This is how we ensure your children and grandchildren will have food

We farm.

We grow food.

Healthy food that nourishes healthy people.

But what if we left the land unable to produce much healthy food when we were done? Would we really be nourishing people?

No. Instead we would be depriving your children and grandchildren of the ability to feed themselves.

That’s why one of our core values is regeneration. We want to leave our land better than when we received it.

This is why we spend a lot of energy on making and applying compost, adding micronutrients by foliar feeding, and raising cover crops in our market garden. This supports healthy plants which put more carbon in our soil, which increases fertility so we can grow more healthy plants in a virtuous cycle.

We also focus on the animals in our soil. Plants need animals to grow well. They need large animals, but they also need micro animals like worms and microorganisms, like bacteria and fungi.

After being row cropped for years with corn, beans and RoundUp, our soil was lacking most of the fungi and bacteria it needed to support plants. But that has changed.

In the pasture it’s changed due to carefully planned grazing. In the market garden it’s changed due to soil and plant probiotics that we’ve applied, as well as the fungally and bacterially rich compost.

Our goal is a healthy soil ecosystem that makes healthy plants. Healthy plants can fight off diseases and even insects.

We’ve seen some fascinating results when we supply plants with high levels of nutrition.

For example, our onions last year had deformed leaves due to allium leaf miner. They looked like goners, but our consultant suggested feeding a cocktail of micronutrients as a foliar spray. Amazingly the onions recovered and went on to produce a decent crop.

We aren’t at the level of health that allows us to totally avoid pest control. We need to use row cover for sensitive crops and occasionally we need to use a naturally-derived, organic-approved spray to keep insects off our crops, especially cabbage family crops. Still, that is our goal and we’ve seen some good progress toward it.

But another goal is just to provide delicious food for people to enjoy.

Fortunately, a side benefit of giving plants such high levels of nutrition is that they keep longer and taste delicious!

Leave a comment and let us know what you are doing to ensure your children and grandchildren will have food!