Renewing the Countryside

Story Clearinghouse

Polyface Farm

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Diversified Everything Swope, Virginia On one 550-acre farm in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley, there’s not much that isn’t diversified. The nationally-recognized Polyface Farm is owned by Joel and Teresa Salatin, Joel’s mother Lucille, and includes their children, Daniel and Rachel, and two apprentices who have woven an ecological approach to farming that is convincingly more profitable, […]

Bossie’s Best

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Home, Kansas Organic farming is a way of life that dates back 150 years in Nancy Vogelsberg-Busch’s family. Her great-grandfather homesteaded on the north central farm where Nancy was born. When Nancy’s father inherited the farm from her grandfather in the 1950s, it was on the condition of a promise never to use chemicals on […]

Farm on Wheels

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Self-Reliance Linda Noble has known since the age of 12 that she wanted to be a farmer. She married a farmer (Mike) in 1977, and together they started raising hogs, and dairy cows, and rotationally growing alfalfa, corn, and beans. When the farm crisis of the late 80’s hit, they were forced to rethink theirincome […]

The Babbitt Ranches

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“Just Participate!” Coconino County, Arizona · By Rose Houk If you ask Billy Cordasco what sustainability is, he takes his time answering. “It’s a hard concept,” he says, “because the environment is always changing.” The best explanation he’s ever heard is “living off interest, not principle.” Billy is president of the board of Babbitt Ranches, […]