Our country’s agricultural history is a melting pot of immigrants who came in waves to start farms. But it has been home to farmers for more than a thousand years. Native Americans working without draft animals or metal hand tools in the Upper Midwest and Plains states situated villages along river floodplains to take advantage of the fertile soils in the floodplains. Fire was used to burn vegetation and fertilize the soil with ash. The Three Sisters method of farming – an intercropping of planting corn, beans and squash together – was an early model of sustainable farming.
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Chris Hardie
Chris Hardie and his wife, Sherry, live on his great-grandparents’ Jackson County farm. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in 2001, he is a former member of the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council and past president of the Wisconsin Newspaper Association. His book “Back Home: Country Tales by the Seasons” is available through Amazon.
