Farming

Food

AgriCulture: The Great Release

AgriCulture bloggers Peter Davies and Mark Scherzer are the owners of Turkana Farms in Germantown, NY. This week,  Peter writes: This is the week of the great release. Our 100 or so heritage turkey poults finally, after more than two months of confinement, have reached a size that they no

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Food

AgriCulture: Why We (Um)...Castrate

AgriCulture bloggers Peter Davies and Mark Scherzer are the owners of Turkana Farms in Germantown, NY. This week,  Mark writes: If you want to know what empathy is, follow the expression on a  young man's face as he assists at a piglet's castration.  Last Sunday I

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Food

AgriCulture: The Farm and I

AgriCulture bloggers Peter Davies and Mark Scherzer are the owners of Turkana Farms in Germantown, NY. This week,  Peter writes: Ah being a “farmer!” But, what’s in a name, as they say?  My first memory of the term is from baby nursery rhymes: “The farmer in the dell The

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Food

AgriCulture: Antibiotics, You Can Run But You Can't Hide

AgriCulture bloggers Peter Davies and Mark Scherzer are the owners of Turkana Farms in Germantown, NY. This week,  Mark writes: Lately I’ve been afflicted with the uncomfortable feeling that my fate is in the hands of other people. Last week it seemed almost all of those people were in

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Food

AgriCulture: A Tail of Two Cultures

AgriCulture bloggers Peter Davies and Mark Scherzer are the owners of Turkana Farms in Germantown, NY. This week,  Peter writes: That’s right, “tail” not “tale.” Our sheeps’ tails have gotten caught in a collision of cultures. As some of you may know, we breed karakul, a desert sheep originating

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Food

AgriCulture: Pretty Weeds, Friend or Foe?

AgriCulture bloggers Peter Davies and Mark Scherzer are the owners of Turkana Farms in Germantown, NY. This week,  Mark writes: It is still late Spring, though the recent stretches of extreme heat and the explosion of vegetation read more like mid summer. In the late afternoon sunlight, the pasture is

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Food

AgriCulture: Perspective Shifts from Picturesque to Practical

AgriCulture bloggers Peter Davies and Mark Scherzer are the owners of Turkana Farms in Germantown, NY. This week,  Peter writes: Having a farm does change the way one sees animals. I can remember in my pre-farm academic days in the early 70’s living on Phyllis Curtin’s estate in

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Food

AgriCulture: Instead of Roasting, They're Grilling

AgriCulture bloggers Peter Davies and Mark Scherzer are the owners of Turkana Farms in Germantown, NY. This week,  Mark writes: I am much relieved that Saturday before last we dodged another bullet at Turkana Farms. Just after 5:59 p.m., I interrupted chores to yell into the house to

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Food

AgriCulture: Animal Farm

AgriCulture bloggers Peter Davies and Mark Scherzer are the owners of Turkana Farms in Germantown, NY. This week,  Peter writes: It is the time of the big change-over at Turkana Farms. Last week our veteran prize ram, Suleyman the Magnificent left for his new home at Pine Hills Farm in

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Food

AgriCulture: Life and Death Decisions

AgriCulture bloggers Peter Davies and Mark Scherzer are the owners of Turkana Farms in Germantown, NY. This week,  Mark writes: Spring mud is still with us.  The mud in front of the barn is proving a challenge for our  oldest ewes, especially Marina, an eleven year old favorite of mine

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Food

AgriCulture: Kybele Gets Her Dream House

AgriCulture bloggers Peter Davies and Mark Scherzer are the owners of Turkana Farms in Germantown, NY. This week,  Peter writes: It has been well over ten years now since we restored our then collapsing barn into a working sheep barn. And we had almost forgotten the arduous process we went

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Food

AgriCulture: Awaiting the Impending Storm

AgriCulture bloggers Peter Davies and Mark Scherzer are the owners of Turkana Farms in Germantown, NY. This week,  Peter writes: There is a strange silence, an ominous stillness. It is around eight o’clock Thursday morning but instead of a steady brightening the morning continues to darken, the sky taking

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