Tagged with Local Sustainable Farms …

Willowsford: Agriculture Supported High End Community

Willowsford: Agriculture Supported High End Community

By Amanda
Willowsford’s ‘in house’ farm may be perceived as just another amenity to provide “farm to table attributes,” to sell to prospective residents of the mega house development. However, I wonder how would our world be changed if all new developments included a farm? What if it were required of the developer, like water, sewer, runoff mitigation and stoplights?
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Spring Comes Full Cycle for a Growing Season

Spring Comes Full Cycle for a Growing Season

By Amanda
Martina and I recently got together to celebrate spring and the one year anniversary of this blog, A Growing Season. For both of us, it was a time to look back and see how far our lives have come: what our blog has produced, how it has expanded our knowledge and understanding of local food and food systems, and most of all, where our life’s journey has taken us. Continue reading →

Farm Profile: The Bowen Farmstead, Brandywine, Maryland

Farm Profile: The Bowen Farmstead, Brandywine, Maryland

By Amanda
I recently visited the P. A. Bowen Farmstead in Brandywine, Maryland in southern Prince George’s County, a pasture-based mixed animal soy free farm operation owned by Sally Fallon Morell, author of the Nourishing Traditions cookbook. With pastured dairy cows, egg and meat chickens and pigs, each part of the farm is organized with sustainability and humane animal treatment principles in mind. Continue reading →

DC’s Eat Local First Week July 14-21

DC’s Eat Local First Week July 14-21

Now’s your chance to get together with other DC area locavores and local food activists and celebrate all that is fresh, delicious and sustainable about the local foods movement! Eat Local First is a local food campaign that begins with a week-long celebration of local food in the Washington DC area. Continue reading →

Looking for Local: Dairy Day

Looking for Local: Dairy Day

By Martina I grew up spending summers in Germany visiting my Oma, where every hike through the woods had a purpose, ending at an outdoor cafe…with local pastries, of course!  So when Clear Spring Creamery advertised their Open Farm Day at the Dupont Circle market recently, I looked forward to a meandering country drive with … Continue reading →

Suburban Pioneer

Suburban Pioneer

Today I went on a farm tour at Grassential Farm in Potomac, MD.  Just a few miles outside the beltway and surrounded by McMansions, this ten-acre farm is incredibly productive with cows, pigs, goats, lamb, ducks, chickens and rabbits.  The owner, Matt Rales is a three-year veteran of Polyface, and he’s using all their innovative techniques to get the most out of his land while putting the most back into his land.  He’s incredibly knowledgable about soil replenishment and doesn’t mind explaining how his cows eat 1/3 of the grass they graze on and trample 2/3 back into the earth to enrich the soil mixing it with their manure and making it better than before.  He prefers the terms restorative and regenerative farming rather than sustainable farming, because sustaining is not enough… Continue reading →