PRESTON, Minn.—“Cover Crops, No-Till and More” will be the focus of a special soil health workshop Friday, Feb. 16, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., at St. Columban Church (408 Preston St. NW) in Preston. This Land Stewardship Project (LSP) workshop will feature West Union, Iowa, farmer Loran Steinlage. There will also be short presentations… Read More →
Farm Beginnings & Journeyperson Applications Being Accepted LEWISTON, Minn.—One of the most comprehensive farmer training initiatives in the country is offering educational and support options for both new and established farmers, beginning this fall. The Land Stewardship Project (LSP) is now accepting applications for its Farm Beginnings Program and the Journeyperson Course. Farm Beginnings Farm… Read More →
LEWISTON, Minn. — If you are a crop or livestock farmer in southeastern Minnesota, the Land Stewardship Project (LSP) invites you to join the Soil Builders’ Network to receive regular updates on workshops, field days and on-farm demonstrations related to the latest in soil health and cover-cropping. The Soil Builders’ Network was launched earlier this… Read More →
For an artist, it’s always nice to get a little public recognition—it helps make up for all those hours spent alone in the studio. So when Deborah Foutch’s piece, “Soil Horizon,” won a blue ribbon at the Minnesota State Fair in 2015, she was thrilled. But even more exciting was that the artwork—it uses various… Read More →
“Upon this handful of soil our survival depends. Husband it and it will grow our food, our fuel, our shelter, and surround us with beauty. Abuse it and the soil will collapse and die, taking humanity with it.” This quote was taken from the Vedas Sanskrit Scriptures, which date back to 1500 BC. For a… Read More →
The Star Tribune newspaper recently ran an in-depth series of articles about the environmental risks faced by our Minnesota waterways, focusing on the Upper Mississippi, the Red River and the Chippewa River. The last article in the series highlighted the Land Stewardship Project’s work related to the Chippewa 10% Project, which is helping farmers and… Read More →
When I started working with the Land Stewardship Project on the Chippewa 10% Project, the work felt far away. Based out of Minneapolis, I was working on the Cropping Systems Calculator to help farmers in the Chippewa River watershed region in west-central Minnesota determine what financial differences they would see by switching a marginal corn/soybean… Read More →
In the late 1790s and early 1800s, British economist Thomas Robert Malthus used mathematics, the agronomic reality of the day and basic biology to lay out a grim assessment about the future of the planet: we were doomed to an endless cycle of boom and bust. It was inevitable human populations would periodically grow to… Read More →
Finding the weakest link in a farming operation is often easier said than done. But sometimes a few energetic pigs accomplish the task quite nicely. “Today, fencing suddenly moved up the list as our weakest link,” quips Paul Freid on a brisk day in early May. He and his wife Sara, along with their 11-year-old… Read More →
First, some background: I grew up on a conventional hay, corn and soybean farm in western Iowa and moved to Rochester, Minn., for work after getting a mechanical engineering degree from Iowa State University. I like engineering, but after a few years of working in an office environment, I was feeling the urge to get… Read More →
