Close-Up Of Bees In Hive

Bees and the World-Wide Farming Web

Connections between beekeepers in the 17th and 18th centuries created the early “world-wide farming web”—a way to share information across long distances.
Piper Cub plane farmers

An Airplane in Every Barn?

Why airborne farming hasn’t been cleared for take-off.
Sugar Beet Field

Did Youth Farming Programs Really Fight Juvenile Delinquency?

Summer jobs for teens are becoming a thing of the past, but considering these beet farm jobs, maybe we shouldn't romanticize them too much.
Barbed wire

How Barbed Wire Changed Farming Forever

On June 25, 1867, Lucien B. Smith of Ohio received the first patent for barbed wire. Within a few decades, barbed wire transformed the American West.
Butter-making, Appalachia, USA, c1917. 
(Photo by EFD SS/Heritage Images/Getty Images)

Gender and Family Farms: An Investigation

We look at how gender affects the roles of men, women, and children on family farms in Appalachia.
Three generations of men on family farm

Our Farming Ancestors

While fewer farming family can be found today than many years ago, they still remain an important concept for any genealogist to understand.