Not Your Papa's Farm

08/31/2026

08/31/2026

08/30/2026

Tell Congress and the White House: Stop Spraying Glyphosate on National Forests. SIGN THE PETITION: tinyurl.com/StopGlyphosateForests

A Mother Jones investigation found that the U.S. Forest Service (USFS), an agency within the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), has been spraying massive amounts of toxic glyphosate herbicide on forests across the United States.

Mother Jones wrote, "While glyphosate is more well-known for its use in agriculture, its fastest-growing use in California—where our investigation analyzed more than 5 million state pesticide records—is on forestlands. Private timber companies and the USFS have been dousing hundreds of thousands of acres of the state’s forests in the herbicide, especially areas affected by wildfires.”

Why is the USFS dousing forestland with a carcinogenic herbicide?

The USFS claims that spraying glyphosate is the easiest and least expensive way to help conifers regrow after wildfires. Pine needle conifers aren’t affected by glyphosate in the same way as other plants. Blanketing forestland with glyphosate kills everything but the conifer trees. This helps the agency meet its desired forest density for future timber sales, according to hundreds of pages of USFS documents reviewed in Mother Jones’ investigation.

In 2025, President Trump issued an executive order for the USFS to increase timber sales by 25%. In 2026, Trump issued an executive order calling for an increase in the domestic production of glyphosate to help Bayer-Monsanto. While these presidential actions may benefit Trump’s allies— the private timber industry and Bayer-Monsanto—they only bring increased risk of disease to Americans and destroy the vital biodiversity of nature.

Locals living near the sprayed areas are livid and have been speaking out. EVERYONE should be angry. The spraying of glyphosate on forestland is not acceptable and the practice must cease.

Tell the White House and Congress to direct the USFS to stop spraying glyphosate, or any other toxic synthetic herbicide for that matter, on national forestland. tinyurl.com/StopGlyphosateForests

08/30/2026

Ruby red minnows experiment

08/30/2026

We spend all spring coaxing fussy little seedlings, all summer fighting off pests, and then we just let the first hard frost wipe out all that work. I did it that way for decades. But here is the thing most folks don't realise: tomatoes aren't actually supposed to die every year. They are perennials. I stopped starting from scratch every single spring a long time ago. There are two surprisingly simple ways to pack up your best plants, bring them indoors, and put them to sleep for the winter. Come spring, instead of a flimsy little seedling, you're planting a mature, established plant that's ready to put out fruit weeks before anyone else's. Saves a lot of unnecessary effort, and you get tomatoes much earlier. The process takes about ten minutes before the frost hits. I've written out exactly how to do it in the comments.