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Happy Pig Says "Welcome!"
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A descendant of generations of Montana ranchers and farmers, Tim Dusenberry, owner and operator of Double X Bar Ranch, is the steward of nearly 600 acres of farmland where he raises 135 head of beef cattle, 40+ pigs, and uncounted laying hens just a few miles from the city limits of Helena. 
If you were to eat a dinner consisting only of Montana’s top agricultural products, here’s what you’d have in front of you: steak, a potato (no butter or sour cream, sorry), a big piece of bread, a cold glass of beer, and a piece of black cherry pie. What happened to that salad or side serving of veggies? 
What’s a guy to do when life slaps him in the face? When a roll of the boat knocks him to the deck? When a rogue wave drenches him in water? He gets up, dries himself off, and figures out a way. Pete Knutson has always been the kind of guy to find a way around the hurdles and challenges life tosses his way. 
On a drizzly Saturday, Dave Scott (a livestock specialist with the National Center for Appropriate Technology, NCAT) and Brent Roeder (Montana State University, MSU, sheep specialist), lead a workshop on grazing, practices, integrated parasite management, FAMACHA© scoring, and new sheep identification and handling methods. It could have been titled, “All Things Sheep, Kids (the 2-legged kind), Barber Pole Worms, and Mud… and Community.” A quirk of the weather (thanks, Climate Weirdness!), and hungry migrating birds can clean out a crop in a matter of hours! Help a friend: Make a donation at Nash and Patty’s Go Fund Me Page. Instead of this… Nash’s has this… Patty and Nash Huber, Nash’s Organic Produce, made it 
Can Montana feed itself? That sounds like a pretty basic question – after all, Montana is the fourth largest state in the United States, spanning 147,000 square miles. Shouldn’t we be able to support our meager population of 1,050,000 souls? We are primarily an agricultural state where almost 28,000 farms and ranches are spread across 60 million acres. 
Most of the millions living in the Pacific Northwest forget that the drylands of eastern Washington and Oregon on the west of the Rocky Mountains and Montana to the east are also part of the nation’s “bread basket.” They’ve been raised to think that wheat comes from Kansas. The truth is that eastern Washington and Oregon, and central and eastern Montana produce millions of bushels of wheat, most of which is sold by the train carload to one of just a handful of huge commercial flour mills or is exported. 
Range rider Bree and her horse Shasta out for a morning’s ride. (Source: Hilary Anderson, Tom Miner Basin Association) While traditionally range riders – “cowboys” of old – were men, many of the range riders in the Tom Miner Basin today are women. Audio Interview Bree Morrison tells about her life as a 
Montana is rightfully called Big Sky Country, and it’s not unusual to drive 3 or 4 hours to attend a meeting, visit friends, or join a field day to learn about ranching or farming. On a hot and smoky day in August, Anderson Ranch in the Tom Miner Basin, near Yellowstone National Park, hosted several dozen folks who came to learn more about resilient ranching. |
 The Voice of Eco-Agriculture North America’s premier publisher on production-scale organic and sustainable farming. Learn more here. Book of the MonthBeginning to End Hunger By M. Jahi Chappell 
Brazil is just one country battling big food and big ag on multiple fronts. In Beginning to End Hunger, M. Jahi Chappell establishes the importance of holistic approaches to food security in Brazil, suggests how to design successful policies to end hunger, and lays out strategies for enacting policy change. Read on... |
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