle that requires two hands to lift, it must be good?

But it’s that packaging that is responsible for a shocking proportion of a product’s carbon footprint: an estimated 40 percent for beer, 29 percent for wine and 20 percent for spirits. Thankfully, producers are taking note. 

Simply opting for lighter bottles is one option. Bodega Catena Zapata in Argentina is reducing the weight of some of its  bottles to 380 from 700 grams starting in 2024, a change that is projected to reduce the carbon emissions of its bottles by an estimated 21 percent, says managing director Laura Catena. This reduction is part of an ongoing effort that will continue in the coming years. Overall as a company, Catena Zapata has already reduced its bottle weight from 2010 through today by 40 percent. 

“We are targeting our highest-volume wines first because we know this will make the biggest difference,” says Catena. 

How to tell if a bottle of wine is light? Pick it up: 380 grams is about 0.83 pounds, or the same weight as a can of soda. 

At Tablas Creek in Paso Robles, CA, which produces around 30,000 cases annually, second-generation proprietor Jason Haas has drastically reduced bottle weights and become one of the first premium US brands to offer wine in boxes. 

Haas says the company transitioned to lighter bottles in 2010, as it began farming organically and reducing waste across its production, from grape to glass. Tablas slashed the weight of its bottles almost in half, to 16.5 ounces from 31.5, but was moved to release a limited-edition boxed wine in 2022 after learning that boxes reduce the carbon footprint by 84 percent. While Tablas made 2,000 boxes of wine, or about 650 cases (two percent of the production), Haas calculated that, after just 10 years, it would  save 1.37 million pounds of glass. There has been approximately zero blowback from customers on both. 

“We got almost universal encouragement on lighter bottles, partly because of the environmental impact, but mostly because the bigger bottles are a pain to lift, handle and store,” says Haas, adding that the $95 boxed wine has also been embraced for its portability and the fact that bag-in-box wine preserves wine for several weeks, making it a great option for people who want just one glass of great wine a day. (And hey, if Vogue thinks boxed wine is cool, maybe projected growth rates of 5.7 percent through 2033 aren’t as off-base as they sound, given wines’ overall declining sales.)

Others are transitioning from bottled beer and wine to cans. The transition from bottles to cans for breweries has been steady and smooth, with brewers saying that cans protect the beer from light, are more recyclable and don’t interfere with flavors. (About 63.4 percent of craft beer on the market is in cans, an enormous increase from five years ago, when just 33.5 percent of craft beer was sold in cans, according to NielsenIQ. After decades of beer in bottles, cans account for a lion’s share of both on- and off-premise beer sales. 

Wine and spirits are still distributed primarily in bottle form, but canned cocktail sales are on the rise, and more and more wineries are offering canned wines, with a projected compound annual growth rate through 2028 of 13.2 percent. 

“Cans are recycled at about twice the rate of bottles and have a 45-percent lower carbon footprint than bottled wine,” says Hilary Cocalis, founder of Sipwell Wine Company, a California-based canned wine company recognized as the Best Canned Wine of 2022 by Wine Spectator. “Cans also require 60-percent less packaging to ship than the equivalent volume of bottled wine and can be recycled infinitely.” 

A cork harvest. Photography courtesy of APCOR.

 Start with the stopper 

Something as simple as the stopper on a wine or spirits bottle can have an outsize impact on the sustainability of the overall product. Cork is not only biodegradable, it is sourced from living trees in a completely regenerative process for centuries. Cork farmers harvest cork for two months a year from trees that live for up to 250 years, and can be harvested at least 15 times during its lifetime. Trees are harvested every nine years and regenerate between harvests.

“Using a cork stopper has a direct measurable contribution to a better environment,” says Carlos de Jesus, operational director of the Portuguese Cork Association. 

Indeed, according to a study conducted by Ernst and Young and commissioned by Corticeira Amorim, one single cork closure captures 309 grams of carbon for still wine and 562 grams for sparkling wine, offsetting the carbon footprint of glass wine bottles, which release between 300 and 500 grams of carbon on average during production. For spirits bottles, cork captures an estimated 148 grams per stopper. 

The carbon offset is great, says de  Jesus, but the contribution goes deeper.

“In addition to playing a great role in carbon retention, cork oak forests also create well-paid agricultural jobs, foster biodiversity, regulate water cycles and protect against forest fires,” he notes.  

Cork closure, check. But also look for extraneous plastic and foil closures around those corks. The capsule on the top of a bottle can look pretty, but it’s a pain to remove and there’s no true need for one. They cost money (which is then passed onto you), the ore from which tin is made is not renewable and foil capsules cannot be recycled in many municipalities. It’s more expensive garbage for the town dump, in other words. 

That’s why several producers, including Kings Carey Wines in Lompoc, CA, have opted to go topless. 

“The foil costs us about $1 a bottle, so we’ve saved thousands already by opting to go foil-free,” says winemaker James Carey. “We’ve also saved on shipping and prevented needless waste. I know some people like them, but it just entails too much waste to rationalize it. Small steps like that can make big impacts, slowly, but surely, which is why we take action where we can.”

The first bottle washer at Staub Brewery, circa the 1940s. Photography courtesy of Staub Brewery.

Pennsylvania’s Straub Brewery produces one of—if not the—country’s only reusable beer bottles. 

“It used to be that reusable bottles were the only way to go, but they’ve really been completely phased out,” says CEO William Brock. “We stick to it because it makes sense and prevents waste. It also saves resources and money, which we pass on to the consumer.”

The reusable beer bottles Straub offers last up to a decade, and they are about 20 percent cheaper than the throwaways, says Brock. While it accounts for only about 12 percent of Straub’s total production, Brock plans to stick to it for as long as he can. 

“Because we’re one of the only breweries still offering this, the bottle-washing machine we use is practically one of a kind at this point,” says Brock. “It requires a little extra effort, but we see it as foundational and part of our mission to just be good corporate citizens.”

One of the sneakiest ways to cut carbon is by snagging wines, ciders and beers by the glass when dining out—from kegs. Kegs, it is estimated, remove about half of all single-use beer containers from bars and restaurants’ waste streams. In the US alone, that accounts for billions of containers. While sipping suds from pints has been one of the preferred ways to consume cider and beers for decades, wine lovers and producers have been slower to embrace the phenomena. 

Haas is all in though. 

“Just this year we’ve moved to pouring most tasting room wines out of a keg,” says Haas. “We estimate that this saves us from creating about 10,000 bottles a year.”

In addition to eliminating waste and reducing the carbon footprint of wine, because kegged wine maintains its freshness (in bottles, the wine is repeatedly exposed to oxygen, which degrades its quality), it stays good to the last drop. 

One restaurant, Sixty Vines, is so bullish on kegged wine that its entire operation revolves around it. Founded in Dallas, TX in 2016, the brand has grown quickly, and it now includes eight restaurants in Texas, Florida, North Carolina, Tennessee and (soon) Virginia. Jeff Carcara, CEO of Sixty Vines, says it  launched to “reimagine wine culture” and partner with ultra-premium wine brands such as  Charles Heidsieck, Krupp Brothers, Ken Wright and M. Chapoutier not normally—to say the least—associated with keg parties. 

They serve an average of 15,000 kegs a year across their restaurants, saving 400,000 bottles of wine a year from the landfill. 

“By saving millions of bottles annually and collaborating with renowned winemakers, we champion the environmental benefits of kegged wines,” says Carcara. “Kegs have a 90-percent lower carbon footprint than glass bottles, aligning with our commitment to sustainability. We’re also excited to introduce a younger generation to premium varietals and propel kegging into the mainstream. ”  

When it comes to true sustainability, believing what a producer is saying is tempting. But there’s no way to ensure that your interpretation of “eco-friendly” is the same as theirs. 

As Carey says, small steps can make big impacts—but only if a lot of us take them. Bottom line: For now, don’t believe everything you read on a drink label. 

The post Scouting Out Eco-Friendly Drinks in a Sea of Greenwashing appeared first on Modern Farmer.

Before the late 1970s, around 70 percent of the clothing that Americans bought was made in the country. As the world became increasingly globalized, this changed. Much of America’s clothing production was moved overseas. Today, most of the wool used in clothing comes from Australia. Synthetic fibers made from raw substances such as petroleum also extended the distance between local economies and natural fibers by offering a cheaper and faster alternative. Today, “fast fashion” results in far-reaching environmental and social impacts, such as exploited cheap labor and the use of harmful dyes and unsustainable fibers. What do we lose when we are removed from our fiber sources?

Vancouver Island and the Gulf Islands in British Columbia, Canada, have many artisanal textile farms. In her new book, Fleece & Fibre: Textile Producers of Vancouver Island and the Gulf Islands, Francine McCabe takes you to them. Through thoughtful accounts of farm visits and original photos of charismatic animals, McCabe guides readers through the materials that are made in her region, as well as the farmers, plants and animals that produce them.

Beyond the individual farms, McCabe also paints a larger portrait of the textile landscape in Vancouver Island and the Gulf Islands. The area seemingly no longer has any processing mills for raw fibers. As a result, much of the material produced in the region has to leave to be processed, and it can’t be sourced by makers or artisans looking for local product. 

In this book, which comes out October 10, McCabe digs into what it means to have a local and sustainable fiber economy and explores the confluence of industry and art.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Modern Farmer: You begin the book with a quote from Indigenous writer and bryologist Robin Wall Kimmerer: “To love a place is not enough. We must find ways to heal it.” Why did you choose this quote and how is this sentiment reflected in your book?

Francine McCabe: Everything she writes is wonderful and touches my heart. I read [that quote] while I was in the very early stages of researching for this book. And I just felt like that was the sentiment I wanted in this book. That was the through-line I wanted this book to have. I love Vancouver Island and I love the fiber economy we have here, and I would love to see it grow and be nurtured and for consumers to be more aware of what is going on in our fiber economy around us—and the importance of our textiles as a place-based symbol of where we come from. 

Our textiles are gorgeous, that come from here. And it can be a way to showcase our beautiful land and our place. When I read that quote, it really spoke to me because I feel like if we can grow our fiber economy and we can nurture our textiles here, that is a way of us nurturing our land and taking care of the place we live.

Bluefaced Leicester X at New Wave Fibre. (Photography by Francine McCabe for Fleece & Fibre)

MF: You use a concept term in your book that might be new to many readers. What is a “fibershed”?

FM: I haven’t coined this term. It is from Rebecca Burgess, who is from California; she is the founder of the fibershed concept. But fibershed, technically, it’s the same as a watershed. It’s the place where you can get your raw materials, you can process those raw materials with transparency, in a specific way that is specific to that land, to that place. Each little pocket, each fibershed through our country, can produce the same breed of fiber, but it’s going to be different. It’s going to be processed differently, the feeling’s going to be different. So, a fibershed encompasses our raw materials, our makers [and] what’s specific to this region.

MF: The Coast Salish history of fiber work, before sheep were introduced to the area, was based on now-extinct Woolly dogs, mountain goats and many types of plant fiber. How can knowing the history of the fibershed inform the decisions we make as consumers?

FM: It was really neat to read a lot of that history because I had seen that there was a lot of fiber in our region that is no longer used because it wasn’t properly utilized. The processes of making it weren’t supported. So, now I see how much fiber we have here, and I want those fibers to be supported and utilized so that they don’t disappear. So, just to talk to some people about the Woolly dog and how much it was utilized and how it was the main fiber here and now it’s basically extinct…It’s pretty sad to hear. You don’t want those fibers that are specific to our region to disappear any further. So, I think that was really important to hear those stories and to really solidify the importance of processing our fiber locally, as much as we possibly can, using it, showcasing it.

Francine McCabe, author, “is a mixed-blood Anishinaabe writer, fibre artist, and organic master gardener from Batchewana First Nation, living on the unceded traditional territory of the Stz’uminus First Nation with her partner and two sons.” (Photo courtesy of Francine McCabe)

MF: You highlight an interesting discrepancy in your book between the amount of financial support and grants available for food-based agriculture and the lesser support for fiber-related farms. Why do you think this disparity exists?

FM: I think it’s maybe because all of our textile production has been moved overseas—out of sight, out of mind. So, people aren’t questioning it as much. The idea of transparency in our textiles hasn’t been brought [to] our attention as much as it has with food, even though food and fiber are both agricultural issues, they both start from the land and our dependence on the land and farmers. But I think that people just aren’t quite aware of it as much or we don’t consider it as much. Clothing and textiles are something we’ve kind of taken for granted as part of our surroundings, but they are just as impactful as our food that we are taking into our bodies. 

MF: You set out to answer a pretty specific question—why is local fiber so costly to produce? You found your answer: no local mills. How would introducing more local infrastructure change the textile industry in Vancouver Island and the Gulf Islands? 

FM: There are people here who are interested in starting that, but the startup is extremely expensive. And there’s no government funding at this time, that’s like, ‘here’s the startup for a fiber-related business.’ So, a lot of people are struggling with just how to get funds to start that. 

But if they were able to start that, every single farmer that I spoke to in this book said they would use a local fiber mill, if it was here. So, if there was somebody who had extra funds to start a fiber mill, they would be in business, and they would have years worth of fiber to process. If I had the money, I’d be all over that. And it would change our infrastructure because it would allow for a lot more of our fiber to be processed right here on the island, which would bring down the price for farmers. It opens up a bunch of different doors and a bunch of avenues for local businesses. It would be a huge boost for the economy.

Fleece from Gotland sheep. (Photography by Francine McCabe)

MF: You advocate that consumers demand the same transparency from our textiles as our food—we need to know what is in our textiles. What are some of the issues woven into mass-produced textiles?

FM: A lot of products that you buy that claim to be 100 percent natural [or] organic, the material may have been grown organically and the material itself might be 100 percent cotton, but then it’s finished with a finishing product that leaves a residue on the fiber that would never allow that fiber to break back down into the soil. So, yes, the fiber itself is natural and organic, but the chemicals in the process that they’re using to dye it and to treat it is not organic. 

It’s one of those confusing things, as it is with food. Like “organic”—what does that really mean anymore? And so with our clothing, it’s the same thing. They say things on them, like “ethically sourced,” but what does what do those words really mean? For us as consumers to just demand from our brands, what does that mean? What does ethically sourced mean for you? And who’s making your products? Where’s the material coming from? Just more questions we could be putting onto the brands so that they feel the need to have more transparency.

Yarn being dyed at Hinterland Yarn. (Photography by Francine McCabe for Fleece & Fibre)

MF: In reporting for this book, you visited several different farms, spoke with a lot of innovative people and met many photogenic animals. I’m sure they all stand out in their own unique ways. What specific highlights or takeaways will stick with you?

FM: I got to meet the Valais Blacknose breed [of sheep], which was one of the breeds I really wanted to meet. And they were just as cute as I expected them to be, and friendly, so that was great. But I think really just being able to see the farmers and see their actual passion for the fiber solidified that this book was where I really wanted to go, because I wanted to help them pass their message along and wanted to connect them to other makers.

MF: You encourage readers to stay “fiber curious.” What does that mean to you?

FM: When you go to purchase products, maybe look at your tag, see what they say, just look for local stuff. If you’re thinking you want a new sweater, maybe get curious who’s making sweaters in your 15-mile radius around you and see if those are the types of sweaters you might want, versus going out to the store to buy one. Just stay curious about what is happening with your textiles [and] where they’re coming from. Think about them as you would your food. 

We are at a time in this world where it’s important to consider all of these different avenues, not just our food. And maybe it’s time to change how we produce and consume our textiles, as well. I think it’s just important that people realize that our textiles are an agricultural product. We are depending on farmers and the land for these things, as much as we are our food.

The post Staying ‘Fiber Curious’ in an Age of Fast Fashion appeared first on Modern Farmer.

Max had lived on a farm as a working dog before being surrendered by his owner to a shelter in South Carolina. 

“The story that we had about Max is the story that we get about so many dogs,” says Rose Stremlau, vice president of CGPR. The reason given for Max’s surrender was that he wasn’t working out as a livestock guardian.

Max, an Anatolian Shepherd rescue. (Photography courtesy of Joy Combs, Providence Farm)

Livestock Guardian Dogs (LGDs) are inherently smart, independent and very big. Traditionally, they’re working dogs that protect livestock from predators. This type of dog encompasses several breeds, Great Pyrenees (colloquially called “pyrs”) and Anatolians like Max being two common ones. They are bred to be good workers, but they also require training to do the job well. These dogs are also often adopted as non-working family pets.

A big dog with a happy face, Max had gotten skinny from the stress of the shelter environment. Because of factors including excessive breeding and improper handling, dogs like him are being surrendered and euthanized at crisis-level rates across the country. Rescues, including CGPR, are doing everything they can, but, according to Stremlau, it is not enough.

“It’s like trying to push the ocean back with a broom,” she says. “Impossible.” 

Trending dogs

CGPR was founded in 1992. In the early days, Stremlau says, it was able to take and rehome all of the pyrs it was contacted about, about 100-150 per year. In the first eight months of 2023 alone, CGPR has been contacted about more than 630 dogs. It does not have the resources to keep up.

Stremlau attributes the surge in owner and breeder surrenders to the emergence of the modern homesteading trend, saying that as more people began keeping backyard chickens or goats, many decided to get an LGD to protect their new livestock. 

To be successful guardians for livestock, these dogs need guidance. Without being properly trained and bonded to their livestock, the dogs won’t automatically protect them. Instead of guarding your chickens, says Stremlau, an untrained dog may treat your chickens like a squeaky toy. And in the end, this results in people surrendering their dogs when they can’t figure out how to manage them. Snapping at, biting or killing farm animals is not a sign of a failed guardian dog but a sign that someone failed to train it.

“Those are all behaviors that are normal in puppies and juvenile guardian dogs that owners who know what they’re doing, [or] social, confident adult guardian dogs would correct if the dog was properly socialized,” says Stremlau. COVID-19 paired with a lack of animal welfare laws exacerbated the situation, along with irresponsible breeding by breeders trying to cater to the trend. CGPR used to mostly field queries about adult dogs, but now it’s not uncommon to see surrenders of partial litters of puppies. Stremlau says approximately a third of the dogs CGPR receives come from farms, and the others come from urban or suburban areas where the dogs were either adopted as family pets or to guard a small number of backyard chickens. 

A breakdown of the reasons owners gave CGPR for why they were surrendering a dog. (Image by CGPR)

Official organizations such as CGPR have trusted contacts, such as Combs of Providence Farm, that it calls for help. Combs has five working dogs, and she’s been able to help take in three dogs so far this year. That’s a lot for a volunteer, but it pales in comparison to the number of dogs she gets contacted about. 

One Sunday this summer, Combs was contacted about 10 different Great Pyrenees needing placement: three pairs of adolescents, a pair of older pyrs and a pair of puppies. Through the network of contacts, placements were found for the puppies and the older dogs. The six adolescent dogs were euthanized. There was just nowhere to put them. 

In terms of making a dent against these numbers, Combs says it feels like sticking your hand into a bucket of water.

“Once you pull your hand out,” she says, “there’s no evidence you were even there.”

Too many to help

Jean Harrison is the founder of the Big Fluffy Dog Rescue in Tennessee. She doesn’t agree that the number of dogs needing rescue is increasing. She says that the issue was always this bad, but, thanks to social media, people have a growing awareness of rescues, so the rescue groups get called upon more often for help with dogs who need placement. Regardless of why it’s happening, Harrison says the uptick in surrendered dogs is overwhelming and there are not nearly enough resources or rescues to help them all.

“Every day, I get up and I live a sort of existential hell,” says Harrison. “Before my feet have hit the floor as I get out of bed, I know that I’m going to get 3,000-4,000 emails every single day asking for help with a dog.” 

To illustrate the point, Harrison toggles over to her email inbox. “I have 26,312 unread emails right now,” she says. “And I will never get to all of them.” 

A Great Pyrenees. (Photography by John Adams for CGPR)

Sue Innamorato is the director of intake for National Great Pyrenees Rescue and verifies the trend across states, saying the numbers are overwhelming and depressing.

Innamorato believes the uptick is due to the combination of multiple factors. She’s observed that the majority of owner surrenders the rescue receives are from farms, but it’s also not uncommon to see litters of puppies who need homes. In some of the states where the problem is the most critical, such as Alabama, California, Texas and Tennessee, she says shelters can see 15-30 Pyrenees per month. 

The best things people can do, she says, are to spay and neuter their dogs, provide working dogs with consistent veterinary care and do their best to combat the “mountain of misinformation” about these dogs—such as that they don’t need to be trained or socialized to be good workers. Innamorato, who sees a deluge of Pyrenees who need homes on a daily basis, says she always remembers the ones the organization can’t save. With every dog, she says, it’s a race against the clock. 

Gracie (left) and Optimus (right). (Photography by John Adams for CGPR)

Rescued

Despite his rough path to get there, Max, the Anatolian Shepherd at Providence Farm, is doing well. Combs says she has already received three applications for his next potential home. To combat feelings of helplessness, some LGD rescuers have learned to look for bright spots like this among even the most horrific stories. Earlier this year, Combs was on her way into Chapel Hill when her phone rang. It was a veterinarian who was asking for help with two dogs. After not being able to manage the dogs, the owner of the small farm where they lived had tried to euthanize them at home with prescription drugs. When Combs got to the dogs, they were alive but non-responsive.

One dog quickly recovered and got a new placement, but the other, a female Anatolian named Millie, had been hurt badly by the drugs. After six months and four foster homes, Combs and a rescue partnered to find her a perfect home on a farm for flowers and fruit, where she can be a property guardian mentored by two experienced LGDs. One morning at the end of August, Combs got a video from the new owner of the dog playing in the creek on the property for the first time. That feeling, for Combs, is unparalleled.

“I thought I was going to be the one holding her when we put her down because she was such a trainwreck. [She] was in such a bad way,” says Combs. “So, to get her in this place where I know that she is living her best life…it was just euphoric.”

The post These Dogs are in Crisis. Who Looks After the Guardians? appeared first on Modern Farmer.

Alternative textiles aren’t new, but the use of sustainable materials in the industry, while still a small percentage overall, is growing. In an attempt to combat the unsustainable consumption of clothing and other materials made from synthetic fibers, scientists and entrepreneurs have considered other more environmentally friendly alternatives, such as algae and mycelium.

Kombucha tea is made from tea, sugar and a SCOBY. The SCOBY takes the shape of a gelatinous mat, and when it’s dried out and shaped, it can resemble leather or fabric.

SCOBY has its advantages as a material since it’s environmentally sustainable to produce and also biodegradable at the end of its life. But it also has drawbacks. For example, it sponges up water in a way you don’t want clothing to do. Still, with a little bit of experimentation, Brazil-Geyshick made several items out of this material. In the future of sustainable textiles, can kombucha become a prominent player?

Asiah Brazil-Geyshick holds leather in her right hand and kombucha leather she made in her left hand. (Photography courtesy of University of Idaho)

Homegrown

Chelsey Byrd Lewallen teaches an introduction to textiles class at the University of Idaho. In the class, she covers non-traditional textiles, such as coconut, orange peel and more. 

Byrd Lewallen brought up the prospect of kombucha leather in her class, along with the idea of partnering with a local company, Love’s Kombucha, to try and make a usable leather alternative out of SCOBY. Her student, Brazil-Geyshick, was inspired and volunteered to take on the project. 

“I got excited because I’m Native American, and we use a lot of leather,” says Brazil-Geyshick.

Byrd Lewallen and Brazil-Geyshick began doing research, gathering materials and learning from others who had experimented with this material. 

After mixing the materials and growing the SCOBY, Brazil-Geyshick took the thick and rubbery mats—“It feels like raw chicken,” she says—and washed them in soapy water. This removed the fermentation smell and some of the stickiness. After washing, she dried and rubbed them with glycerin.

Asiah Brazil-Geyshick shapes fabric made out of SCOBY. (Photography courtesy of University of Idaho)

It was a lot of trial and error—some things worked really well, such as rubbing glycerin into the SCOBY to prevent it from becoming too brittle, a tip they picked up from Armine Ghalachyan at Washington State University, who is well versed in working with kombucha. Other things were less successful, like when they had the wrong proportion of sugar in their recipe, causing the material to fall apart. 

Once the material was made, dyed, dried and ready to work with, Brazil-Geyshick began creating. 

“It’s really fun to do your own natural stuff,” says Brazil-Geyshick.

The material is not waterproof, Byrd Lewallen and Brazil-Geyshick say, but they’re still optimistic that it can be useful with additional experimentation and that it can be part of a wave of sustainable materials that will help shift the needle away from fast fashion and its hefty environmental impact.

“I think we [as a society] can do better,” says Byrd Lewallen. “I know we can do better.”

Beyond the SCOBY

Byrd Lewallen and Brazil-Geyshick are far from the only ones experimenting with kombucha as a textile. Fashion designer Suzanne Lee, who founded Biocouture and Biofabricate, brought the potential for kombucha textiles into the public eye. Scientist Theanne Schiros partnered with the brand Public School to style a fashionable sneaker using SCOBY. Today, there is a handful of companies and researchers experimenting with the raw material or specific elements derived from or inspired by it and creating usable textiles.

Kombucha SCOBY in a jar. (Photography: Shutterstock)

Zimri T. Hinshaw, founder and CEO of Bucha Bio, began growing kombucha under his roommate’s bed for use in textile development. But, over time, he realized that, for his purposes, he didn’t actually want the SCOBY itself but a byproduct of fermentation called bacterial nanocellulose. 

“It imbues things with immense tensile strength,” says Hinshaw. So, now, Bucha Bio uses bacterial nanocellulose as a raw ingredient to make its composite products stronger. The company no longer brews kombucha, but it sources the bacterial nanocellulose from a larger producer of fermented products.

SCOBY as a textile can be brittle to work with and vulnerable to water, which is why Hinshaw chose to change paths and instead use an isolated element that would give his products—usable in everything from car interiors to clothes—strength without the SCOBY-associated drawbacks.

“If it reabsorbs water in, say, a rainstorm … on your skin, that’s gonna feel pretty gross,” says Hinshaw.

Bucha Bio’s composite materials are also made from bio-based resins and additives, as well as pigments from fruit and algae. The strength added by the bacterial nanocellulose is a significant boon for functionality.

According to Hinshaw, the interest in sustainable materials in the textile industry is tangible, but the path is not yet paved.

“In terms of the startups, there’s not been one clear winner,” says Hinshaw. “We haven’t had our Impossible Foods or our Beyond Meat yet. So, the potential is any one of these number of startups could be that.”

Hinshaw’s advice for consumers is to consider their buying power and do research to find materials that are holistically sustainable.

“Try to buy something made out of next-gen materials, rather than another recycled PET [polyethylene terephthalate] material like another recycled shoe,” says Hinshaw. “That’s great, but it’s not the future.”

The post Does the Future of Textiles Include Fermented Fashion? appeared first on Modern Farmer.

Why not start a backyard homestead?

“At the beginning of the pandemic, the postal service worked,” says Kathy Halamka of the Unity Farm Sanctuary in Sherborn, MA. “That was the one thing that worked well. Chicks, goslings, poults and ducklings—all of these little guys can come in the mail, and that is a very regular way where the hatcheries send out their hatchlings.”

Mika, a rescue goose. Photography courtesy of Anika Wilson.

A duckling can be purchased for only a few dollars from a hatchery and provide entertainment for kids stuck at home. As a bonus, when the duck grows up, it produce fresh eggs. The idea was popular and soon hatcheries were selling out of chicks and ducklings. But as any poultry farmer knows, ducklings don’t stay small for long. Within two weeks, a baby duck will double both in size and in poop production. Long before you see any eggs from them, they will have outgrown your living room.

“We called it the time of the ducks,” says Halamka. Her sanctuary first noticed an increase in ducks and chickens—likely having outgrown their apartment homes and postage-stamp backyards—being surrendered to the sanctuary in the spring of 2020. Next came the roosters, surrendered as they began to find their voices. Finally, as people returned to work after the lockdown restrictions eased, entire flocks of poultry were given up to shelters. “We’ve never had that sort of broad surrender of hens,” says Halamka. “I would accept over a hundred hens at a time and have to find them new homes.”

Birds are the lowest cost option to begin homesteading. Ducklings, chicks and goslings are often for sale at feed stores in the springtime, and the thought that goes into their purchases can be the same as considering picking up a candy bar at the checkout. But the pandemic impulse purchases didn’t stop with poultry. Goats and sheep can be brought home for only a couple of hundred dollars—a purchase that might not require much forethought or consideration of feeding costs or vet bills. 

Greg, a rescue steer. Photography courtesy of Anika Wilson.

Ashley Pankratz, senior manager of rescue & placement for Farm Sanctuary, an organization dedicated to advocating for farm animals, recalls a case of sheep and goats in Dutchess County, NY. The herd started with only a few animals, but,” Pankratz said in an email, “they quickly reproduced, and their guardian was unable to provide appropriate care. Soon, there were dozens of animals in need.”

Farm sanctuaries and rescues have long been places where people can turn when they have an unwanted rooster, but, since 2020, the number of animals in sanctuary care has increased significantly. The Farm Sanctuary, with locations in Watkins Glen, NY and Acton, CA, received 1,255 requests for placement in 2018. Now, it averages more than 1,500 requests a year.

 Anika Wilson is a farmer and florist from outside Portland, ME, who was enlisted in the rehoming of more than 50 poultry from an island in Maine’s Casco Bay. The previous owner collected rare-breed birds, and she had amassed a large flock by the time she died in her 80s. “Luckily for these birds, they had a great caretaker on the island,” says Wilson. “I imagine that it would be a great challenge figuring out what to do with so many animals if you are not somewhat involved in the homestead world. It would be a lot to inherit.”

Wilson notes that the entire situation could have been avoided with forward planning. “In this case, a ‘death plan’ or ‘animal will’ that would provide for the animals would have been useful. In many cases, I think the most important thing is to really think before adopting creatures like this: ‘Am I prepared to care for this animal for x amount of years?’ and secondary to that, ‘Do I have options if I find, down the line, that circumstances change and I cannot care for them?’”

Anika Wilson.

Many people do not consider the longevity of animals when they take them on. Goats and sheep have an average lifespan of 10-15 years, while cows and pigs can live more than 20 years. Feed bills, veterinary care and infrastructure costs add up quickly. Livestock care can be physically demanding, making it difficult to keep up.

The most common animals surrendered to farm sanctuaries are poultry. Unwanted roosters from hatchery purchases make up the majority, and flocks from people who did not check their town’s ordinances on poultry are common. Sheep and goat purchases during the pandemic are more difficult to calculate, in part because goats and sheep are often paid for in cash from farm to individual, rather than sent via the postal service from a company with invoices and records. 

Halamka says animals are often surrendered or rescued and end up at the Unity Farm Sanctuary because of caretaker deaths, home foreclosures and long-term illnesses. But there can be more abrupt cases, too. 

“Sometimes, people literally move out of the apartment,” says Halamka, “and leave behind the mini pig or other animal. They literally walk away with the animal in the apartment. It’s very sad for me to have to work with animals that are found and have to be rescued.”

Planning can avoid these situations, as can a little bit of humility. Halamka is grateful that the majority of the animals she has seen since the pandemic are surrenders, and she notes that to surrender an animal you just have to call or email your local sanctuary

Following the pandemic uptick in livestock rescues, the hustle at sanctuaries has not slowed down thanks to inflation and foreclosures. Inflation has meant both that people’s budgets have been cut back, sometimes not leaving room for the livestock, and that people are again impulse purchasing poultry thinking they’ll get “free eggs.” 

The conclusion seems simple. Animals should never be impulse purchases and require more planning than just a feed budget and proper housing. Ideally, if you are investing in animals, you should also make a plan in case something happens to you, so that the animals don’t end up at a sanctuary looking for a home.

The post Impulse Chickens and Trendy Goats: The Pitfalls of Modern Homesteading appeared first on Modern Farmer.

Photography by Ryleah Foehl Photos

After having her second child and making the difficult decision to leave her career as a teacher, Kitchen felt isolated in her new role as a stay-at-home mom. “I was in a big season of life transition and feeling really alone,” explains Kitchen. “I took up gardening because it was a place of rest during that season.” She lived on a one-acre homestead in a small town about halfway between Seattle and Bellingham, Washington, and dedicated herself to caring for her land. 

Ten years later, Kitchen officially launched the Growing Kindness Project, a nonprofit organization with a mission to empower, educate and encourage individuals to cultivate connections in their communities by growing and giving flowers. She moved from the one-acre homestead to a 10-acre farm along the Puget Sound in 2016 and began growing an extensive selection of specialty cut flowers, at one point cultivating as many as 1,000 dahlia plants alone. She documented her journey of growing flowers and giving them away on social media with the hashtag Growing Kindness. 

Deanna Kitchen launched the Growing Kindness project from her home garden. Photography by Ryleah Foehl Photos

“A tremendous amount of joy for me was not so much growing and selling flowers but connecting with people through flowers,” says Kitchen. “[Our farm] could only reach so far, but if we could invite other people to be a part of what we were doing and help equip them to have what they needed to do it, then we could multiply exponentially throughout communities beyond ours.”   

The Growing Kindness Project has flourished, and it is now 2,000 members strong, with people from all over the world growing flowers and donating them to folks in need of a boost. With her time focused on keeping the nonprofit running, Kitchen has scaled back her farming efforts, currently growing about 500 dahlia plants on only a fraction of an acre. Under the name Twig + Vine, she sells dahlia tubers, designs floral arrangements for events and hosts workshops. Kitchen donates the majority of her flowers to local food banks and long-term care facilities, giving an average of 500 arrangements per season. 

Flower donations ready to go. Photography courtesy of Fern Creek Florals.

Meanwhile, the Growing Kindness Project members give away untold numbers of flowers each year. The organization is open to all, regardless of experience level or yield. It doesn’t matter if you can donate one stem or 1,000 stems. Some members are planting seeds for the first time, while others are working farmers, donating portions of their flower crops. “If you’re a flower-based business, it doesn’t mean you stop selling flowers and give everything away,” says Kitchen. “Make donating to your community an intentional part of what you do in whatever volume makes sense.”

In its online community, the organization provides education and resources for new floriculturists and experienced flower farmers. Interested folks can learn how to plan a garden, set up irrigation systems and grow flowers. There are also resources on how to design floral arrangements and ways to donate flowers. 

Once the flowers are ready for gifting, it’s up to the growers to identify the recipients. Some members take their cut flowers to women’s shelters, refugee families and, in the case of Fern Creek Florals, inpatient families at a children’s hospital.

Photography courtesy of Fern Creek Florals.

Jen Koym started Fern Creek Florals, a cut flower farm and donation garden in Charlottesville, Virginia, during the pandemic, as a way to bring some joy to her family. Replacing a 400-square-foot vegetable garden, Koym grew a number of varieties, from sweet peas and stock, lisianthus and poppies to dahlias and roses. When the farm filled with blooms, she decided to share in her bounty, donating a handful of bouquets during its first growing season in 2020. By 2022, Fern Creek Florals cultivated about 2,800 square feet and gave away around 280 arrangements. 

Koym learned about the Growing Kindness Project after she had already implemented its mission. She immediately joined as an ambassador, a role that involves championing the organization and encouraging people to join in. “One of the nice things about gardening is that it’s so easy to share. There’s an abundance, so you can collect seeds and bulbs and corms and tubers and pass them on. It’s another wonderful way of spreading kindness,” says Koym. “There are so many ways to sow it forward.”

In addition to operating Fern Creek Florals, Koym runs LilyPads Housing, a non-profit organization that helps locate temporary housing for the families of pediatric patients at the hospital where she also donates flowers. 

Photography courtesy of Fern Creek Florals.

Sarah Adams recalls moving into a LilyPads apartment last year while her baby awaited a heart transplant. She received a welcome bouquet from Fern Creek Florals upon her arrival and many arrangements after that. “It was a very dark and scary time, so having gorgeous fresh flowers in the apartment was a bright spot. The thought behind them was even more special,” says Adams, who spent nearly a year with her child in hospital. “I would frequently see a cart with the most beautiful floral arrangements you can imagine. Without fail, they were always a delivery from Fern Creek Florals.” 

It’s stories like those of Koym and Adams that keep Kitchen energized to continue the work of the Growing Kindness Project. She wants more people to take part in the joy of this community and in the cultivation of flowers. To that end, she has started developing programs for sponsorships and grants and expanding educational resources to remove economic and educational barriers to access. “If you have a little bit of dirt and a big heart, you have what it takes to grow kindness in your community,” says Kitchen. “What you have is enough. Who you are is enough. Start where you are, use what you have, do what you can. It really does have the opportunity to make a huge impact.”

The post These Flower Farmers Are Planting it Forward appeared first on Modern Farmer.