a blog post by Farmer Stephen
Prove it
We claim to work with the natures of creatures and the relations between creatures using regenerative agriculture practices to work with the soil and help heal the soil. Since many marketing claims are empty–you don’t need to watch Elf to realize the ridiculousness of the gas station’s claim, “World’s freshest coffee,” that pictures their logo on a cup in coffee groves–we thought it would be worth giving you all some substantive, empirical reflection on how our soil has improved since we bought the land 7 years ago. Your support of this farm has helped heal this land.
Organic Matter, in general
The building of soil, or its degradation, is something that can be observed both by the naked eye and also by soil tests which through various wonderful instruments enhance the naked eye. Of the many things that soil tests reveal, the percent of organic matter in the soil often takes pride of place, especially for farmers focusing on soil health. Soil consists mainly of the following components: clay, silt, sand, organic matter, air, and water (see here for more). The mineral components of soil (clay, silt, and sand), the farmer cannot really change in a cost effective way. Water can be affected by irrigation, but water-holding capacity is magnitudes greater when organic matter improves: 10 to 1000 times more water (and nutrient!) holding capacity is obtained. Air can be affected by mechanical means, but air exchange works more effectively when organic matter levels are improved. Organic matter levels are one of the easiest soil factors that a farmer can improve or corrupt. The gains from improving them are amazing. For a short summary of them see here. For a longer podcast series on it, see Natalie Lounsbury’s work.
OUR FARM
When we first bought the farm all the fields were in hay rather than grains and corn. We deliberately wanted that because there would be less pesticide and herbicide residue and because the soil’s organic matter would be higher than systems where frequent tillage and spraying occur. Our baseline soil tests indicated an organic matter content at around 2.5%. While it wasn’t as low as it could have been and often is in conventional agriculture, it was not where a healthy farm’s soil should be for this biome, which is somewhere between 5-10%.
We knew that our no-till farming practices which include among other things cover crops, rest, compost, and moving livestock on the gardens after the veggie season would improve this. In 2024, the vegetable beds ranged from 6.4% to 8.9% and the field where our chickens and sheep pasture through management intensive rotational grazing (very different from continuous grazing systems!) was at 4.8%. Here is a graph that shows it over the years at each soil test interval:
Food For Thought
A couple of years ago, someone said to me within a conversation about cows, “Everyone knows that healing land is impossible. Cows are destroying the earth.” Aside from reminding me of Socrates’ critique of people wise in one area thinking that gives them wisdom in another area, this sentiment seemed to me dangerously wrong despite that it is voiced by many today. Management rotational grazing of ruminants is one of the key ways that soil is rebuilt and that carbon is sequestered. Cattle and ruminants are not the problem. Whether we raise them according to their nature and in relation to the land properly determines whether the land is healed or corrupted.
Additionally, chemical agriculture often looks at soil with an extractive gaze, as if farming were mining. We wrongly assume that land can only be “used up” in the production of our food. Within this mindset, technologically derived, chemical inputs are the savior because they allow us to synthetically feed the crops on the same denatured land and thus avoid war to acquire good land. The soil becomes dirt, merely a place to hold crops because they inconveniently seem to need that. Hydroponics and aquaponics takes this logic one step further. Since the soil is now nutrient-dead dirt, we just give the plants a sterile growing medium (something dirt-like) and inject the plants with all the chemical nutrients we think they need. This paradigm never stops to question whether farming is really just like mining, whether living things are really reducible to chemicals.
Contrary to both of these theories of the world and the creatures in it, our farm and many others like ours demonstrate the inadequacy of this narrative of the world: healing of the soil is possible if good people like our customers support good farmers with that aim. Check out this inspirational farm whose 3rd party study shook the world! Check out also Gabe Brown’s book From Dirt to Soil which shocked the agricultural landscape moving people to realize the potential for regenerative agriculture to feed the world by healing the soil. As Americans know too well, the cost of healthcare is the price of cheap food from depleted soil. Thank you for supporting the regeneration of this soil and the regeneration of your health.
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