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Judy Isacoff

Writer, naturalist, educator, and garden designer Judy Isacoff has published in regional monthlies, weeklies and dailies as well as professional journals in the field of environmental education. She is a columnist for the Battery Park City, New York Broadsheet Daily and The Broadsheet, and for five years contributed a weekly astronomy column to The Berkshire Eagle. A leader in nature study and curriculum-based gardening at schools in urban and rural settings, Isacoff is passionate about cultivating the sense of wonder through her teaching and writing. Her website: NaturesTurn.org

written articles

Learning

EYES TO THE SKY: Seasonal change is aloft, vernal equinox

March 9 - 22, 2015  What is this life if, full of care, We have no time to stand and stare.
………… No time to see, in broad...
Farm and Table

NATURE’S TURN: ‘Vegetable magnetism,’ edible landscapes

Our fascination with plants involves everything about them, including underground tubers, bulbs, and, by extension, the special charm of seed packets -- all of which hold the promise of new growth. Altogether, their appeal is so compelling that when choosing varieties and quantities for the new year’s garden great restraint is often required when purchasing.
Learning

EYES TO THE SKY: The Winter Circle, 5 planets, and a time change

Planet Jupiter, visible in the east soon after sundown, dominates the eastern periphery of the crowded field of brilliant stars known as the Winter Circle or Winter Hexagon.
Garden

NATURE’S TURN: Seeding our gardens, caring for the earth

"To grow healthy food requires a vibrant diversity of plants, animals and soil life. These form the immune system of your land that together help each other to sustain the farm. The soil we work with as part of a farm organism needs our help to be healthy.” -- Lia Babitch, seed garden manager at Turtle Tree Seed
Learning

EYES TO THE SKY: Exquisite planet, moon pairings at dusk, dawn  

In deepening twilight, above Venus the planet Mars emerges, with its dim but steady, rusty-gold to orange light. The two planets appear closer together each evening, an exquisite show culminating on the 20th when a waxing, eyelash crescent moon joins the pair the day before their closest approach.
Garden

NATURE’S TURN: Halfway to spring; Wild and domestic pleasures

Forcing plants to awake from winter dormancy well before their season is a wonderful experiment at home and in educational settings.
Learning

EYES TO THE SKY: Astronomer Bob Berman  

“There’s no such thing as free will. Astronomy was my destiny. My first memory of life is looking into the night sky from my carriage or stroller. I memorized every star in the sky and their spectral classes by the time I was 12 or 13 years old." -- Astronomer Bob Berman
Garden

NATURE’S TURN: Garden to table: Good keepers

In planning the garden my emphasis is on staple crops that store without any preparation and fit into the existing storage “infrastructure.” Additional priorities include planting produce that is expensive to purchase in winter or not available organically grown.
Learning

EYES TO THE SKY: Saturn and Scorpius, Venus and Mecury, with crescent moon

In mid-January the northern hemisphere comes out of the darkest days of the year, the days on either side of the winter solstice. At a quickened pace, daylight lifts the late afternoon. An increase to 9 hours 57 minutes will be experienced on January 31.
Garden

NATURE’S TURN: Winter garden 

In the first of her biweekly columns about growing and gardening in the Berkshires, Judy Isacoff writes: "Stars, the sunlit moon and planets circle the expanse of frozen, fertile ground during these long nights. There’s the sense of a night shift at work underground."
Learning

EYES TO THE SKY: Planetary drama at dawn, then dusk

Uniquely, right now it is easy for relatively late risers to enjoy the beauty and wonder of celestial dawn. Beginning today and lasting through January 10, sunup in our locale is at 7:22 a.m., the latest of the year.
Learning

EYES TO THE SKY: Winter Solstice: Sightseeing beyond the Milky Way

"The cosmos, for me, is a vast space to explore for both beauty and science. The beauty is self-evident…. The science is important to help understand the place humankind has in the universe and even in daily life." -- Astrophotographer Kent DeGroff
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