The history of the sugar beet has far more twists and turns than you might expect, from Napoleonic orders to anti-slavery movements. One of the newer uses for the sugar beet lies in using a mixture of ...

From behind the driving wheel of his pickup truck, Don Guinnip turned the ignition key, flipped on the A/C and immediately rolled down the windows. The sticky, midsummer air barely budged even as cool ...

What is graywater, exactly? Household wastewater from washing machines, bathroom sinks, showers, and bathtubs is considered “gray” because it is only lightly soiled and poses a minimal health risk. As ...

The house was raised above the ground, like a mushroom or a white ray gun, its rooms radiating out like spokes of a wheel. It was 1957 and this was the “House of the Future,” a prototype modular house ...

Tim Smith has a story to tell, but it’s stuck way down in his throat. Typically, this fourth-generation Iowa farmer is chatty and warm, but sitting at the kitchen table with his wife, Tina, his face ...

Have you heard the one about Daylight Saving Time (DST) and farmers? As the story goes, farmers and agriculture groups lobbied for DST in order to have more light at the end of their day to complete ...

A dearth of children in the wake of the Great Plague, some historians surmise, led farmers to use adults to guard their crops, some keeping watch in straw huts as Native Americans did, evident in an ...

Water scarcity is a growing concern. Lack of water from long, recurring droughts is increasingly dominating the food and agriculture world. It’s driven up the cost of groceries and put a dent in ...

If you had millions of pounds of cheese—along with butter and dry-milk powders—where would you keep it? If you’re the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), the answer is obvious: in a series ...

In Washington’s Skagit Valley, the beginning of summer is largely marked by the first ripe, red strawberry. Just off of State Route 20 headed west out of Burlington sits the Skagit Valley location of ...

If you’ve perused a selection of California wines recently, you might have noticed something strange. There are 2019 vintages available and 2021 vintages, but there’s a big hole in the market where ...

In general, the primal pork cuts from the top of the pig (like the loin) are leaner and more tender than those from the bottom. But cooking the tougher cuts (like the shoulder and the hocks) low and ...