family farm

Each winter, my family goes to our orchard to carry out an ancient tradition.

The perennial plant's tightly furled leaves emerge in March, pushing aside wintry desolation.

Underneath layers of mulch, the German Butterball and Rose Gold flourish.

All hands join in to get 40,000 pungent cloves into the ground.

How does the blazing sun produce so much refreshing fruit?

We invest each seed and young plant with the exuberant yet completely rational hope of compounded returns.

By summer, the plants are working overtime. It's a wonder we don't have as many words for green as the Inuit have for snow.

Harvesting wild greens always returns me to our species' hunter-gatherer roots. Not so long ago, this is what people did the world over.

It landed on my patio in early November, a pointy-ended battleship that was more mineral than vegetable. It stayed there as the days got shorter.

As soon as frost threatens, my brother drops everything and calls all hands to come help dig the sweet potatoes.

Christians didn’t baptize Aldo Leopold’s land ethic after the fact. They got there years before his work.

My favorite heirloom fruit tree nursery sent an e-mail about a sale. With scarcely a thought, I ordered a bucket of trees.

It's been too long since Christmas, and most folks wish the winter were over. But this lingering not-yet-spring is a precious time.

When you grow up with a grandmother who insists that you thank the hens every time you gather their eggs, gratitude becomes second nature.