Farming

Food

AgriCulture: The Sanctity of Leeks

Peter Davies and Mark Scherzer are the owners of Turkana Farms in Germantown, NY. This week Peter writes: At last, rain. If only in helpful little increments. The ground at last feels soft underfoot, and the pastures are rapidly greening. What a difference rain water, as opposed to well water,

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Food

AgriCulture: Indigestable Science News and the Comestible Beet

Peter Davies and Mark Scherzer are the owners of Turkana Farms in Germantown, NY. This week Mark writes: The news this week was certainly difficult to digest.  A Stanford University climate study was reported to have concluded that heat waves like the one we had in early July will by

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Food

AgriCulture: Cassis-Making Season at Maison Turkana

Peter Davies and Mark Scherzer are the owners of Turkana Farms in Germantown, NY. This week Peter writes: While last week Mark discussed the pains of farming in a dry season, I am going to describe one of its rare pleasures, a wet one at that, as Turkana Farms starts

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Food

Our Incredible Shrinking Pond and Other Alarming Signs

Peter Davies and Mark Scherzer are the owners of Turkana Farms in Germantown, NY. This week Mark writes: It's Too Damned Hot!  Cole Porter got that part right.  It's also too damned dry. I feel like a contrarian, but looking at the weather forecast and seeing

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Food

AgriCulture: Beware the Downey Mildew Basil Blight

Peter Davies and Mark Scherzer are the owners of Turkana Farms in Germantown, NY. This week Peter writes:  Just the other day I was looking on the bright side of the rather dry, hot spring we have been having here in Columbia County. At least, I thought, these weather conditions

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Food

AgriCulture: No, We Are Not The Fabulous Beekman Boys

Peter Davies and Mark Scherzer are the owners of Turkana Farms in Germantown, NY. This week Mark writes: ...but our chickens are very tasty. It started around three weeks ago, when Ronda Goldfein, a lawyer friend in Philadelphia, hearing from me on a decidedly non-agricultural matter, responded by telling me

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Food

AgriCulture: The Ancient Lore and Allure of the Fava

Peter Davies and Mark Scherzer are the owners of Turkana Farms in Germantown, NY. This week Peter writes: It’s spring, folks—time to Fava! Our favas have suddenly burst into full production, presenting us with one of the best crops of these quirky beans we have had yet. Some

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Food

AgriCulture: Sex and the Barnyard

Peter Davies and Mark Scherzer are the owners of Turkana Farms in Germantown, NY. This week Peter writes: He was displaying already in early April, a brilliant, luminous arc of blue and green, virtually enfolding in his vibrating tail feathers the sole object of his desire—our dainty white pea

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Food

AgriCulture: How to Fatten a Goose

Peter Davies and Mark Scherzer are the owners of Turkana Farms in Germantown, NY. This week Mark writes: I'm skating onto thin ice here (as befits such a warm May day) by even mentioning a highly controversial product:  foie gras.  I can readily imagine a deep split in

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Food

AgriCulture: Separating the Bad Seeds from the Good

Peter Davies and Mark Scherzer are the owners of Turkana Farms in Germantown, NY. This week Peter writes: Seeds have been very much on my mind of late. Largely, it would seem, because of the hours recently spent in the greenhouse painstakingly inserting them into peat pots and flats of

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Food

AgriCulture: Non-contributing Members of Farm Society

Peter Davies and Mark Scherzer are the owners of Turkana Farms in Germantown, NY. This week Mark writes: Perhaps it's advancing age, but sometimes these days I find myself focused on ideas or phrases I learned in the distant past.  Most recently, I've been dwelling on

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Food

AgriCulture: May Day! Turkana Farms Goes to Pot

Peter Davies and Mark Scherzer are the owners of Turkana Farms in Germantown, NY. This week Mark writes: Our turkey poults, Bourbon Reds, Spanish Blacks and Naragansetts, have arrived from the hatchery and are in the hayloft of the sheep barn under heat lamps until they feather out. What Peter

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