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The Natural Farmer
Spring 2022
Land Access
Image Credit, Sawyer Farm, MA
Community Land Trusts as a Vehicle for Homestead Land Sharing
BY GRACE GERSHUNY Land ownership is often considered to be integral to achieving the “American dream.” At the founding of this country,...
Accessing Farmland Together: Strategies and Considerations
BY KATHY RUHF AND JIM HABANA HAFNER Many farmers are exploring ways to farm together. The idea of being and sharing with other farmers is...
Building the Organic Neighborhood
BY MARY-HOWELL AND KLAAS MARTENS American agriculture has a serious problem. The average American grain farmer is in their 60’s, often...
Agrarian Trust and the Agrarian Commons
BY KRISTINA VILLA The Agrarian Trust exists to raise awareness and address the crisis of exceedingly high land prices that puts land...
How One NYS Farmer Found Land by Writing Letters and Making Cold Calls
An interview with Erica Frenay, Co-owner Shelterbelt Farm BY ELIZABETH GABRIEL We know well that finding land is one of the biggest...
We Built a Farm on Public Land…That Was the First Hurdle
BY CAROLINE FANNING Twenty years ago, when my husband and I were apprentices in the Hudson Valley, the world of small-scale farms could...
Expanding Tree Tapping Through Sap Harvesting Tenure Agreements
BY MIKE RECHLIN, PH.D Harvesting sap to produce maple syrup is a historic farming activity in many areas of the Northeast and Appalachia....
Escaping Private Property: A Long-Term Alternative to Farmland Ownership
BY ELIZABETH HENDERSON In the US, the ideal for most farmers is to have their own farm and to hold it as private property. With farmland...
Land Justice, Not Speculation
BY DOUG HERTZLER Access to land has become the number one issue for aspiring young farmers in the United States, who come from many...
What Legal Personhood for U.S. Rivers Would Do
BY KAYLA DEVAULT In mid-March of 2017, New Zealand officially recognized the Whanganui River as a living entity with rights. The river,...
Planting Roots at Providence Farm Collective
BY KYLE SEMMELL Life in Refugee Camps Although Abdullah “Abdi” Sundi’s family had farmed in Somalia for years, Abdi never learned how. In...
Seeds and Their Stories: A Beet Story
A plant-person companionship through research, recovery, and reimagining BY SOLVEIG HANSON This started as an article about beets. During...
My Back Yard, Equity Concerns, and Land Grant Truth-Telling
BY CHARLES GEISLER I live on land in upstate New York awarded to Revolutionary War veteran, Izaac Doty, for his military service. I also...
Parenting and Farming: Seeding Gratitude, Cultivating Care
BY NIKKI KOLB A cow is crossing the road. It’s mostly white with rusty spots and curvy horns, head high, at once regal and nervous as it...
Pricing Milk
BY JEN MILLER How many mature cows did you have as of January 1, 2020? Did you buy or sell any equipment in 2019? How much milk did you...
Studio Hill Farm: A story of resilience and regeneration
Visitors regularly pass through to learn about the regenerative techniques used to remove and store atmospheric carbon.
The Farmer’s Voice in the Climate Crisis: How Climate Challenges Expose the Need for Regenerative Ag
It goes without saying that agriculture in the Northeast is being affected by climate change, and Massachusetts farmers are no exception.
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