The history of the sugar beet has far more twists and turns than you might expect, from Napoleonic orders to anti-slavery movements. One of the newer uses for the sugar beet lies in using a mixture of ...

Perhaps the most common in the US, the potato is native to the Americas and comes in a variety of sizes, shapes, textures, and colors. Potatoes should not be eaten raw, but can be cooked in … you know ...

What is graywater, exactly? Household wastewater from washing machines, bathroom sinks, showers, and bathtubs is considered “gray” because it is only lightly soiled and poses a minimal health risk. As ...

In 2010, a young man on a quest for enlightenment walked into the office of Jerry Hatfield, director of the USDA’s National Laboratory for Agriculture and the Environment in Ames, Iowa. His name was ...

A dearth of children in the wake of the Great Plague, some historians surmise, led farmers to use adults to guard their crops, some keeping watch in straw huts as Native Americans did, evident in an ...

The house was raised above the ground, like a mushroom or a white ray gun, its rooms radiating out like spokes of a wheel. It was 1957 and this was the “House of the Future,” a prototype modular house ...

In the fall of 2014, when the Elzinga family of Alderspring Ranch were bringing their cattle back to the ranch from the jagged river canyons and rocky peaks of their public grazing allotment above ...

Chris Rauch was strolling past booths at the annual ag show in Spokane last summer when he spotted a large jar full of basalt powder. A nearby sign urged him to spread it on his croplands to help ...

Building a basic chicken coop for a small flock of birds is a solid weekend project for the determined do-it-yourselfer with basic carpentry skills, while the more elaborate coops could easily take ...

Have you heard the one about Daylight Saving Time (DST) and farmers? As the story goes, farmers and agriculture groups lobbied for DST in order to have more light at the end of their day to complete ...

When Leanna Maksymiuk started keeping sheep at Lone Sequoia Ranch, her business in British Columbia, she did it with a direct interest in fiber art. Today, she has a flock of 25 sheep, mostly ...

Paul, who owns Cameron Winery, and Raney, the founder of nearby Evesham Wood, practice what’s known as dry farming – they rely on natural precipitation alone for their vines. By 2004, the two had ...