My Writing
Someone Grew That
I have long been concerned about the sustainability of our food and natural fiber systems but the challenges of my own farm kept me too busy to write about these concerns. The COVID-19 pandemic revealed many weaknesses of our system. I retired from professional farming and engineering in 2022 to work on these weaknesses. My newsletter Someone Grew That can help you help the farmer and improve the resiliency of our food supply.
The classic book on how to figure out what people really need and want, that I wrote with my colleague Ivy Hooks. It’s been in print for 25 years, as the book is easy for anyone to read and the approaches work. We describe ways for people of very different experience to communicate their needs. And this works more than product development. In government, the “product” is not a widget—it’s a service or policy or program.
Letters from a Family Farm
My parents came of age in the Great Depression and served in World War 2. Both were in combat, both wounded. They met and married after the War and did well enough through the 1950s, but found themselves wondering if The Great American Dream of WW2 veterans — the tidy home in the suburbs — was really what they had fought for. They took a huge risk in 1965, buying a failing 450-acre dairy farm in Madison, Virginia.
Saving Farms
How can we save the remaining farms and our domestic food production?