The Journey As I drove out to Stolen Acres on a sun-splashed Saturday morning in November, I saw dormancy glitter all along County Trunk Highway N in the township of Pleasant Springs. [ … ]
A World of Cokes
Coca-Cola has been a popular drug of choice for nearly 125 years. The famous beverage was born in 1886 in Georgia, the same as Tyrus [ … ]
The Author Who Stood the Heat
Bill Buford’s best-selling book, Heat, was a case of an author deciding to stand the heat and stay in the kitchen until he learned first-hand what Italian food culture, the [ … ]
Plowing Ahead
Debate continues on the most efficient, environmentally-safe way to plow fields in this age of economies of scale and conservationism. Dane County land conservation director Kevin Connors says farmers like [ … ]
The global harvest
As Thanksgiving approaches, we tend to focus more on what we have to be grateful for. We have a bountiful food supply, symbolized at this time of year by horns [ … ]
Get the word out on FAD
I knew little about Foreign Animal Disease (FAD) when I walked into a Wisconsin Department of Agriculture (DATCP) talk on the subject Nov. 3 at the Microbial Sciences [ … ]
Mac ‘n’ Cheese — How Many Wheys?
A recent blog criticized Kraft’s Macaroni & Cheese dinner, a family and kids favorite for decades, for selling a quick meal product made with “cheese products,” not real cheese. [social_buttons]On [ … ]
The Cereal “Box” for Fiber Folks
Nearly 20 years ago, my doctor told me that I had IBS. Irritable Bowel Syndrome. I was getting my annual physical exam and lamented about consistently painful bowel movements and [ … ]
The Beans About Crisco
Soybean oil. That’s it. That’s it? [social_buttons] Yes. After learning that Crisco got its name from crystallized cotton seed oil and waxing nostalgic about the big red-white-and-blue shortening can Mom [ … ]
CAFOs Affect Food Transport, Too
[social_buttons] To food safety advocates, CAFO is a four-letter word. The acronym stands for Concentrated Animal Feed Operations. They came into being as industrialized farming methods took hold largely as [ … ]
Ach, Henry!
Henry Albert Schroeder (1898-1967) must be rolling over in his grave at Kroghville Cemetery. Either that, or he is about ready to come down from Heaven and give corporate farming [ … ]
Sustainability Starts (and Ends) Small
By Steven D. Schmitt A Letter to the Editor in the September 17, 2009 Wisconsin State Journal could not have been timed better. A Madison resident who had farmed for [ … ]