farming & ranching

This wool has a story - it comes from sheep that graze the hillsides, pasturelands and brushfields around my Sierra foothills home.This wool is shorn and skirted and rolled and sacked by the hands of my family and friends.This wool comes from sheep tha...

We are ahead of schedule for this rice season; a welcome change from recent years when spring rains brought delays.   I'm almost complete preparing my rice fields.  The water will be going on soon and airplanes should carry out the seedi...

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When I grew vegetables for the farmers' markets, I always looked forward to the day (usually around Christmas) that my seed catalogs would arrive.  Farming at this scale (for me, at least) required a certain amount of amnesia - I found that I had ...

Ewes and lambs returning from their morning escapade!My friend and fellow sheep rancher Lana Rowley once posted on facebook that she was never sorry when she took a dog or a gun with her when she left the house.  While I'm not as much as a gun guy...

Conservation Project Director Monica Igelcia with Audubon California comments on work by rice farmers to improve wildlife habitat on the farm.

Radio personalities Armstrong & Getty comment on the use of airplanes in planting rice in the Sacramento Valley each spring.

By Jim MorrisMany areas have that “go to” location. First-timers to San Francisco often seek out the Golden Gate Bridge. When in Anaheim, one must don mouse ears.  Neophytes to Los Angeles crane their necks on the 101 looking for the Hollywood...

By Roberta FirovedNo longer is the term crop duster acceptable in referring to the professionals who apply crop protection materials from airplanes. The term was coined over eighty years ago when airplanes used dusting materials.  Today, the techn...

I had occasion one morning several weeks ago to drop by Jim and Steph Barrie’s place in Thermalands (just northeast of Lincoln).  Mutual friends from southeastern Oregon who winter their cattle with Jim and Steph had left some “Shepherd’s Sc...