The Connection Between Human Health and Soil Health

...s in the lecture above and in her book Farmacology: What Innovative Family Farming Can Teach Us About Health and Healing. In the research for the book Miller visited farmers who, as she put it, “farm in the image of nature,” who approach the farm as a living organism. While she cautioned that there is little research behind the connection between farming practices and health, she suspects that biodiversity on the farm may be an important factor in...

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071 Farmer Mai Nguyen

...he grows grains and vegetables in Northern California using a no-till, dry-farming method with draft horses–all in the midst of a historic drought! During the course of the conversation we discuss: Southeast Asian vegetables Growing rice Dry farming No-till agriculture Growing wheat Sonora wheat Red Fife wheat Dark rye Managing risk Sheep and draft horses on a small farm To find out more about what Mai is up to check out her blog farmermai.com. If...

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Rain Barrels

...don’t want to discourage anyone from making an attempt at it, but for most urban homesteaders it won’t be economical or practical given the space requirements and weight of thousands of gallons of stored water. Thankfully, there are simpler strategies for harvesting rainwater. Rainwater used for irrigating plants does not need filtering or purification, and since outdoor watering accounts for the number one household water use, you’ll be using tha...

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The Great Water Conservation Grift

...onceived water conservation policies have gone poorly when it comes to our urban landscapes. Take, for instance, LA’s horrible lawn replacement rebate program that ended up in the hands of fly by night operators who exploited their workers and left us with acres of gravel and plastic lawns. Or, since most homeowners don’t have any understanding of climate or horticulture, we just get dead lawns or, at best, decomposed granite and a few sad cacti....

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