William Castle is a craftsman. As such he is steeped in the traditions of work process, of the fit and effectiveness of tools, of the grain of each circumstance, of the integration and protection of heritage, of the next earned comfort. All of these things and much more go into the assessment that here is a man who is best suited to step up as guide and instructor of this way of working. In an artisan’s manner Castle accumulated, over his long service with work horses, measurements of the appropriate and of the transformative, tools and fittings.

Bloat can be a frustrating problem and sometimes a serious emergency. Carl Dahlen, Beef Specialist, North Dakota State University says legume pastures like alfalfa generally have the greatest bloat potential, especially if it’s lush regrowth. Some farmers put up one or more cuttings as hay and then graze the regrowth in the fall.

Cotswolds are one of the most important breeds in British history, with a legacy extending to the United States. But ironically, the breed is now considered rare by the Livestock Conservancy in the United States and the Rare Breeds Survival Trust in England. Modern agriculture has pushed out breeds like the Cotswold, but this hardy dual-purpose sheep continues to be an asset to the small-scale farmer. Their importance in the history of the British and American sheep industries is undeniable.

The old husband and wife partnership has worked a lifetime on this farm, caring for their four acres of orchard, the 4 two-acre fields of legume pasture and hay, and these two acres of poultry operation. They hold title to 20 acres that feels to them as a very large outdoor garden, house, and sanctuary. In the beginning, (their beginning), they cared, with thoughtful vigor, for five bee hives as they also cared for all of the intertwined parts and elements of their farming. While it has become more unpredictable, difficult and demanding they maintain hives still, they farm still.

My husband and I have a small 7 acre farm in Beavercreek, Oregon, where we ride, drive, and farm with our horses. When working horses there can be as many opinions about how to do it correctly as there are people you ask. Here are some of my thoughts about how to apply knowledge of horse dispositions to the driving horse and farming set up based on my experiences working primarily with my three saddle-horse-sized Kiger Mustang mares.

My dad said a lot of things to me in his life. One of them was “Never underestimate your audience,” which I thought was quite an amazing thing for a World War II veteran to say who only had grade 11 and had never been on a stage in his life. The other thing he said to me while I was busy trying to be an artist / musician and having doubts was, “Even the little Prairie chickens dance.” Another thing I remember him saying was “Go ye to the plains” … that was supposedly from the Bible. Now the first few quotes that I’ve mentioned I totally get, but this last quote has me stumped and I’ve been searching for where it says that in the Bible for most of my life and I haven’t found it yet.

Recently, while visiting family, my father-in-law was telling some stories on his sons and grandsons. Pausing to reflect, he went on to tell me how healthy it is for children to play outdoors and how it prepares them for adulthood. Climbing trees, building a fort in the woods, making a dam in the creek, swinging out on a grapevine, digging out crawdads, picking wild fruit, the list is endless. When out on any one of these adventures, much energy can be spent, fatigue, hunger and thirst all forgotten. The stamina built by children at play is not wasted when they transition to adulthood.

I like to think I’m a positive sort of chap… but sometimes, occasionally, it is hard to remain completely without foreboding. Today I am struck by the thought that British farming is under pressure, and many a small farmer here in the UK would agree that the current government’s policies are contributing to, or at the very least failing to alleviate, what many small farmers see as a crisis.

Lynn, You recently wrote you were short on shop tips, so here’s something I’ve found useful.

Images from 25 Years Ago in SFJ

Mounting the main beater on the axle permits building the John Deere Spreader with a box that’s uniformly low from front to rear. This easy loading feature does away with high pitching – the hard part of loading. You can load and spread more loads in a day with less effort. And you don’t have to pitch over the drive wheels in loading the rear of the spreader.

For our last trip to France, Liz and I decided to spend the whole of our time in Paris. We stayed in an apartment on the sixth floor of a classic Haussmannera building in the 1st arrondissement, close to the magnificent church of St. Eustache. We wanted to experience the day-to-day life of the city rather than that of a typical tourist, constantly on the move from one city or region to another. This almost radical (for a farmer) urban experience got me thinking about the great cities of the world and the connections they might share with the countryside that surrounds them. What follows is a somewhat rambling collection of thoughts and observations on the subject.

The reader doesn’t need to wade through all of Paul Kingsnorth’s heavy intellectual artillery to understand the scale and violence of the struggle he details in his new book, Against the Machine: On the Unmaking of Humanity (Random House, 2025). The Machine of his title is the engine of technological progress that has been an ever-expanding constant in Anglo-American culture and economics for the last 250 years. The reader soon gets the sense from Kingsnorth’s exploration and analysis that there is effectively no one to blame but ourselves for the collapse of our values and loss of a modest, human-scaled culture, though those effects are definitely part of the mechanistic “progress” that feels ongoing and unstoppable.

found in a collapsing shoe box

Oliver Hart-Parr Tractor

We have always believed that farming and making art are parallel, even cojoined, human endeavors. What loops around tends to be inclusive. Gazing over Sharon Yates’ cow paintings makes me feel completely at home and at the same time challenged. They come to us as straight as the front shoulder rise of that seated cud-chewing cow. I found out about her and these fine paintings when she wrote me a letter.

Small Farm Rising is a little gem of a documentary, filmed and directed by photographer and filmmaker Ben Stechschulte of New York City. While it was completed and released back in 2012, it seems to have quietly held its space on the internet without a lot of attention. The film dips in and out of several ordinary days throughout the seasons on three different first-generation farms in the Adirondack Mountains of New York State: Asgaard Farm, Fledging Crow Vegetables, and Essex Farm.

Farmers and fisherman in the most remote areas of Northern Bangladesh in South Asia, on the shifting sandbar river island, known as Chars, such of the mighty Brahmaputra River. Chars are midstream islands formed through accretion of sedimentation of huge amounts of sand, silt and clay over time. They are in a constant state of transformation. In Bangladesh, one of the most densely populated countries in the world, land is scarce and the Chars are still used as areas for settlement and cultivation.

I have custody of The Wee Holms, a strip of land along the river that a century ago was held in respectful awe as a fairy domain. A place where they would baffle and confuse the unwary, and where when crossing it was imperative to turn your coat inside out. My great-grandmother knew the fairies, she lived in Pothill, the clachan above here, and she oft told my mother that their pasture was The Wee Holms, their bailiwick The Clornies and their totem The Grey Woman (a standing stone) on Loughin More. I also have a ‘diamond dog’ called Bo-Patch. He’s big and athletic, full of fun and tricks and like David Bowie he has a blue and a brown eye.

Rubber boots were introduced to my townland in 1936. That’s when a returned Yank produced a pair of them (gum boots) from his portmanteau and sparked a frenzy of work. Every man in the country was beside himself to get a lend of them. A rota had to be established. Men for whom ‘if there was work in bed, would lie on the floor’ toiled from dawn to dusk in anywhere that was wet. Habitats lost – newts and frogs dispersed – due to the draining of sheughs and bogs.

Cresting a hill, a slow moving horse and buggy are ahead. If you are not too impatient with the slowness of the buggy and the horse manure on the road, perhaps you will notice the land and farms around you. Often, these farms are a little ragged on the edges, working farms, not showplaces. Instead of corn and bean monocrops, the fields and pastures are fenced, with often dairy or beef cows, sometimes hogs or sheep. Wash lines are full of freshly laundered clothes. Large and small gardens surround the house, a shed by the road has eggs, produce and sometimes baked goods for sale. In the distance, horses or mules are working in the fields, often driven by a young lad.

Auctions are a great place to meet your next work partner and equine friend. It is also an opportunity for them to find the new homes that they need. I appreciate the trainers who help make horses the helpful partners that they want to be. Above all I am grateful for the gift of the wonderful horses that have been in my life and thank you Waverly for helping us meet some of them.

As you enter the workshop, small groups of people are gathered in clusters around the room. Under bright lights, they are quietly discussing raker depth, saw set, degree of angle tooth profiles, metal hardness. Welcome to the West Coast Saw Filers Gathering, held at the Cispus Learning Center. Cispus is located on the west slope of the Cascade mountains, eight miles south of Randal, Oregon. Well-known expert saw filers Don Sanderson and John Sterling put together what they are hoping will become an annual saw filers event.