Category Archives: Uncategorized

Good news today for a Santa Cruz-area organic farming family. Jacobs Farm Del Cabo won a million dollar jury verdict because pesticides sprayed nearby ruined a year’s worth of organic sage, rosemary and dill. The pesticides were meant for a nearby Brussels sprouts crop. But the aerial application apparently evaporated, then blew over to theContinue reading “Organic Farm Wins $1M Verdict for Pesticide Contamination”

We went to the Morton Arboretum on Saturday for a picnic and to celebrate fall. But it turns out, we didn’t have to go anywhere except for a walk/bike ride around the block to see some major tree diversity. Pictured are the results of our fall “stained glass” project on Sunday while the iFarmer workedContinue reading “Fall Craft Project: Celebrating Leaf Diversity”

Looking for a way to get your kids some agri-education, but are more than a stone’s throw from a real farm? Check out 4-H Virtual Farm. It’s Vermont centric, but pretty general in content. It’s a fully interactive site, complete with audio, video and computer-generated, cartoon graphics. I’m partial to the aquaculture pages.

Seems somewhat unbelievable, but today was my first visit to the Morton Arboretum. Unbelievable because it’s a fantastic, family-friendly gardens and it’s only about 10 miles from my house. I can’t believe we haven’t been there before. We’ll certainly be back when the weather’s as good as it was today. Indeed, we picked a perfectContinue reading “Scaring Up Fall at the Morton Arboretum”

The MacArthur Foundation folks and all their riches have realized something we at Virtual Farmgirl have known all along…farmers are geniuses…and worthy of the same support and recognition as the scientists who make important breakthroughs and the luminaries who bring art and joy into our lives. Why? Because farmers feed the world. We literally couldn’tContinue reading “Urban Farmer Gets $500K Genius Grant”

It was good to see a Twitter post today from one of our local reporters alerting me to an Oak Leaves story about what I hope will be a model food-to-table program at an area elementary school. The Hatch Patch is in its second harvest at Hatch Elementary School in Oak Park. The students areContinue reading “Gardening is Elementary at This Grade School”

I’ll admit, one of the reasons I don’t want to plant a fruit tree is that there’s little chance I’d be able to keep up with a harvest on a mature tree, and I’d end up with a fruity, mushy mess each year. But in Toronto, an innovative little start-up has come up with aContinue reading “Fruit Rescue Squad Dispatched to Backyard Harvests”

OK. I had to do a double take at the byline and dateline to be sure I wasn’t reading agri-satire from The Onion. Turns out, farm neighbors in some fruit-farm regions have more to complain about than livestock odors and slow-moving tractors. According to the AP, there’s been a resurgence of the use of hailContinue reading “Holy Hail Pa, Was That a Cannon?”

After I came home from work today, I sat down with the iFarmer to check out the features of our new AT&T U-verse. [Despite the misrepresentations of the three, yes it took three, in-person sales folks, we are now set up pretty much with what we were told we would get (a week later).] WeContinue reading “Ultimate Lasagna With Farm-Fresh Ingredients”

Despite a skirmish with my neighbor’s son over the volume of his hip hop, we had a fantastic day. Future Farmboy and I started out with an early trip to the Oak Park farmers market, for doughnuts, provisions from Shrooms Kitchen, veggies and some fresh flowers. I’ve found that I can no longer feel readyContinue reading “Flowers in Every Room”