The first three words you see when you visit Pond Hill Farm’s website are Eat, Drink and Play. Those are the focuses of this popular farm destination in Harbor Springs, MI, and their desire to draw in visitors isn’t limited to just the growing or harvest seasons. Jimmy Spencer of Pond Hill Farm spok...

One of the many land uses to which farmland is increasing converted is solar energy. Solar farms are cropping up on farmland across the nation, replacing agricultural land with commercial scale solar panels. But losing food production to produce renewable energy isn’t very palatable. Dual-Use Solar ...

Recently my wife Phyllis and I were visiting my son and his family. As I was eating breakfast, I watched a Shark robotic vacuum moving back and forth, following a programmed map of the floors powered by IQ Navigation. This started me thinking about how much technology is ingrained in our daily lives...

If someone asked you to define your business in one short sentence, how would you respond? Often called an “elevator pitch,” as if pitching your idea in a matter of seconds, your marketing message encapsulates your reason for existing in one quick assembly of words. Words are more than descriptive; ...

When Henry Bennett was 16, he started attending farmers markets to sell fruit grown on his family’s Frankford, DE, orchard. After college, where he majored in international business and Spanish, Henry returned to the farm. Although Henry’s original plans didn’t include returning to the farm, through...

Some people get it and some people don’t. If you are a grower or work in the horticulture industry, it’s more than likely you understand the power that plants can have. Not only can they serve functions (growing fruits and vegetables and making pollen available to pollinators), they can entirely cha...

Are winter cutworms wreaking havoc in your high tunnels? “We have been hearing a lot of people say they have problems with cutworms in their high tunnels,” said Anna Wallingford, a University of New Hampshire Extension state specialist of entomology and IPM. Wallingford was one of five panelists par...

The darling of growers seeking a new commodity, hemp has had its ups and downs. At the recent Grow-NY Summit in Syracuse, NY, Lawrence Smart, professor of plant breeding and genetics at Cornell University, compared the introduction of hemp in New York with a rollercoaster. Although fun to ride at am...

Onion production occurs in volume in select regions throughout the U.S. The Midwest, the Rockies, the Northeast, the Pacific Northwest, all of California, Southeastern states and the Southwest regions each have substantial production of onions. But storage onions are often plagued with rot. Economic...