Sustainable Thoughts and Ideas: Thinking outside the Soapbox about “Going Local.” Part 4: Is Going Local Expensive?
By: Nathan Melson, MS Agricultural Sciences Written for Living Natural First Magazine June 2010 As I continue my series on “Going Local”, I’ve come to one of the questions many of us in the local food and economy movement get asked by skeptics a lot. The question is, “Is going local expensive”? This question cannot [...]
Sustainable Thoughts and Ideas: Thinking outside the Soapbox about “Going Local.” Part 3: Stumbling Blocks on the Road & Ways to Repair Them.
By: Nathan Melson, MS Agricultural Sciences Written for Living Natural First Magazine May 2010 By now many of you are following along with my series of articles about “Going Local”. If you haven’t been, try to find a back issue of LNF, or e-mail me and I’ll shoot you a copy of my previous writings. [...]
Sustainable Thoughts and Ideas: Thinking outside the Soapbox about “Going Local.” Part 2: Food Sheds & Food Miles
By: Nathan Melson, MS Agricultural Sciences Written for Living Natural First Magazine April 2010 As many of you know, and some of you may not, our family farm is located in the DFW Metroplex Food Shed. As I mentioned in the March article a food shed can be defined as a geographic zone around a [...]
Sustainable Thoughts and Ideas: Thinking outside the Soapbox about “Going Local.” Part 1: Definitions
By: Nathan Melson, MS Agricultural Sciences Written for Living Natural First Magazine March 2010 At the end of January I was asked to speak at the Texas Organic Farmers & Gardeners Association (TOFGA) annual conference also known as the Texas Conference On Organic Productions Systems or TCOOPS . I was fortunate enough to be asked [...]
Sustainable Thoughts and Ideas: Are Internet Video Games reflecting a pre-programed desire for a connection with the land in humans?
By Nathan Melson, MS Agricultural Sciences Written for Living Natural First Magazine February 2010 On one the coldest January nights in recent memory while rendering some pork fat into lard (we wanted to try using or own source of cooking grease), I began pondering the connection it seems that people subconsciously have with the land, [...]
Sustainable Thoughts and Ideas: Why do so many folks run down an alternative food system that can produce high quality food, profit, and benefits for local economies?
By: Nathan Melson, MS Agricultural Sciences Written for Living Natural First Magazine January 2010 Recently, I saw the documentary film “Food, Inc.” I had previously heard a lot about it from some of our customers, and I had seen the previews. Even though I had some preconceptions about what I was going to see, and [...]
Sustainable Thoughts and Ideas: Becoming Locally Satisfied
By: Nathan Melson, MS Agricultural Sciences Written for Living Natural First Magazine August 2009 As those who read my articles on a regular basis know, I cover a lot of topics and thoughts here in this little section of the magazine that the publisher has so graciously given me. As I look back at them, [...]
Sustainable Thoughts and Ideas: From the Farm to the Fork
By: Nathan Melson, MS Agricultural Sciences Written for Living Natural First Magazine July 2009 In the past few months the farmers’ market season has crept upon us once again. For many direct marketing farm families like mine, the time from mid-April through October is the busiest time of the year. Not only are we having [...]
Sustainable Thoughts and Ideas: Sheep on a Cattle Farm in Northeast Texas, You Must Be Kidding.
Nope, St. Croix Hair Sheep Work Quite Well. By: Nathan B. Melson, MS Agricultural Sciences Sloans Creek Farm, Dodd City, TX (To Be Published in Living Natural First Magazine.) For years in Fannin County, TX most people wouldn’t even think about raising sheep on their farms. “We are a cattle, hay, and grain county in [...]
