The Ashfount blog
Practical writing on regenerative agriculture, the US local food scene and farm to table: soil, grazing, markets, policy and the people doing the work.
Four packers buy 82 percent of fed cattle and two companies sell most of the corn and soybean seed. What the Packers and Stockyards Act forbids, where USDA's rules and the Justice Department's cases stand this October, and what a small producer can do.
Meat needs a federal mark, poultry exemptions stop at the line, eggs and produce follow flock size and sales, and raw milk never travels. What the Cooperative Interstate Shipment program changes, how to pack a cold box, and how to price shipping honestly.
September is peak delivery season for CSA shares and restaurant accounts. Here is how to plan a route that pays, choose between a refrigerated van, a CoolBot trailer and iced totes, keep a temperature log buyers trust, and know when to share the route.
A week before Labor Day: who picks the fruit and vegetables, where the H-2A program stands after a record year and a court ruling on wages, what enforcement fear has done to crews, and what a fair small farm owes the people who harvest.
Chat assistants are good at farm paperwork: sorting records, drafting a CSA email, explaining a soil test line by line. They are unreliable on local agronomy and they see everything you type. What the research shows, and a short checklist for using them well.
NAP, LIP, ELAP, ECP, TAP and the FSA Emergency Loan explained for a small farm: what each one pays, the deadlines that cannot be missed, the records to gather before the storm, and what none of them covers.
How to size an energizer by output joules, choose between polywire and netting, build a ground that still works in a dry July, train stock, move a herd alone before breakfast, and what NRCS practice 382 pays for temporary fence in fiscal year 2026.
Hospitals, campus dining halls and senior meal programs buy food every week on a planned menu. Here is how they purchase, which state incentive laws push them toward local farms, what a kitchen needs from you, and how to land the first account.
The summer glut is here. How to grade for seconds, sell imperfect produce, process the surplus, set up a gleaning partnership, feed culls to livestock within the rules, and claim the enhanced tax deduction, with composting as the last resort.
The rules that run Lake Powell and Lake Mead expire at the end of 2026, the seven states have no deal, and spring brought record-low snowpack. How the river is divided, who holds the water, and what an irrigated farm can plan for.
What USDA organic certification actually costs, how the three-year transition and the organic system plan work, what the inspector checks, what the Strengthening Organic Enforcement rule changed, where the cost-share program stands in 2026, and when certification is not worth it.
When a small town loses its grocery store, the nearest fresh food can be 30 miles away. Here is why rural stores close, the cooperative, nonprofit and city-owned models that reopen them, how a farm supplies one, and the money behind it.
