sheep

Government spends $40 million mowing lawns of empty homes

The U.S. government owns 200,000 foreclosed homes. And to keep those empty homes looking spiffy for would-be buyers, the government has to keep up appearances — including the appearance of the lawn. As a result, we taxpayers are forking over $40 million for lawn-mowing at these uninhabited houses.

Food Studies: Post-communist pork, the Goat Whisperer, and other stories from the field

Mangalica pigs in Hungary. Food Studies features the voices of volunteer student bloggers from a variety of different food- and agriculture-related programs at universities around the world. You can explore the full series here. Over the past few months I’ve visited food producers, large and small, all over Europe. I’ve been behind the scenes on […]

Local dressing is the new local eating

The wool and cotton for all of the clothes in Rebecca Burgess' closet was grown within 150 miles of her home in the Bay Area. The wool was spun there, too; the dyes were grown there; the sweaters were knitted there. In fact, the clothes were entirely locally sourced from what Burgess calls her local "fibershed" — the network of farmers, millers, weavers, designers, dyers, knitters, and seamstresses that it takes to make clothes.  

Making cheese from Icelandic sheep [VIDEO]

At Star Thrower Farm, Deborah and Scott Pikovsky raise these cold-hardy animals for their milk, meat, and wool -- and they do it outside, on pasture, all year long.

Herding sheep is like herding people: Desire works better than fear

Moving my sheep into their barn for the winter has me thinking woolly thoughts about flocks of various kinds.

Citing Heritage, Dana Milbank attacks valid climate science as ‘bordering on the outlandish’

Cross-posted from the Wonk Room. In “Global warming’s snowball fight,” Dana Milbank, the Washington Post‘s premier Capitol Hill reporter-turned-columnist, applied his trademark snark to the political debate over climate change. His George Will-style column is based on the premise that “the greens” have been “hoist by their own petard” because they have “argued by anecdote […]