WHAT DO WE MEAN WHEN WE SAY “REGENERATIVE”?
If you read or see any farm product websites or ads, there’s no way to avoid seeing all the latest marketing buzzwords; grassfed, grassfinished, naturally raised, sustainably raised, local, humanely raised, holistically managed, regeneratively raised, and the list goes on! All these phrases sound great, and ARE in practice, but there’s really no official definition for any of it. One person’s sustainable can be very different from the next. For now we’re choosing to use regenerative, because that’s what we’re doing on our farm. Read on!
This isn’t the first time, & I’m sure won’t be the last, that I’ve written about how we’re farming these days, but we’re really SO passionate & excited about it that I need to keep sharing! The picture above needs a little explanation. This pic is from Google Earth & was taken sometime this past spring. The “lines” are the breaks where our quick fences were, so each section represents one day’s worth of grazing for whichever group of cattle was in that piece. The different sized paddocks mean that there were different numbers of cows in each group; bigger groups get slightly bigger areas to cover. If you look closely at the left hand side of the photo you can see some really small sections of pasture. That’s where the dairy cows have been. There were only 12 of them at the most so their pieces were really narrow! The solid green sections are areas where the cows haven’t been yet. If you look really closely (or just have better eyes than mine) you can see some black specks in two of the sections. Those are the beef cattle, about 140 of them!
What does all this mean & how is it regenerative? As we, Jim & Kris and the boys, learn more about how mammals behaved traditionally in nature, we can adapt what we’re doing here to mimic that. Think about the majestic bison roaming the prairies years ago. Predators kept them in tight groups, while manure & urine (everybody does it!) kept them moving to fresh ground. That’s what we’re trying to achieve when we keep them close & move them every day, using our polyfences to do that job. It’s a much more sound way to do it than running equipment over the ground, & the plants and soil can make better use of it when it’s delivered naturally. When the animals & plants & soil are all working together like a system, it’s regenerating! This doesn’t necessarily mean that our fields are in bad shape & need to be rehabbed, but everything needs to be regenerated or it eventually dies, & it can always be improved. Feeding the soil and all of its microbes is a huge component of this plan.
I could keep going, but I don’t want your eyes to glaze over! If you ever catch Jim in the yard or store & have questions about what we’re doing, he loves to talk about it. We’re big believers in the theory that cattle are truly the answer to climate challenges & changing weather patterns. I’ll try to do a better job of sharing when I come across interesting blurbs around this topic.
If you’ve stayed with me this long, thanks for listening!
