I farmed that ground out there and that used to be our best field thought maybe he was late 70s or 80s 80years old and the ground had turned from being their best field to all of a sudden being a field that wouldn't grow anything for us at all hi everyone.
welcome to regenerative journey where I share the stories of people transforming farming through regenerative agriculture in this episode you're going to hear about a farm that started with dirt that wouldn't grow anything and transformed it into soil that opens up almost unimaginable possibilities and hope for the next generation of farmers on this farm.
let's jump in we moved here and started trying to farm it and that's where it really in our face is like nothing's growing we couldn't get anything to grow and so i mean we weren't we weren't saints we came here you call the co-op okay what do we grow and what do we put on it give you seed give you all the fertilizer tell you what to spray and how much and everything but it wouldn't grow nothing and nobody had answers and So finally One man gave my husband a book said well here try this and it was neil kinsey and that was when kevin's eyes were first opened to oh soil so it sounds so dumb but i mean i had no idea that you know the quality of your soil or the type of your soil or what's in your soil is what helps things grow i just i we didn't sound so dumb but we didn't know.
You know this whole soil biology thing is pretty new it's only in the last couple decades or something that people are starting to figure this out and so we feel very fortunate that our eyes have been open to this so on our farm we like to say that we are farming soil and even more specifically we're raising soil biology.
We have tons of tiny little microorganisms in our soil that we are farming we are trying to manage our soil so that those increase in number and grow and that in turn helps build our soil into a healthy soil that can grow things and so we have all these tiny little living things underground that we're constantly taking into account when we make decisions on the farm.
we started to first address the toxicity on our ground if you have soil problems you have to address those first before you you know start trying to use different soil practices or building your soil or even growing things you have to address the toxicity many people are saying you got to make your soil better don't want to have steel in the soil no plowing nothing i mean it should be happening naturally we found that it was harsh enough here that we needed it keyline plow.
It's a way that allows you to go under the surface lift and break up that compaction allow your roots places and water places to go down deeper without disturbing the surface and that allows the life that you might have in those top few inches to still live it stresses it a little but you know it's still there versus inversion where you're plowing and knocking everything over and it kills everything that didn't solve all of our problems. It kind of took off from there so when i say that we're farming soil here we have many different you know parts to that and the sheep is their one part so on the outside it really looks like we are raising sheep or sheep farmers even though we are raising sheep and we love the sheep and we want to manage them well and take good care of them the sheep are a tool for us now in building the soil we need the who faction and the grazing that helps break up any crusts we get on the top of our soil and helps develop that soil deeper and down below and the biology that is present in a sheep's rumen so that when a sheep is grazing nutritious pasture that rumen is not just digesting the food the way the sheep needs but it's also adding biology from the rumen into the manure that goes back onto the soil and so that manure is helping to build the soil.
while the sheep grazes and we saw differences in our soil within three years from flat out just dirt that wouldn't grow anything was highly erosive and wouldn't use water well to growth in our fields life in our soil worms and different visual things we could see roots that instead of being in the top two inches of our dirt we're now down eight nine ten inches water usage we would water and water and water all summer long because it gets very hot here all of a sudden we didn't need to water as often we were watering and things would grow and things would grow and things would keep growing and the surface is getting dry but you dig down and we still had water two three inches down and since the roots were down lower we didn't need to water again you know things were still growing and turning green with better soil then our visions for the farm are wide open you know with good soil you have lots of different options on what you can grow.
We've talked about small grains putting in acres and acres of different vegetables we've talked about planting an orchard we know it's possible here with good soil i think a big part of regenerative ag for us is very hopeful around us right now there's people who have barley contracts they have to grow this barley and grow the crop problem is the barley prices have come down so low that they're not making enough money to even cover their costs and growing the barley but they have to keep growing it because they're under contract to do it to me that's a very.
you know unhopeful situation for agricultural it doesn't make people want to stay in agriculture it doesn't make them want to make their farms better doesn't make you know their kids want to like.
what the kid's going to say oh I'm going to grow up and be a barley farmer like my dad because i want to lose money it's very unhopeful so even though what we're doing is hard and isn't perfect and doesn't always work out right i think it gives us a lot of hope because we're building for the future.
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