We love curating helpful reading material for country living enthusiasts! If you are looking for a variety of useful books on everything from starting a farming enterprise to planting crops to drawing horses, we highly recommend the Homestead Bookshelf as the place to find what you’re looking for. We have collected public domain classics, modern…
Tag: Weather
The Old Farmer’s Almanac Weather Notebook
Looking for a great tool for logging the weather? Look no further! The Old Farmer’s Almanac Weather Notebook is a full-color four-year journal that is sure to please! There is so much to love about the Weather Notebook that it is hard to know where to start. There is one page for every day of…
11 Applications for an Agricultural Interest Besides Farming
Running a farm or ranch is not the only way to cash in on your agricultural interest. These days, there are plenty of fields where a knowledge of agriculture and agricultural sciences can be a plus, and where you will have an opportunity to aid those who have chosen to work the land. Here are…
6 Tips for Keeping Plants Going Through the Summer
How do plants beat the heat? Find out how your garden can stay productive this summer.
Heat Index Calculator
Here’s a fun tool for summer—a heat index calculator! While most reports of current weather conditions out there will list the current heat index, for those of you obsessed with data, this is an easy way to figure it out yourself: Enter your current temperature (must be 80°F or higher to work). Enter your relative…
Benjamin Franklin, Storm Chaser
This Founding Father was also the father of tornado pursuit.
WunderMap
As wet weather sets in, it’s handy to have access to tools for tracking rapidly changing weather conditions. One resource we’ve made good use of is the WunderMap from Weather Underground. The WunderMap is an impressive compilation of data from the National Weather Service, trained spotters, law enforcement officials, and citizen scientists. With the click…
Kansas Ag Connection
Looking for a good way to keep up with daily agriculture-related headlines? Give Kansas Ag Connection a try! Subscribers to On the Range, our weekly country living update (read more), may already be familiar with this site as a source for some of our headlines. There’s a reason for that. Kansas Ag Connection is a…
The Agricultural Adjustment Act in the Great Plains: Part 2
Adjusting Livestock Production In an effort to reduce hog numbers, payments were also distributed to farmers who would destroy their piglets and pregnant sows. About 6 million piglets were slaughtered under the Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA). A cattle-purchasing program was similarly implemented under the Drought Relief Service in areas where the Dust Bowl had hit the…
The Agricultural Adjustment Act in the Great Plains: Part 1
Between 1929 and 1932, the net income of the average farm operator fell 69%. Prices for agricultural products were at their lowest since the 1890s. Wheat sold for only 25 cents per bushel. Much of this drop in prices was due to an agricultural surplus. Harvests had been bountiful before the drought hit, and a…
