“A resilient garden is one that’s ready to adapt and recover, no matter what comes its way,” says Manny Barra, a master gardener at TeachMe.To and the community garden coordinator for the City of Oakland in California.

So how does one build a resilient garden and care for flowers and plants when the weather is unusual? Read on for expert tips.

Know Your Microclimate

Think of your microclimate as your garden’s unique personality: it determines how everything grows. Knowing your microclimate lets you understand the sun, shade, wind, and moisture patterns that make your space special. 

“Understanding the zone in which you grow is an ideal starting point to understand sowing and planting dates, what will be needed to protect plants in colder months, and what will not be possible if temperatures are too warm,” says Daniel Pettus,  farm manager at Olivette Riverside Community & Farm, an agrihood in Asheville, North Carolina. “ Knowing your proximity to North, South, East, West should determine how you plan your farm or garden, where you build structures. If there are existing structures in place, where these are in position to the movement of the sun throughout the season and your farm or garden are key to growing successfully.”

It’s like unlocking the cheat codes to gardening success, so you can work with nature instead of constantly struggling against it. Plus, it helps you pick the right plants for the right spots, which is a gamechanger.

Mix it Up

Diversity is key to a resilient garden. Barra suggests using a variety of plants in your garden, including native plants that naturally thrive in your area.  “If you notice certain plants struggling, don’t be afraid to swap them out for something better suited to your conditions.”

Keep Friends Together

When designing a new garden or adding new plants, consider grouping those with similar water needs to save resources and avoid waste. For instance, ferns, azaleas, and hydrangeas all have similiar water, soil and shade needs. Broccoli, cauliflower, and cabbage all need extra water once they sprout while eggplant, artichoke, zucchini, and summer squash don’t require much water.

Research And Note

Stay aware of changing weather patterns and take notes on what works and what doesn’t. 

“When starting a new farm or garden, think about the best and worst possible scenarios in your area,” says Pettus. “Research weather patterns for the past 100 years or more; design your garden to withstand the worst possible scenario, while thriving in the best.”

He suggests starting small and taking notes. You’ll want to track which varieties you’re planting and how they do, especially as you learn more about your own microclimate. 

“Some varieties of green beans or tomatoes are a little bit heartier than others. So even if you really love heirlooms, and you want to do an all heirloom garden, heirlooms are generally a bit fussier and less resilient,” adds Lara Hermanson, co-founder of California-based Farmscape which specializes in designing, installing, and maintaining sustainable gardens. Picking a heartier variety of crop can help ensure it will withstand weather changes.

Build Soil Health

Healthy soil is the foundation of a healthy garden. In addition to using mulch to prevent soil erosion, Barra suggests adding compost to build up soil health, and keep the soil draining well if heavy rains do hit your garden. 

“Make sure your soil drains well by incorporating organic matter and digging shallow trenches to direct excess water away from roots. 

For areas that frequently flood, consider adding rain gardens or planting water-tolerant species. 

Lift Them Up

Raised beds are such a lovely way to garden. It’s a better experience for the gardner–often kinder on knees and backs–and can even reduce insect damage on produce. Plus, when a cold or heat wave hits, raised beds can provide a structural base for cold frames and shade cloth.

When Inclement Weather Hits

Hermanson is a big fan of using a cold frame when drastic weather happens such as a hailstorm or freezing temperatures in the spring. “It’s important for home gardeners to get comfortable with a wide variety of quick and easy structures that you can put up when it’s really cold or really hot to help your plants transition,” Hermanson says. There are pre-fabricated cold frame options available, or you can construct your own. And don’t forget shade cloth from an online vendor like Gardeners Supply to help cover your vegetables in case of a heat wave.

Heavy rain is a bit trickier. When heavy rain hits, your garden can quickly turn into a soggy mess, but the good news is that many plants can withstand even a high amount of rain, says Hermanson. However, she suggests fertilizing the garden after a heavy rain.

“Add back in any nitrogen that may have been leached out, especially in a spring garden that needs a lot of nitrogen.”

You May Have To Start Over

If you get bad weather in the infancy of a produce plant and it’s damaged, Hermanson says it’s likely best to start over. “The right move is to be ready to assess and know when to stop rather than try to coax things back to life that have been damaged. Especially in their infancy, don’t commit to it.”

Don’t Forget The Mulch

Mulch helps keep soil moist, regulates temperatures and protects roots. You can make your own, or pick some up at a local plant nursery.

Stay Flexible

Gardening is a bit of luck and chance but as climate change continues to make the weather unpredictable, flexibility is more important than ever. Don’t be afraid to experiment and realize that not everything is going to be a success.

“Gardening in a changing climate is all about staying creative and resourceful. Gardening is always a work in progress, and even the most seasoned garden can benefit from a little TLC and creativity,” Barra says.

The post How to Care for Your Garden in Unpredictable Weather appeared first on Modern Farmer.

“It’s a premium product,” says executive chef and partner Daniel Garwood. “The cow has gone through its whole life. There’s a lot of natural marbling. It has an interesting flavor and texture.”

Since opening the restaurant in October of 2024, Garwood, who hails from Australia and spent time cooking in Sweden, has served ribeye, strip loin, tenderloin, brisket, and even mince pie, all from dairy cow beef.

In the U.S., dairy cows are almost exclusively raised for dairy production. The exception is male calves, sold to the beef industry and raised for veal or beef. Once a dairy cow’s milk productivity declines, the cows are slaughtered with their meat, which is often considered of a lower quality and makes its way into dog and cat food and fast food burgers. In other parts of the world, though, such as in Sweden, where Garwood worked, meat from dairy herds is prized. 

Now, a growing number of U.S. restaurants, including ACRU, Blue Hill at Stone Barns, and Gwen Restaurant in Los Angeles, have been exploring whether dairy cow meat will appeal to consumers interested in sustainability.  

“Meat from grass fed dairy cows is considered to have a lower carbon footprint than meat from traditional beef herds in part because its footprint is spread across the years of protein rich, delicious milk the animals produce in their lifetime,”  says Dan Barber of Blue Hill at Stone Barns.

There’s an idea that beef from a dairy herd is a more sustainable option, because you are getting more food for the resources used. Instead of simply just getting milk or beef from the land, water, feed, put into the cow you’re getting both. 

Sustainability was a big draw for The Oberon Group, which owns restaurants and food markets in the Catskills and New York City. They introduced dairy beef in 2017, and while customers supported the sustainability efforts, there were concerns around texture.

“The customer pushback on the toughness was significant,” says Henry Rich, managing partner.

As dairy cows are older when they are slaughtered compared to beef cattle, which usually are culled at six to seven months for veal, or two years for beef, the meat is generally considered tougher.

“They generally don’t have a lot of intramuscular fat or marbling that gives beef the flavoring that is associated with it. And all of those things usually reduce consumer acceptance. I would guess restaurants are using some pretty unique cooking methods in order to overcome that,” says Tara Felix, an associate professor in the Department of Animal Science at the University of Pennsylvania.

The Oberon Group is focused on sustainable, environmental restaurants with a goal of carbon-neutrality and zero-waste. As he explains it, they started serving dairy beef in a meat-centric restaurant, Metta, because, at the time, they believed that because the carbon emissions of the cow were already caused by dairy, using the cows for meat would have a lower carbon footprint that cows that were just used for meat. The calculation soon felt a bit off to Rich.

“The claim that they had lower overall carbon footprints is because you’re ignoring the first however many years of life because they’d be here anywhere. That accounting started to feel a little fuzzy for me,” Rich says.

There is research that seems to agree that dairy beef has a lower carbon footprint than conventional beef. An analysis from Our World in Data, found that per 100 grams of protein beef from a beef herd had 49.89 grams of greenhouse gasses, whereas beef from a dairy herd was 16.87 grams.

“The challenge is that sustainability means something different to everyone. Is it reduced methane emissions? Is it reduced feed inputs? Is it reduced time on feed?” says Felix who added that it’s a question a number of people are currently researching in regards to the offspring from dairy farms which do already often make their way into beef herd programs.

Between the customer response and the lack of clarity over sustainability, The Oberon Group ended up phasing out the dairy beef program after about two years.

However, the company started and stopped its dairy beef program before the coronavirus pandemic upended life as we knew it. Chefs life Garwood and Barber that have started their dairy beef programs within the last year or so have done so at a time when there is perhaps more awareness of the interconnectedness of food systems, and climate-related disasters such as the wildfires in Maui or more recently in L.A., have pushed more people to think about the impacts of global warming. Garwood and Barber have so far received vastly different responses to their program. 

“The response has been overwhelmingly positive. Grass-fed beef and meat from dairy cows has the reputation of being tough, but some of our guests have told us it’s the best steak they’ve ever had,” says Chef Dan Barber of Blue Hill at Stone Barns.

Blue Hill started using dairy beef in 2023, but Barber credits the cows on his family’s dairy in the Berkshires for making him want to experiment with dairy beef.

“Blue Hill Farm, my family’s dairy farm in the Berkshires, had an older dairy cow ready for culling at least once or twice a year. I bet it was my proximity to these exceptional ladies—spending years, in some cases seven or eight or more years, getting to know them well—that made their inevitable fate of becoming dog food feel disrespectful,” says Barber.

Barber and Garwood haven’t yet faced any significant negative customer response. At Blue Hill at Stone Barns, dairy cows forage on grass and hay before being slaughtered.

“The meat from grass-fed dairy cows has this incredible, idiosyncratic flavor,” says Barber. “But more than that, the idea is to showcase how delicious this often-overlooked meat can be and create a market for it.”

U.S. dairy farmers typically get only about 60 cents per pound for meat from retired dairy cows as dog food and fast food hamburgers. If they could get closer to $6 a pound or more for their animals, Barber says it could help boost revenue for dairy farmers.

Felix agrees that it could be economically appealing for dairy farmers but believes that its success would depend on the size of the dairy farm and whether or not the restaurant could take all of the animals the dairy produces.

“There are 86 million head of cattle in the United States, and each year we kill 26 to 28 million. If we’re talking about even eight or 10 restaurants using two to three cows a week, this is a very, very small market,” Felix says. “Not to discount it, because it would be great if a farmer could develop a relationship like that, but it’s probably never going to be our primary marketplace.”

That isn’t a deterrent for Garwood. Initially, he had trouble sourcing the dairy beef. “We had to buy the entire cow,” says Garwood, who is sourcing from Ends Meat in Brooklyn, which gets dairy cows from farms in upstate New York, adding that he’s had other restaurants express interest in getting primal cuts but not being able to handle the entire cow.

“We really want to pursue it,” Garwood says. “We’ll focus on whole dairy cow dinners in the coming months.”

The post Why Are Restaurants Selling Beef From Dairy Cows? appeared first on Modern Farmer.

“Our major goal is to support the ecosystem, heal nature, and be more attuned with nature’s processes,” says Bosch, who farms using organic and regenerative agricultural practices. “As I researched more about soil health, I started to learn how plastic impacts microorganisms in the soil.”

Start thinking about all the ways we use plastic in the garden—seedling trays, landscape fabric, plant pots, to name a few—and it’s hard to unsee all that planetary warming fossil fuel-produced plastic. Most of it tends to get used for a season or two before ending up in a landfill, where the consequences for the planet and ourselves can be dire.

We all know about the issue of plastics in the ocean. The United Nations has declared the plastic pollution of our oceans “a planetary crisis.” Each year, according to National Geographic, about eight million tons of plastic waste ends up in oceans. Yet, there’s likely even more plastic pollution in our soils than in our oceans. Scientists estimate that more than half of the world’s human population might have plastic passing through their bodies. 

Researchers are still trying to understand what all that plastic is doing to us and to the soil, but some recent studies have found that microplastics can change the structure of the soil and potentially interfere with plant growth if they enter the plant tissues through the soil.

But there are steps we can take to reduce the use of plastic in our gardens, ultimately helping to protect our health and the planet.

Here’s how to start reducing the plastic used in your garden.

Swap your plastic plant labels

for wooden sticks, stones, or even popsicle sticks. 

“I love the look and the fun of painting rocks as reusable labels! You can get paint markers, too, to keep things less messy with the kids,” says Nicole Baker, a biologist with The Wild Center, an interactive science museum in New York’s Adirondacks.

Instead of buying plastic ties and stakes

use natural twine to tie up plants and wooden or bamboo stakes to support them. You could even use a sturdy branch from your backyard or a big stick as a stake. These materials break down naturally and are safer for the environment.

Give the plastic pots or containers you have a second life.

You can wash, sanitize, and reuse them. “If they start to break down, you can often use them as drainage material in larger pots or garden beds,” says Georgia-based entrepreneur and gardener Adria Marshall. Marshall, the founder of a plant-based hair care company, Ecoslay, has been gardening alongside her mother and grandfather since the age of 12 and is on a mission to reduce single-use plastics in her garden. 

If you have loads of old plastic pots or seed starter trays you’re not using, you may also be able to return some to your local greenhouse. “This plastic costs money for those nurseries, many of which are mom-and-pop-owned shops and farms,” says Baker. “Many businesses will welcome the return of their plastics, and they will reuse them. This helps out the local business and keeps that plastic out of the landfill. It’s always good manners to call ahead and ask if they would be willing to take the old, still useful, plastic pots.” 

When you do need seed starter trays or pots, consider your options.

“Instead of buying plastic seed trays or pots, use items you already have around the house,” says Marshall. 

You can likely repurpose items such as coffee cans, egg cartons, and maybe even old casserole dishes.

Bosch has found a lot of success using cedar seed starter trays. “It holds up phenomenally well. You would think they would rot, but they don’t.”

You can also look for grow bags made from natural fibers such as cotton, burlap, jute, hemp, terracotta, and clay pots or biodegradable options like those made from coconut coir, peat, or compressed paper.

Baker has even had success planting directly into straw bales. “They act as both the container and as a growing medium. Straw bales get bonus points because they can be composted after the growing season for future use as a natural fertilizer.”

Instead of using plastic weed barriers or synthetic mulch

use compostable materials such as straw, grass clippings, wood chips, newspaper, or leaves. “It reduces plastic waste, and organic mulches also break down over time and add nutrients to the soil,” says Marshall.

Bagged soils, along with the seed starter trays, are two of the biggest culprits of single-use plastic in home gardens, says Bosh, adding that, most of the time, your soil probably doesn’t need much. If you need mulch or soil amendments, try to buy the biggest container you can. Some garden centers or even town landfills that have composting may offer refill stations where you can bring your own containers.

“It hasn’t been as hard as I thought,” says Bosch, who was determined to find ways to farm without using plastic. She started by removing about two-thirds of all the landscape fabric she used before eventually removing all landscape fabric and plastic netting, using natural mulch or cover crops to control weeds instead. The hardest part has been finding an alternative to the plastic irrigation tubing, as tubes with fabric are lined with resin and copper is simply cost prohibitive. “We’re buying the highest quality we can find so we’re not replacing it every year and can patch it as needed.”

You can start by targeting one thing at a time, and it might not be perfect. 

The post How to Reduce Your Plastic Usage in the Garden appeared first on Modern Farmer.

If you grew up on the East Coast or in the Midwest, you know what I mean. Barefoot in the yard, watching the twinkling fireflies, chasing their dazzling lights: It’s quintessential summertime. In the US, there are more than 160 known species of fireflies, and while they are the most common in the eastern and southern US, they are found throughout the country, with peak firefly season in June and July. Worldwide, there are more than 2,000 types of fireflies, and they have been around for millions of years. Yet, like so many of our insects, fireflies are in trouble. However, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List of threatened species, the numbers of many firefly species are decreasing; some are even at risk of extinction. 

But there are easy steps you can take to help the fireflies, and experience their magic yourself, by turning your yard into a firefly sanctuary.

“Whatever little bit of land you have, no matter how small it is, is this amazing opportunity to really help these creatures thrive,” says Deb Landau, director of ecological management for The Nature Conservancy Maryland/DC chapter.

Leave your leaves 

“Probably the number one thing we can do is avoid yard cleanup,” says Nicole Baker, a biologist with The Wild Center, a science museum in New York’s Adirondacks. “While the leaves and detritus may look messy in the yard and in the garden, you’ll need to leave this ‘waste’ in place as it serves as the winter home for thousands of invertebrates, some of which the firefly larvae are hoping to eat.”

Fireflies spend up to two years as firefly larvae. They have voracious appetites at that stage, feeding on various invertebrates, including snails, slugs, and earthworms, all of which are likely crawling on that leaf litter.

“Firefly larvae are crazy looking—they look like armored caterpillars. They’re actually pretty scary looking up close, and a lot of times, people will see them and be like, what the heck is this crazy creature in my yard? But it’s a firefly,” says Landau, who encourages people to look up pictures of firefly larvae so they become familiar with them.

Those leaves also help to build the overall soil health of your garden. They allow the soil to retain moisture, and as leaves and plant matter decompose, they add nutrients back to the soil. Keep in mind that you could also have a dedicated area in your yard for the leaves if you’re using your yard in ways that require parts of it to be neat and tidy. 

Opt for local

When you’re looking to seed your yard in the fall, look for native grasses or wildflowers in your area.

“Try to find seed supply that is local to the area; don’t mail order it if you don’t know where exactly the seeds are coming from,” says Ben Pfeiffer of Firefly Conservation & Research. 

While prioritizing native plants is a tried and true method for conserving all aspects of the natural world, it can be challenging to go all native, especially if you don’t have a blank slate to work with, and that’s OK.

“What is more feasible is to diversify and, little by little, replace and/or add in native perennials, shrubs, and trees over time. Truly, every little bit helps, whether it’s small or large scale,” says Baker.

Be patient 

While you’ve heard of “leave the leaves” in the autumn, you also want to wait for your spring cleanup. Baker says you’ll want to wait to do spring garden cleaning and yard racking until there has been about a week’s worth of temperatures over 50 degrees Fahrenheit and the threat of nighttime frost has passed.

“The point is to wait long enough for the overwintering insect life to emerge from the leaf litter, and gardens, before detritus removal. That way, your “leave the leaves” efforts pay off, and insects don’t get squashed by the rake when we gardeners inevitably get excited by the first warm day,” says Baker.

You’re also not going to see the results of your work overnight. According to Pfeiffer, it can take more than two years. If you’ve done any chemical treatment on your lawn or had a mosquito control company out, it could take even longer as those chemicals also likely killed fireflies. 

“I can’t say enough about the importance of minimizing the use of pesticides. It’s not just that it negatively impacts the firefly larvae and the adults, but all the microorganisms underneath which the firefly larvae are feeding on and dependent on,” says Landau.

Turn off your lights

Come firefly season—typically June and July—you’ll want to keep at least some of your yard a little wild with longer grass. Think about creating dark spaces for adult fireflies with the grass, but also with trees and shrubs, and turn off your outdoor lights if you can.

“Many insects are influenced by artificial light, and the firefly is no exception. Since these little beetles are reliant on their flashy display to communicate with others, they are more likely to experience negative impacts of artificial light pollution,” says Baker.

While the best solution would be to eliminate artificial lights at night or at least in June and July when the fireflies are most active, you could also switch to motion sensor lights for outdoor lights, light fixtures with top shields, or replace your bulbs with red lights, which have less of an impact.

Take in the experience

Don’t forget to enjoy the fireflies you see. 

“They are these iconic things, and I think experiencing them helps connect people across boundaries,” says Pfeiffer. “I love doing firefly walks.” 

You can also collect them and put them in a jar; it’s a great learning experience for kids; just let them go after you’ve looked at them. Don’t leave them in the jar overnight. You can even participate in citizen science projects such as Firefly Atlas, where you snap pictures of the fireflies you see. 

“Just that picture of capturing what life stage it is at what time of the year, in what location it is, is incredibly helpful to scientists trying to put together a better picture of how our fireflies are doing,” says Landau.

The post How to Create a Firefly Sanctuary appeared first on Modern Farmer.

“I initially sought them out because they are delicious,” says Standridge, the James Beard Award-winning chef of The Shipwright’s Daughter in Mystic, CT. But after learning the crabs are invasive, as well as the damage they cause, “it was just one more good reason to use them as much as possible.”

Originally from Europe, commercial ships likely carried the first green crabs to North American shores some time in the 1800s. The non-native species has few predators, reproduces quickly, outcompetes many local species for food and habitat, and, through certain behavior, can destroy saltwater habitats such as eelgrass. They are commonly caught and used for fishing bait.

“I was shocked to find out that they were everywhere,” says Standridge. That is when his quest to find food-grade green crabs began.

Across the United States, chefs including Standridge and Charlie Ray in California, as well as tournaments such as the Emerald Coast Open in Destin, FL are seeking out invasive species for restaurant menus, attempting to put a dent in invasive species such as green crabs, lionfish, and black mustard while building up new income streams for vendors and educating people about the impact of food choices.

Building a supply chain for invasives

Plants and animals are considered invasive if they are non-native to an area and if their presence causes harm to the environment, health of local populations, or to the local economy. Green crabs are just one example, but invasive species range from wild fennel mainly in California to garlic mustard now found throughout much of the US.

Last spring, with the help of Eating with the Ecosystem, a nonprofit that promotes sustaining wild-caught fisheries in New England, Standridge was introduced to fisherman Jason Jarvis, who agreed to put green crabs on his catch list. This opened up a supply chain and made the restaurant the first in Connecticut to use the crabs regularly.

“In Connecticut, we have very little opportunity for people to fish commercially,” says Standrige. “All fish that are regulated under a quota are federally regulated, and the quota is divided by state based on territorial waters. Connecticut has very limited waters, so our piece of the pie is very small. Connecticut fishermen can’t make a living on the limited quotas of fish like fluke, black bass, and scup, so developing markets for lesser used species that don’t have harvest quotas can help them diversify their income streams.”

Since then, with the help of the Green Crab Organization, Standridge and Jarvis have expanded to additional sources for green grabs in Rhode Island and southern Massachusetts. As the ocean warms in many places along the New England coast, the number of these invasive crabs has been growing, but no one knows quite how big the problem is. The Green Crab Organization is performing harvester surveys to get an estimate of how many crabs are out there, but until then, it is working on getting fishermen licensed to harvest them in Connecticut, and to help get green crabs on the menus of other restaurants.

And it’s not just crabs.

“We still get a lot of ‘is this safe, are they good to eat?’” says Brady Hale, marketing director for the Emerald Coast Open, the largest lionfish tournament in the world. “But most people know about lionfish, and they know they are bad and that they are hurting native species.”

The open was born out of a Florida statewide initiative to raise awareness about lionfish and the importance of their removal. Native to tropical waters in the South Pacific and Indian Oceans, the fish have become a massive problem in the Atlantic Ocean, where they have been invading since 1985, posing a threat to the overall ecosystem. The fish, which have powerful stings thanks to their venomous spines, have no known predators and eat basically anything that moves—areas that lionfish heavily invade have seen fish populations reduced by more than 90 percent.

Every year, fishermen and harvesters are encouraged to catch as many lionfish as possible as part of the pre-tournament between February and mid-May, and a three-day-long tournament during mid-May. They can sell or donate the lionfish, with most of them sold to local chefs during the tournament’s end event.

“The demand is huge; the problem is a consistent supply,” says Hale.

According to Hale, that’s not because there aren’t enough lionfish but because it’s not quite lucrative enough for harvesters to catch lionfish full-time, so the supply chain for restaurants isn’t predictable.

It’s not a problem that is unique to seafood. In California, Ray, who grew up foraging for wild mushrooms in Sweden and the United States, spends each spring foraging for Black and Mediterranean Mustards, two of California’s most invasive edible plants. Still, Ray admits that, financially, it doesn’t often make sense for foragers to sell or for chefs to gather independently, as it’s very time-consuming to gather and harvesters aren’t able to sell it for very much.

“Each seed or spore picked is one not being planted,” says Ray.

Ray uses them across her cooking: The Mediterranean mustard goes in salads, where they taste like broccoli, and adds a pop of color and texture, while the Black Mustard, which has a horseradish-like taste, is whipped into butter for steaks or sushi.

Can we eat our way out of the invasive species problem?

While chefs like Ray and Standridge know it’s unlikely we’ll eat enough of the invasive species to eliminate them, they still see it as beneficial.

“Years ago, we might have said we could never eat enough lobster, and now they are basically gone, but also, there is the benefit of eating them over other species that are not so prolific,” says Standridge. “The only way we can manage our blue food resources effectively is to diversify our options.”

The post Building a Market for Invasive Species appeared first on Modern Farmer.

Gottenborg is working to create a habitat on his ranch that sustains the elk population. The ranch sits on the migratory path of the big animals, and every winter, hundreds of them travel through Eagle Rock looking for food as they move from higher to lower elevations. You could see their presence as a wildlife management success story or a nuisance, depending on how you look at them. Maybe a bit of both. 

“Elk can provide an indicator of how well habitats are functioning,” says Karie Decker, director of wildlife and habitat for the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, which works to ensure the animals have the habitat they need to thrive. “They have a direct role on vegetation through herbivory and seed dispersal, create wallows and serve as prey and carrion for many other wildlife species.”

According to the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, before Europeans settled in North America, more than 10 million elk were roaming around the US and parts of Canada, but due to overhunting and habitat loss, their numbers dwindled to 40,000 at the turn of the 20th century. 

That’s when conservationists and government agencies began efforts to restore elk populations through protected areas and regulated hunting. Today, Colorado is home to 280,000 elk, the biggest population in the world. Despite these efforts, maintaining that population is a challenge.

Threats to the elk include everything from climate change to manufactured barriers that can stifle their daily and seasonal movements, land development, traffic, increased human recreational activity, fencing and conflicts with human activities.

“In Colorado, elk and many other species had a very challenging winter in 2022-2023, with a deep snowpack for an extended period, significantly reducing the population in northwest Colorado,” says Decker. “Other challenges to elk across various states include development and the loss of habitat, lack of or low-quality forage, drought, disease and social tolerance.”

Eagle Rock Ranch has been in operation, primarily as a cow-calf operation, for more than 150 years, but Gottenborg, who runs the ranch with his wife, Jean Gottenborg, daughter Erin Michalski and son-in-law Matt Michalski, is relatively new to Eagle Rock, acquiring the ranch about 12 years ago. The elk came with it.

“My predecessor fought them for years,” says Gottenborg. “He did probably everything a landowner could legally do to chase elk off the property, with mixed results. He had propane cannons and salt and pepper shells, and he would get into these big arguments with the Forest Service and CPW [Colorado Parks and Wildlife].”

Elk are not small visitors. Males can weigh up to 700 pounds and stand five feet at the shoulder, females up to 500 pounds and 4-1/2 feet at the shoulder. 

“They are very large, determined eaters,” says Kara Van Hoose, Northeast Region public information officer for CPW. “They will devour hay and other grains left outside for domestic animals and livestock. Elk are known to be destructive in their pursuit of food, toppling over containers, ruining fences and other infrastructure and eating large swaths of crops.”

Still, the Gottenborgs decided to welcome the elk, hoping to make them a benefit to the ranch. Since buying the ranch, the Gottenborgs have been working to diversify their income with the goal of keeping themselves and other ranchers on the land and maintaining the open landscapes. They’ve dipped their toes into agritourism with curated experiences, including fly fishing, ranch tours and eco-tours, and they see the elk as another income stream.

Programs such as Elk Rent in Montana, from the nonprofit Property and Environment Research Center, and the USDA’s Migratory Big Game Initiative in Wyoming, Idaho and Montana pay landowners for providing elk habitat. While there isn’t a program set up yet to do the same in Colorado, the Gottenborgs are in talks with organizations that will pay for the elk to have forage access to their pastures in the winter.

During the winter months when the elk are migrating through the property, the Gottenborgs’ cattle are in Nebraska, so the Gottenborgs don’t need to worry about cows and elk competing for food. By the time the cows are back on the ranch, the elk have moved back up to higher ground. To make it easier for the elk to graze without the risk of getting caught in their fences, they’ve started making modifications to make it easier for them to move up and down the valley. 

“The hope here, too, is that my neighbors are watching me. That they’re following what we’re doing and we can expand the concept, so, eventually, there’s 10 or 12 miles of this valley opened up in terms of easier access,” says Gottenborg.

Elk-friendly fencing that can be laid down flat on the ground to support seasonal wildlife passage is expensive. Still, the Gottenborgs believe there is enough interest in the forage access that they’ll be able to make more modifications. They’re not laying down all of the fences, but they can easily track the migration patterns of the elk in the snow, so they lay down specific fencing sections while keeping their gates open.

In 2023, the Gottenborgs also installed five large, shallow-pool structures that hold fresh water with pumps powered by solar panels. The drinkers, as the Gottenborgs call them, provide water in the higher elevation pastures during the warmer months and the shoulder seasons where natural water sources aren’t present and help to distribute wildlife across the landscape better. They’re hoping to install additional drinkers this year.

“The elk have been here a long time, and we’re trying to change our approach to make them an asset,” says Gottenborg.

The post Meet the Ranchers Working to Sustain the World’s Largest Elk Population appeared first on Modern Farmer.

Livestock is responsible for anywhere from 11.1 percent to 19. 6 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, the majority of which come from cows raised for meat and milk products. Cows belch methane, a potent greenhouse gas that stays in our atmosphere for a much shorter time than carbon dioxide, about 12 years compared to thousands of years, but has much greater warming potential. One cow, for instance, burps about 220 pounds of methane in a year. As the planet warms, everyone from the IPCC to consumers to farmers and food producers is asking how to reduce those emissions—but what does that really mean? 

“When you hear the term carbon neutral, that relates to industries that have carbon dioxide emissions,” says UC Davis professor and head of the agricultural research organization CLEAR Center at UC Davis Frank Mitloehner. “The cows are eating carbon-rich feed; they digest it, and when they digest it, they convert it to methane, and then they belch it out. So, what matters is that we manage methane and find ways to reduce it … Methane is only a problem if we don’t manage it and let it go into the atmosphere.” 

In other words, to reduce emissions from the agricultural sector, many companies and scientists believe the answer is to capture or reduce methane and nitrous oxide, the other significant greenhouse gas from the farming industry. Yet, measuring how much methane and nitrous oxide to reduce is a source of debate—in part because we don’t have a good understanding of these terms and labels. 

“One of the issues is the imprecise use of language many are interchanging between carbon-neutral and climate-neutral,” says Caspar Donnison, the author of a paper published in the journal Environmental Research Letters, on climate neutrality claims in the livestock sector. 

Donnison says that, in order to have alignment with the Paris Agreement (keeping global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius), there need to be significant methane reductions in the livestock sector, around 50 percent between 2020 and 2050. In contrast, the methane reductions proposed by some, such as studies he and his co-author scrutinized in their paper, are insufficient. Even with a proposed cut of 23 percent, livestock sectors would remain a source of very high emissions, sustaining a warming impact that is too high. 

“It is a misleading use of the term ‘climate-neutral’ that is used in these studies, since under their definition the sector would still be causing global warming,” says Donnison. To actually maintain neutrality, Donnison says, the sector has to reduce enough to offset all the greenhouse gasses and other emissions for which it is responsible. 

According to Donnison, there are large opportunities for the food sector to lower emissions, but they involve dietary shifts to plant-based foods, especially in areas with high meat consumption, and increased efficiencies in livestock production. 

“About five years ago, I gave our sustainability director a goal for the farm to be carbon-neutral by the end of 2022 and expand that to the rest of the other farms that supply us by 2030,” says dairy farmer and president of Straus Family Creamery Albert Straus. The Straus family farm has been operating for more than 75 years, tucked along the coastline of Northern California. In 1994, Straus dairy farm became the first certified organic dairy farm west of the Mississippi River, and it was the first 100-percent certified organic creamery in the country.

The farm didn’t make its goal of carbon neutrality by 2022, but it is still working toward it. It has started testing a feed supplement with red seaweed, which has demonstrated a reduction in cow’s enteric methane emissions (which occur via cow burps) an average of 52 percent and as much as 90 percent, although there have been delays with availability recently. The Straus farm is one of a growing number of dairy companies, including Organic Valley and Neutral, which are trying to be climate-neutral and vying for sustainability motivated consumers in the process. But they each have different ways of going about it. 

Along with the seaweed supplements, Straus has implemented a few new pieces of tech, including a methane digester that captures methane emissions from on-farm manure that would otherwise be released into the atmosphere and converts it into electricity. They are also working with other farms that supply the creamery; in 2023, Straus launched an incentive program to incorporate the practices he experimented with and perfected on his farm, so the whole dairy creamery supply chain can be carbon-neutral by 2030.

“I think it is essential for us to create a positive environment where our farms … can address climate change, can address healthy organic food for the local populations and regional populations, and help revitalize rural communities as well,” says Straus.

Start-up Neutral, which launched in 2019 in Oregon and Washington before expanding nationally in 2021, uses carbon offsets. Carbon offsets (when a company or individual calculates its carbon footprint and then funds projects that offset climate change, such as tree planting) have become controversial over the past few years because they rely on hard-to-verify data and tend to put the burden of fighting climate change on projects occurring in the global south. Still, for Neutral, it was a way to be climate neutral from the start while working with its suppliers to reduce emissions on farms.

“Our goal is to use fewer offsets as we implement more of our carbon reduction projects,” says ​​Jake Schmitz, carbon reduction manager at Neutral Foods. “With a growing portfolio of emissions reduction projects, our goal is to cover as many reductions as possible through our own projects, resulting in a reduced use of offsets.”

To do that, Neutral is working with its farms to supplement cows’ feed with Agolin, an essential oil blend that the company says increases feed efficiency by more than four percent and reduces those burps by more than 8 percent. As Agolin helps farmers feed less, it should reduce N2O from crop production. It is also working to change the manure systems to separate solids and liquids, allowing farmers to distribute the manure more efficiently to cropland. 

Organic Valley, a 1,600-farmer-owned cooperative, decided carbon offsets weren’t right for it.

“If we wanted to be carbon neutral tomorrow, we would have to buy carbon offsets because that’s how you get a lot done quickly,” says Nicole Rakobitsch, director of sustainability at Organic Valley. “Buying the carbon offsets from outside of your supply chain, though, means money goes to those projects that are not related to your commodity or the products that you’re making.”

On the facility side, Organic Valley has already pivoted to renewable electricity. Organic Valley, which has plans to be climate-neutral by 2050, decided to go with an approach called carbon insetting, which, according to Rakobitsch, means that, instead of purchasing offsets, it is using that money to invest in its suppliers and farmers.

Thanks in part to a USDA Climate-Smart Commodities grant, Organic Valley started a pilot program to provide technical assistance to farmers who want to implement a new practice, such as agroforestry, but don’t know where to start. Organic Valley pays its farmers annually per ton of carbon reduction to incentivize the farms. 

There are pros and cons to all of these reduction methods; the methane digesters that are part of Straus’s and Neutral’s work to be climate-neutral have been touted by the Biden administration as a critical part of methane reduction, but there are questions about how effective they really are. 

As the climate crisis intensifies, dairies who reduce their emissions are helpful, but only one part of an agricultural solution. As consumers look for more climate-friendly options, Donnison says to pay attention to the language companies use, to help avoid greenwashing. “It’s important to understand how companies are defining climate-neutral, and how they have calculated their emissions, as it can be misleading.”

The post Can Milk Be Climate-Neutral? appeared first on Modern Farmer.

Roman had recently entered the foster care system and found herself drifting away from things she once loved, such as spending time outside. She recalls thinking, “You seriously want me to be around bees? Definitely not.”

With no prior pollinator experience, Roman was apprehensive. “I knew they stung and to get away from them if they’re close to you.” But by her fifth week in the program, Roman had warmed up to the bees, finding them therapeutic. 

“The sound of the bees is really relaxing,” says Roman. “It’s calming.”

Started by clinical social worker Sarah Taylor in 2018, the Huneebee Project is a therapeutic job skills training program that has graduated 25 cohorts, including Roman, from the 15-week program over the past five years. It’s also installed roughly 30 honey bee colonies across seven sites in the greater New Haven area, planted pollinator-friendly garden plots and launched an online marketplace that sells honey made from the hives, candles and a curated selection of other artisan products.

Participants range in age from 15 to 23, and the project prioritizes enrolling children and young adults with past or present child protective and foster care involvement.  

Taylor had long dreamed of creating a nonprofit for youth who are aging out of the foster care system. But it wasn’t until she took time for herself that she realized the therapeutic potential of beekeeping. Burnt out and disheartened with the foster care and child protective services systems, Taylor started keeping her own bees while working and attending a fellowship program in New Haven. 

“After a day of work, the only place I wanted to be was with my bees,” says Taylor. “It became a meditative practice for me. They’re their own form of therapy.”

The Huneebee Project became Taylor’s opportunity to combine her love of beekeeping with her professional background. 

The students are responsible for about 30 hives, although they are working on expanding to 50 hives by the end of summer 2023 across seven official garden sites in New Haven neighborhoods where the youth live. They also now have community hive checks where locals can join in checking on and learning about bees. It’s one more place to create a network and sense of community for the teens and the bees.

“It was really important to have the gardens where youth live so they would be accessible and create spaces where they can have a sense of ownership,” says Taylor.  

Over the years, the programming has evolved as participating youth have given feedback. The program runs each summer and is purposefully small, with about six students taking part. The students must attend at least 75 percent of the workshops to graduate and are matched with a mentor who provides encouragement throughout the program and helps with practicalities such as transportation and breakfast.

“These are kids that are often not going to school or are struggling to get out of bed or are extremely socially anxious. The mentors encourage them, they help with transportation and even get them something to eat. The intensive individual attention is so important,” says Taylor.

Students don’t even get into a bee suit for the first weeks; instead, according to Taylor, they spend time forming relationships, understanding their feelings and their body’s responses to emotions, such as fear, and identifying what they need to regain a sense of control. 

“We have these 15-, 16-year-olds who are used to pretending to be tough, but it’s hard to pretend to be tough around the bees, and it allows for more authentic conversations around fear,” says Taylor. “When someone with a trauma history has that fear response activated but can regain a sense of control, I believe that is healing.”

Since starting the project, Taylor has watched students heal, graduate with professional skills they take with them to college or new jobs and blossom.

For Alex Guzman, who graduated from the program in 2019 and continues to work at the Huneebee Project as junior bee instructor while attending college, the experience helped teach her skills she continues to use today.

“I’ve learned how to socialize in a more professional setting, and I’ve also gathered a lot more patience,” says Guzman. “I have been handling my mental health, learning when to set a boundary or take a break when I need to and take a breather.”

They’re skills she’s learned from interacting with others in the program and the bees themselves. 

“You have to be really patient when you approach bees and to take your time,” says Guzman, “kind of like when you’re dealing with any living thing. Everything I’ve been doing with the bees has contributed to developing those [socialization and patience] skills.”

Students also learn practical office skills, such as using a printer or a coffee maker, that are easy to take for granted but intimidating if you’ve never used  them.

“I look at myself now and, sometimes, I feel like I’m ready to be a boss,” says Roman, who adds that she would someday like to have her own house with bees that she could take care of and eventually, if she has children, teach her kids about.

The post For These Teens, a Unique Beekeeping Program Teaches About Much More Than Honey appeared first on Modern Farmer.

“It was a unique property and I didn’t really have a plan when I bought it, but I decided I didn’t want to build a house on it,” says Adams. “In thinking about what else I could do that was productive, I decided I’d take a shot at growing food.”

Adams quickly developed a plan to host farmers in residence, grow specialty crops for local brewers and host events on the small quarter-acre property he named New Brooklyn Farms. He connected with Prince George’s Soil Conservation District and eventually received USDA funding to build a greenhouse on the property.

That’s when he hit a roadblock. “I was trying to do things correctly and went to get a permit for the greenhouse and was told, ‘You can’t build a greenhouse, it’s not inline with the code, and you can’t operate a farm business, the property isn’t zoned for that,'” says Adams.

Urban farms, like New Brooklyn Farms, have sprouted up in vacant lots across the country since at least the 1990s, when urban farming started to go through a renaissance. In the decades since, many communities have reaped the benefits of having farms in traditionally residential areas—including increased access to fresh foods, carbon sequestration and even workforce training and community building—but many zoning laws haven’t kept up with the increased demand for urban farming. 

“Zoning initially was created to separate uses, to separate residential from agriculture, and it was all to promote public health and safety initially, but now I think people are beginning to see that it’s not really worked to further our communities,” says Lihlani Nelson, deputy director  at Center for Agriculture and Food Systems (CAFS) at Vermont Law and Graduate School, which helped to create the Healthy Food Policy Project.

Five years ago, CAFS, the Public Health Law Center (PHLC) and the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Health at the University of Connecticut came together to create a policy database to give local governments examples of policies that best work to increase access to healthy food. They quickly realized that zoning laws could have a significant impact on improving access to healthy food.

“People have been doing what we’re calling urban ag for a very long time,” says Nelson. “It’s not some brand new thing, but there has been such a growth in the movement around urban ag and there’s so many benefits that people understand in terms of health, environment and community, that it seems like a no-brainer to try to support it as much as possible through local policy, including zoning.”

When Adams realized he couldn’t build his greenhouse, he started rallying local support.

 “I thought, ‘Wow I got this money to spend and I can’t build,”  says Adams.

He wrote to the mayor and the town council, worked to get support from different community organizations and eventually connected with a county council member that was pro-urban farming. For Adams and others who have worked to change zoning codes, gathering supporters has been the key to easing zoning restrictions.

In Kansas City, Missouri, a farmer from the former urban farm Bad Seed Farm got Cultivate KC involved early in their zoning fight.  The organization helps growers develop skills and access resources to start and maintain sustainable farm businesses.

“They were operating a CSA out of a backyard farm in a residential neighborhood and they started running into some issues with the city around running a business in a residential neighborhood,” says Ami Freeberg, Cultivate KC’s assistant director of strategy and partnerships.

In 2009 and 2010, Cultivate KC worked with the farmer and other community organizations on what ended up being an extensive process full of community meetings, meetings with city council members and members of the zoning department to come up with ordinances that eventually allowed for Bad Seed Farm and other urban farms to operate.

“It was a big step forward at the time because it made it possible and created a pathway for farm businesses to operate in residential areas, but there are still a lot of particulars around requiring special use permits, limiting onsite sales and specific restrictions around CSAs, separate from other types of urban agriculture,” says Freeberg.

In the 13 years since, the ordinance has made Cultivate KC’s work more straightforward in the sense that there are codes for them to point people towards, but the reception or the ordinance and urban farms in general has varied greatly by neighborhood and individual community member.

“There’s one neighborhood in particular that had a proliferation of urban farms after the ordinance passed,” says Brien Darby, executive director of Cultivate KC. “And even within that neighborhood, it depends on who you talk to, but some folks are all for it. They like it as an identity for the neighborhood. And some folks are like,  ‘We do not want any more green infrastructure going on in our neighborhood.’” 

Cultivate KC does expect that it will need to collaborate with the city to revisit the ordinance in the next few years. 

“There’s still a lot of gray areas in the language. We get questions every few months,” says Freeberg, adding that one of the initial things Cultivate KC worked on was putting together training for code enforcement, which they’d like to do again.

They also hope to work with officials in Wyandotte County, which oversees zoning for Kansas City, Kansas, on updating their codes to make urban agriculture more accessible.

It took Adams two years and a lot of campaigning to receive a special planning resolution to permit his  farm in Prince George’s County. The county also used it as an opportunity to expand zoning for urban farming.

Adams advises that others going through the process try to speak to as many people as possible within their zoning department. Getting in touch with politicians to get their support can be a worthwhile challenge, he says, noting that he leveraged community organizations to get in touch with politicians. “You have to put yourself out there, collect signatures    and use social [media] and the press to keep the eyes on and give people more reason to help you.”

The post For Urban Farmers, Community Organizing Can Be Key to Easing Zoning Constraints appeared first on Modern Farmer.

The Long Island-based nonprofit organization works to raise awareness of sustainable marine aquaculture through public oyster gardening and other sea farming activities. Oysters are one of the most environmentally friendly and sustainable protein sources. They help filter out pollutants in the water, keep the population of phytoplankton in check, and create habitat for other marine life. South Fork Sea Farmers helps the waters off of Long Island reap all those benefits, while connecting people to a food source and teaching them about oyster farming.

“A single oyster filters 50 gallons of water a day,” says Jeff Ragovin, a board member with the South Fork Sea Farmers. “The oyster gardens are really amazing for the marine environment, providing habitat to shrimp, crabs, sea bass, and black fish. While the oysters aren’t for sale, the people growing the oysters get to harvest them for their friends and family.”

Program participants pay a yearly fee of $200 for the equipment, and, in return, South Fork Sea Farmers asks for 200 oysters back from each plot, allowing it to continue seeding the public gardens. Participants can expect to grow up to 1,000 oysters, ready to eat, over the course of the season.

“It’s a super-sustainable, good-for-the-earth program,” says Ragovin.

Since it started, the program has grown to five harbors off the coast of Long Island. Last summer, with several partner organizations, it started a new reef in the waters off of Accabonac Harbor. South Fork Sea Farmers had students from East Hampton, NY schools sign up to help build the reefs, using bags of recycled oyster shells upon which spat will settle and grow. Those students will continue to monitor the reef’s progress as part of an educational project.

“We wanted to build a reef for years, but it took time to get the permit and do the shell collection,” says Ragovin. South Fork Sea Farmers purchased biodegradable bags from the Netherlands and filled them with used oyster shells collected from local restaurants to form the foundation of the new reef. 

After the shells were collected from restaurants, they had to cure for about six months before they were ready to be placed on the reef. While this reef is built from oyster shells, the waters off New York are also home to several artificial reefs built out of hard structures such as clean, recycled Tappan Zee Bridge material and jetty rock.  As those artificial reefs, the first of which was built in the 1940s, tend to collapse over time, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, which builds and maintains those reefs, adds materials back to them every few years. The state hopes that, in addition to creating habitats for marine life, the reefs stimulate a productive aquatic ecosystem, increasing marine biodiversity as corals, mussels, snails, crabs and larger fish start to call them home. They also protect the shoreline from flooding and erosion and can decrease the energy of intense storms, and the Accabonac Harbor reef will provide space for more oyster gardening.

South Fork Sea Farmers hopes that, in addition to building more oyster reefs locally, it can help inspire other municipalities and organizations to start their own public oyster gardens.

“We get people all over the country reaching out and asking how they can do something similar, so we’re working on putting together a guide of how to do it,” says Ragovin. “It’s been really a fun and exciting opportunity to see people in the local community be stewards of the environment.

The program has grown to an expected 150 families for the 2023 season, from an initial 15 pilot families, with many families including the original 15 coming back year after year.

If your local town isn’t quite ready for such a program or you don’t live along the coast, you can still witness some of South Fork Sea Farmers’ work when it live streams the oyster spawn next week. 

The post Meet The Modern Farmers Creating Public Oyster Gardens appeared first on Modern Farmer.