These Healing Plants we call Weeds

I can still hear the voice of my good friend and mentor, Bernhard Hack, in his thick German accent saying “These healing plants… we call weeds.” For a young conventional farmer, which I was back in 1982 when I first met Bernhard, this was a revolutionary concept. Weeds were simply a nuisance, something to get […]

May 2018 Newsletter

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Life in the Soil – A Thumbnail Sketch

What many of us don’t know, or don’t think about, is that all of this diverse life that we see, and some, like farm animals that we have to manage, is entirely dependent on a community of living things that we don’t see – the life in the soil. A single tablespoon of healthy soil […]

A Brief History of Organic Farming at ZFF

A Brief History of Organic Farming (at Zettel Family Farms) By Ted Zettel Part One: Beginnings In 1982, on the day of my first contact with a real organic farmer,  I was a progressive young dairy farmer working in partnership with my Dad, who had taken over the family farm from his Dad. I got […]