DIGGING The Dirt

DIRT. An Unlikely Gift.

As a child I made mud pies and played patty-cake, poked seeds in the garden rows with my grandmother and ...
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The Garden of Many Opinions

Our dirty story takes place in the small medieval village of Montone in the Upper Tiber Valley of Umbria in ...
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Soil Stewardship – Our Road to Redemption?

Nobody was more surprised than me about the direction my research took for this article. I have been focusing on ...
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When Good Intentions Aren’t Enough: GE Wheat Trials

The US Department of Agriculture has proposed a policy change that should provide more oversight of genetically engineered wheat planted ...
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Black Sunday: The Day the Earth Blew Away

Where Texas and Oklahoma meet, there is a strip of land called “No Mans Land”. The year is 1901 and ...
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Chocolate, Pesticides and Pollutants, Oh My!

One may think that chocolate, pesticides and pollutants are an odd combination. Three years ago I, too would have tilted ...
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Food Design And Sustainable Diets: Going Mobile & Vertical

The field of food design has moved away from a focus on investigation and usability toward the designing of experiences ...
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NY’s Hudson Valley Is As Sweet As It Ever Was

The fruit of their labor is as sweet as ever. And Forever. Here in the Upper Hudson Valley, it is ...
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A Woman’s Idea: Chickens Sustain & Permaculture Takes Root

A dream is becoming reality, thanks to the tenacity of one young woman and the support of the Barilla Center ...
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Homage to a Bee and Its Beekeeper Family

“To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee, One clover, and a bee, And revery. The revery ...
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Yoga, Meditation & Empowerment in the Fields

2015 was the United Nations Year of the Soils. What a wonderful opportunity to raise awareness on this “silent ally” ...
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The Kids Are Alright

Welcome to DIRT, our second edition of W-E Digest. Again, it’s a labor of love and perseverance. This issue has ...
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Alice Waters visits the UCSC Farm & Garden

Alice Waters, visionary, pioneer and ally to the Center for Agroecology & Sustainable Farm Systems (CASFS) toured the organic farm ...
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We All Gotta Eat

We all gotta eat Last week I saw a brother shimmy a coconut tree with his bare hands and feet ...
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Can Strawberries Ditch Fumigants?

“Do you want some strawberries?” asks research assistant Lucy Toyama. She points to two one-gallon buckets sitting askew in the ...
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Women Taking Risks: Coffee Leaf Rust Crisis in Nicaragua

When crisis came in the form of devastating coffee leaf rust, it was time to take a chance. And the ...
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It’s Alchemy! Turning Trash Golden

A leaf falls in the forest, drifts to the ground and settles among other leaves. On the forest floor it ...
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