A live read of the article "The Present" by Dr. Jeff Gardner.

To read the full article, visit https://hearthandfield.com/the-present

I turned fifty-seven this year. Not that there is anything remarkable about that. I am at that point in life where I no longer see the passage of time as a wondrous thing, but I don’t fear it either. I could be afraid of it; I have reason to. All of the men in my family one generation above me died by the age of sixty. My father and his two brothers lived hard-drinking, hard-driving lives, dying at ages sixty, fifty-eight, and fifty-nine. While I don’t smoke and only drink occasionally, being closer to sixty than fifty is sobering.

When I was in my thirties, during a particularly difficult time in my life . . .

A live read of the article Non-Homogenized: Musings of Milk & Other Matters, Mrs. Gina Loehr.

To read the full article, visit https://hearthandfield.com/non-homogenized-musings-on-milk-and-other-matters/

I'm beginning to think of myself as a milk connoisseur. Some people relish the subtle nuances of coffee drinking, or wine tasting, or beer brewing, but I prefer to spend my beverage-based energy on healthy, delicious, satisfying cow’s milk.

There are three distinct ways to consume dairy milk. Raw is the first, but it can be hard — though not impossible — to come by raw milk unless you own a cow. Then, there is pasteurized, homogenized milk (what we around here call “store milk”). And finally, there is pasteurized, non-homogenized milk, which can be found occasionally in stores, sold as “cream top.”

As a newlywed, I joined my . . .

A live read of the article Undisturbed by the author, Mrs. Gina Loehr.

To read the full article, visit https://hearthandfield.com/undisturbed/

For all of the technological advances in soil management, harvest productivity, and veterinary services, and all the genetic progress being made with animals and crops, there are still two factors in the life of a dairy farmer that simply cannot be controlled: weather and death.