10 results for author: Owner of Pushing the Envelope Farm


Animal & Human Relationships

Two years ago, we deicded to add goats to our farm for milk production and also for the educational value they could bring to visitors. We started by buying two does, which Elan picked by spending a significant amount of time at the breeders, and taking home the two friendliest goats there. We kept them and brought them up to weight, and then we bred them to get them milking. When they delivered, they delivered three boys and one girl. Which raised the question, what should we do with the boys? The two options were: sell them for meat, or raise them as pets. Not prepared to embark on the meat goat journey, we decided to raise ...

Announcing the Jewish Homestead 2013!

Hi Everyone, I wanted to use my blog post this week to introduce our three-week residential homesteading opportunity for young adults. There is more information in the link below. Please share with your friends! The Farm Team

Tu B’Av: Jewish Valentine’s Day?

Hi All, For Valentine’s Day, I thought I’d do something short and sweet. So, I leave you with these tantalizing links below about a candidate for a Jewish Valentine’s Day – namely Tu B’Av. Have you heard of it? According to Chabad, the Talmud considers this holiday the greatest festival of the Jewish year, one that is even more important than Yom Kippur! To find out more, read below. Blessings for Love, The Farm Team http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/717175/jewish/Of-Holidays-and-Weddings.htm An article about the themes of Tu B’Av, and why it is the most joyous day in the ...

A Great Children’s Activity for Tu b’Shevat

Although Tu b’Shevat is already over for 2013, here is a great activity we thought up on the farm that you can use for 2014! This activity is adapted from The Lookstein Center’s “Tu B’Shvat Seder for Young Children.” Make a birthday cake for trees! The activity involves making a large batch of air-dry salt clay in several different colors: brown, green, red, etc. On a very large surface, make a tree shape out of the brown dough. Then, each participant can come and help to make the leaves and fruits to add to the tree, to show how it grows in spring. When the tree is done “growing,” you can add ...

Are We Still in Eden?

Elan, our lead educator, frequently teaches visitors here this concept: what if we haven’t left Eden, but only forgotten that we are still here, surrounded by the same plants? In the Torah, Adam & Eve are not farmers, or even gardeners. They are to “to eat of the fruit of every tree” (with the obvious exception.) Which means: all of our food was initially provided to us. What if our expulsion from Eden, however, was a mental one and not a physical one? An expulsion that happened in the heart, when we forgot our relationship to the plants and animals around us, and began failing to recognize them? On my short ...

Perennial Vegetables for the Shmita Year and Beyond

We are still considering Shmita on the farm, and with Shmita two years away (beginning on Rosh HaShanah 2014) we have a little more time to plan than we previously thought. Which means, we get to expand our list of edibles that we’ll be putting in, and deepen our plans! It also means that some of my plans for fall sown greens for the following spring won’t work, and that goes for garlic (which is put in in November) as well. That being said, we wanted to share some resources for anybody looking into Shmita-izing their projects with perennial vegetables by discussing our favorite North American friendly perennial favorites. ...

Practical Ideas for Shmita

In preparing for the Shmita, we are laying the foundation for an Edenic world The Shmita year has the possibility of being one of the most revolutionary and profoundly Jewish ethical experiences because it serves as a foundation to synthesize so many of the values that we hold as important in our daily life. It has the transformative power of turning these values, which we aspire to, into real direct action that can change our mind frame, our relationship to the earth, and our relationship to each other. Shmita, like Shabbat, has the power to be a consciousness changing experience. It presents us with an opportunity to change ...

Reflections Before the Hazon Food Conference

We are getting ready to attend the Hazon Food Conference, which has brought about a bit of a reflection. I've been thinking this past fall, as we investigate our institutional role in the future, abou tthe futility I felt about going to farmer's markets last year. About how much work it took to grow everything. How much money we lost on our mistakes. All of the times we connected with people, and then lost those connections. Things like this get me down, but if I were to stop and reflect on what my thoughts were when I "joined" this movement, I would have said something like: 1. Individual consumers are the only ...

Thanksgiving Food for Thought

Thanksgiving and the Harvest At Thanksgiving we celebrate the abundance of the harvest, the end of the agricultural season and the entering of the winter cycle. During the previous summer, we’ve worked in partnership with the land to yield abundance before a season of scarcity. For many of us, the harvest will come from our gardens, as well as our agricultural fields. But what does a partnership with the land really mean, at its best? Thanksgiving is celebrated as a day of a meeting of cultures, between Native American and Europeans. In this light,we thought it might be interesting to look at pre-European land management practi...

Seed Sovereignty, Tikkun Olam, and Gardening at Home

And God said: "Behold, I have given you every herb yielding seed which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree that has seed-yielding fruit — to you it shall be for food." Gen. 1:29 So, this is our (Pushing the Envelope Farm’s) first posting on Jewcology. Woo-hoo! In honor of this, I thought that I would begin at the beginning: a seed. This month at the farm, we’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to be food independent. There was a talk at the Great Lakes Bioneers by Dr. Vandana Shiva. She’s a remarkable woman who has received the alternate Noble Peace Prize (the Right Livelihood ...