Human resources may seem like a department or set of duties for a business far different from your farm; however, it’s important to perform these tasks legally and consistently, both to protect your farm and to train new people correctly. Jess Skellie works for a small group of dairy farms. She rece...

Happy International Year of the Woman Farmer, farm family! If someone had told me a decade ago that there would be an International Year of the Woman Farmer, I likely would have said something to the effect of, “Well, that’s the most unnecessary, gender-discriminatory thing I’ve ever heard of.” Some...

Bob Rimol discussed high tunnel construction and other recommendations at the 2025 Ohio Ecological Food & Farm Association ’s annual conference. Rimol is the owner and founder of Rimol Greenhouse Systems based in Hooksett, NH. Rimol manufactures and distributes greenhouses across the U.S. Framing Ma...

Great Lakes Expo returned to Grand Rapids in early December with its usual fanfare and the chilly weather of a Michigan winter. Over 350 exhibitors filled the main hall and the Farmers Market area, representing a large cross section of commercial horticulture: fruit and vegetable growers, nursery an...

University of Vermont Extension Professor Vern Grubinger summarized the results of research to address the economics of high tunnel production that he and his research colleague, UVM Assistant Professor Becky Maden, initiated in 2024, at the 2025 High Tunnel Production Conference in West Lebanon, NH...

“More than 70% of cyber attacks are aimed at businesses with less than 100 employees. They’re not going for the big guys because the big guys can afford the big cybersecurity firms,” said IRS employee Sheba Gonzalez. At an event hosted by USDA, Gonzalez and her colleagues, all IRS specialists in tax...

Look at a penny and zero in closely at Lincoln’s nose. That’s the size of the redbay ambrosia beetle (RAB), a tiny insect and key player in laurel wilt, an aggressive fungal disease of trees in the Lauraceae family transmitted by the RAB. Although important landscape and forest trees are in this fam...

At the American Society for Horticultural Science ’s sizzling summer summit in New Orleans, an unexpected underdog dazzled the data-driven crowd: the snow pea. Crisp and colorful, this cool-season crop took the spotlight in a seminar by Jacob Schwab, a graduate research assistant at the University o...

Our sun has some incredible powers, not least of which is feeding the plants which feed us. But we can also harness its energy to help eliminate the plants we don’t want to grow – aka weeds. Soil solarization uses the passive solar heating of moist soil under transparent plastic tarping to reach hig...