Entries by Cathy Svejkovsky

Understanding the COMET-Planner Tool

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By Cody Brown and Darron Gaus, NCAT Agriculture Specialists Carbon Farm Planning is a rewarding process for producers and conservation planners, as we “dig deep” and find all the potential carbon sinks and soil health practices that can be implemented across the landscape. Alongside great partners like Carbon Cycle Institute, we have developed a resilience […]

Natural Senescence

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By Lee Rinehart, NCAT Agriculture Specialist September is the beginning of my year. The summer crops have just about given their all, their leaves brown with wilt or downy mildew, an element of a plant’s natural senescence. The garden wants to go to sleep, and I tuck it in with a blanket of cover crops…my […]

The Season of Mud

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By Tammy Barnes, NCAT Agriculture Specialist Ah, the season of boot-sucking, tractor sliding, truck bed smashing, brown paw-printed kitchen floors, heavy pant cuffs, human swearing mud. The constant freeze-thaw cycles of the eastern part of the U.S. create ankle-busting holes and ruts that are maddening and dangerous to humans and beasts. Our pastures are devastated […]

Living Lawn Mowers in a World of Mowing Madness

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By Danielle Crocker, NCAT Sustainable Agriculture Specialist Mowing lawns is a common activity in the United States due to factors like suburbanization, homeownership trends, and a cultural emphasis on well-maintained yards. A well-clipped yard with stripes is often associated with the American Dream. Mowing has become an American pastime. I won’t deny how attractive a […]

Greens as a Secondary Income from your Cash Crop Plants

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By Audrey Kolde, NCAT Agriculture Specialist I find great joy in incorporating green vegetables into my meals. Yet, we tend to restrict ourselves to greens cultivated primarily for their leaves, leaving them susceptible to bolting in high temperatures or losing leaves to disease. But did you know that our gardens have delectable green vegetables available […]

Celebrating the Wisdom of Women Shepherds: ATTRA’s She’s Raising Sheep Podcast Series

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By Linda Poole, Regenerative Grazing Specialist March is Women’s History Month, “an annual observance to highlight the contributions of women to events in history and contemporary society,” states Wikipedia. There couldn’t be a better time to honor the wisdom and accomplishments of women shepherds! For millennia, women have tended sheep to provide food and fiber for their families and […]

Identifying Waste: Becoming a Lean Farming Machine

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By Hakeem Holmes, NCAT Agriculture Specialist Lean is a business process improvement concept that focuses on the elimination of non-value-added activities from processes, which are defined as waste. These activities may appear in agribusiness operations as processes that do not change the form or function of a product or service being offered. There are eight […]

Can Cover Cropping Heal Abused Soil? A Mad Farm Reflection

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By Lee Rinehart, NCAT Agriculture Specialist In my past two blogs, I reflected on planting cover crops on small plots and gardens. If you missed them, you can read them here and here. I wrote these blogs because, as an agricultural educator, I need to ground truth what I teach. My little mad farm helps […]