Rural Living

This will be an ongoing topic for a potpourri of things pertaining to rural living in general. It could be sharing your new adventures with chickens, what you've been up to on the homestead, or perhaps asking a question. Pretty much anything goes here.

Another gardening season has come and gone ( for most of us anyway ). Like many gardeners, you may already be thinking about lessons learned and what you may do when Spring 2026 arrives. This is an ongoing topic.

For Village of Owego resident Tamara Gates, the new “Comfort Cottage Hens” chicken coop in her backyard is a sanctuary of sorts, a place to seek refuge and peace. It’s there she greets, feeds, and spends time with eleven of her new feathered friends. Tamara explained that when she’s not having a good day, visiting the chicken coop quickly changes her mood, and the experience uplifts her and has become an extension of support for her well-being. Tamara requires full use of a wheelchair due to the loss of use in her legs, and her immune system is compromised due to medical issues. Tamara’s partner, Doug Weeks, put his many talents to work in the early spring to build what …

What do you think, would you quit your day job to start a small farm?

An American Farm Bureau Federation survey released in April reported that 70% of respondents said they couldn't afford all the fertilizer they needed this season. Some farmers are more vulnerable to price swings than others. Producers of corn and wheat, which rely heavily on fertilizer, can spend around a third of their operating costs on fertilizer alone. Half of the farmers who responded to a survey released by the National Corn Growers Association in early April said they wouldn't apply the full amount of fertilizer to their corn crop this year, due largely to higher costs and limited availability. Because farmers often secure their fertilizer stores well before a grow…

Three more cases of the New World screwworm have been confirmed, including one outside the main cluster in Texas, demonstrating the difficulty of stopping a resurgent pest that could devastate the nation’s cattle industry, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced Monday. The screwworm is actually a fly larva that eats living flesh instead of dead material. The flies lay their eggs in open wounds of animals like cattle, but wildlife, pets and occasionally even humans can be infested. The government has a program to breed sterile male flies and drop swarms of them from planes to mate with wild females, which kept screwworm contained at the southern end of Panama for dec…

by Adam Gallaher The state of New York could meet its goal of building 46 gigawatts of large-scale solar by midcentury, but not without making difficult choices in how land is usedacross the state. That’s the overall finding of an analysis several colleagues and I have made in that state. It’s an issue that other states, and the U.S. as a whole, are facing as they seek to shift electricity generation from fossil fuels to renewable sources, such as wind and solar. The question of land use arises because power plants that burn coal and natural gas can produce large amounts of electricity from relatively small areas of land – but solar requires more space to generate the sa…

by Bret R. Shaw People who shop at the more than 8,700 farmers markets operating in the U.S.either year-round or seasonally generally fall into six distinct groups. Three of them are more interested in farmers markets than the others. I study local food systems as a strategic communications scholar, and that’s the main takeaway from a study that I conducted with several colleagues. As we explained in the March 2026 edition of British Food Journal, people who fall into those groups have different levels of interest in farmers markets but also have some things in common. Most people who shop at them are motivated to go because they want healthy, fresh food, they support loc…

After hibernating through a long winter, groggy black bears across New York State are beginning to venture out of their dens, stretch their legs, and look for their first meals of spring. For people living in or visiting bear country, March is time to become bear wise again! According to the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation ( DEC ), adult male bears are usually the first to emerge and may have lost up to 30 percent of their body weight, while females with nursing cubs emerge later and may have lost up to 40 percent of their body weight. Bears are especially hungry in the spring due to depleted fat reserves and will search extensively for easily obta…

The 2026 Pennsylvania Farm Show’s opening day on Saturday started bright and early for many visitors. Carrie Shreve of Derry Township and her granddaughter Macie Lilley, 9, of Harrisburg, arrived at the Pennsylvania Farm Show Complex & Expo Center in Harrisburg at 7:30 a.m. “It took barely anything to get in here. We parked in the main lot,” Shreve said. “I never missed a Farm Show in my entire life.” The two started their day with a breakfast of champions — potato doughnuts and milkshakes — before following their annual tradition of taking in the opening day sights. Visitors have eight days to attend the Farm Show, which runs through Jan. 17 under the theme “Growing …

In the garden, herbs are forgiving plants. They aren’t fussy about soil pH, almost never need fertilizer, and can power through if you occasionally forget to water them. But when the weather turns cold and their outdoor beds become inhospitable, I grow some of my culinary friends on a sunny kitchen windowsill, even as they become more needy. I say “some” because herbs are tricky plants to grow indoors. Dill and fennel have large root systems, making them impractical contenders for indoor pots. Basil tends to grow straggly because it requires intense sunlight, which is just about impossible to achieve indoors. And the way lavender and chamomile spread makes them best left …

MITCHELL, S.D. - 2025 brought another unprofitable harvest in the Heartland, where soybean farmers were already dealing with high equipment and fertilizer costs due to inflation and tariffs. Kevin Deinert grows soybeans and corn and also raises cattle on his family's farm near Mitchell, South Dakota Kirk Siegler/NPR Kevin Deinert farms the same land his great-great-grandfather did near Mitchell, South Dakota, about 80 miles from the Iowa state line. "I'd be probably the fifth generation, I've got sons, that'd be the sixth that possibly would want to take over the farm," Deinert says over the hum of his tractor. Lately it's a fight to just stay in business one year to the…

The Sun is out , the shears , lopers and pole pruning pole blade are all sharp so it’s time to get out there and prune those apple trees . Yes , a bit early as some recommend mid Winter as the optimal time for this chore but by that time , and at this stage in my life , my mind ( whats left of it ) is buttoning up for the Winter ! Now with leaves having gone its easy to see all the ones I missed last year like the so called “ water sprouts “ , those pesky straight up to the sky non apple producing new branches that pull a lot of energy from the rest of the tree , clip em low as the are not going to give you anything but more headaches later ! And those inward growin…

Tour Joel Salatin's Polyface Farm and get his thoughts on the current state of farming in America in this video: