In his book, A Garlic Testament, Stanley Crawford writes, “If you grow good garlic, people will love you for it.” That’s surely true, but here in Southern Idaho, the space between the garlic growing and the love is littered with complexity. Let’s say you’re a home gardener: It’s late fall–perfect garlic-planting season–but you haven’t...
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I simply wasn’t prepared for what I saw when Fred Colby, co-owner of Laughing Dog Brewery in Ponderay, pulled open the heavy door to his walk-in cooler. Instead of setting eyes on cases of craft beer, I caught the cold gaze of six very pink pig carcasses. “Pig beer!” I blurted out reflexively, in order to...
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It’s harvest time on the Palouse, and North Idaho wheat farmer Wayne Jensen has invited me into the air-conditioned cab of his massive combine. A color-coded computer screen shows us exactly how many bushels of grain he’s harvesting moment-to-moment, while an automatic leveling system keeps the cab true to the horizon even as the...
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The Palouse–that beautifully fertile, camera-ready landscape of rolling hills, deep loess soils, ample rain and cool summer nights spreading across state lines shared between North Idaho and Eastern Washington–is nearly perfect lentil habitat. Until five years ago, it was the nation’s lentil-growing capital. Montana and North Dakota now share that title, but the Palouse...
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RICHLAND, Wash. — The cherries are finally ready for harvest in the Northwestern U.S. A cold spring means that this is the latest cherry season anyone can remember. The Northwest News Network’s Anna King has this audio postcard from one of the largest fruit orchards in the world. SOUND: Quiet orchard amb Anna King:...
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SPOKANE, Wash. — Decades of state and federal efforts to recover endangered salmon in the Northwest are well-publicized. What’s less well-known is a project in its infancy—white sturgeon recovery. Scientists only seriously started studying sturgeon in the 1980’s, and concrete information about these fish—and how to care for them in a changing river system—is...
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Neighborhood farmers’ markets are popping up across America. According to the USDA, there has been a 250% growth in the number of farmers’ markets in the U.S. (1,755 in 1994 to a total of 6,132 in 2010). The growing popularity of farmers’ markets is leading many cities to try and reestablish permanent public markets...
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