Farmers make great writers. But while there's a fantastic agrarian tradition in the literary world (Wendell Berry! Wes Jackson!), farmer-bloggers are a little harder to find. Those who do are among the first blog updates I check on my Google Reader - it's so exciting to know what's going on in the fields, even in the "slow" winter season.

Here's some news from a few of my favorites:

"What a happy, happy day this is as I checked each garlic bed and every one has garlic breaking through the ground except one. The Japanese variety is 3" tall! I like that variety a lot as it kept nicely in my kitchen through January. Hurray!!!!"

High Prairie Garlic is just across the Columbia River in rural Washington, and Debbie sells some of the best garlic anywhere at our farmers' market in Hood River!
 

Of course, every kind of weather has pros and cons. In this case, the ‘con’ is that the warm weather is speeding up the usual winter cycle of growth and flowering. Many of the crops we over-winter are technically ‘biennials,’ which means that they flower and set seeds in their second year. In some cases, we welcome those shoots since they are edible and delicious ‘rapini.’ But the appearance of buds also means that the plants are beginning to approach the end of their edible life cycle. Once all the rapini is picked, the crop is usually done. This year, we’re seeding shoots and buds earlier than normal. The cabbage in this week’s share is already just beginning to unfurl and send out its buds, which is many weeks earlier than last year for the same variety. There are more factors in this than just the warm weather, but we’re definitely consistently seeing everything happen earlier this February than in past winters.

From Oakhill Organics in the Willamette Valley - Katie spoke on a panel about farmer-writers at this year's OSU Small Farms conference.

In addition to updates on what's growing and changing out in the fields, farm blogs offer a glimpse into the tremendous challenges small farmers face, and the philosophy that undergirds the daily decisions that must be made  -

The last few weeks have been rather rough. FarmMan is still not feeling well. He has been sicker than I have ever saw him before. That leaves me to catch the slack around here. I can do a lot but I can't build the chicken nest boxes and that is our main income source right now.

From Life on a Southern Farm, in Georgia.  

I think farming, is at its heart, a series of alternating moments of creation and destruction. I remember, several years ago now, standing in a greenhouse, thinning seedlings, killing little plants so that other plants can grow stronger and healthier; and again, this past summer, thinning radishes and carrots, talking with my neighbor as she and I both struggled with killing the little carrots and broccoli’s we had nurtured for weeks so that the strongest ones would be stronger.

From The Dirty Way, also in Georgia.

Do you know of other great farmer-bloggers out there? Please share in the comments!