Featured Articles: Tuttle Farm; Trains & Farms; Mini Cows

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After 378 years, NH family farm goes up for sale (Yahoo News)

By Kathy McCormack (AP)

“According to eyewitness accounts, John Tuttle was shipwrecked off the Maine coast before arriving at his land grant, which boasted a mature stand of white pine trees. He cut them down and farmed around the stumps, starting what would become 250 years’ worth of subsistence farming by Tuttles.”

History of the Tuttle Family Farm

“The Tuttle Farm of Dover, New Hampshire, [was] the oldest continually operating family farm in the United States, having passed down through 11 generations from father to son since the 1630’s when John Tuttle arrived in the New World bearing a land grant from King Charles II.”

How trains replaced solar-powered transport and gave rise to the Farm Belt (Grist)

By Tom Philpott

“The emergence of trains, Cronon argues, transformed the U.S. landscape. He shows that the development of Chicago as the central U.S. rail hub, the “gateway to the West,” facilitated the conversion of the Midwestern prairie ecosystem into today’s Farm Belt. Without a thriving market for farm products in Chicago, and the means for cheaply getting them there provided by the rails, it would not have made economic sense to plow up the prairie and plant it with grain.”

Why mini cows could save the planet (Gaurdian UK)

By Rebecca Seal

“Farmers in the US are getting excited about miniature cattle that are less than a metre tall – and may be the future of sustainable beef farming.”