Soil

Last week, I read an article on The Bitter Southerner, after which I was really, really excited about soldier flies. I kept interrupting Scott to read him passages. The article examined a farmer, his ingenuity, and a shared goal among a community who worked on a large farm. It didn't sound like every other article—and there are a lot of them—on the subject. I couldn't stop thinking about those amazing flies and the way a farmer and a farm are restoring both a town and its soil.

More than once as we roam the pastures of White Oak, Harris makes it clear he believes chemical fertilizers are to a farmer as heroin is to a junkie. 

“When I first gave up chemical fertilizers, my pastures looked like shit.” 

But he persisted, and two or three years later, the farm’s bottom line turned black again. So did the soil in his pastures. The percentage of organic matter in his farm’s soil today, Harris says, is about 10 times higher than the soil of nearby conventional farms. Two years after that, he introduced sheep, heeding what farmers have known for centuries: that raising different species on a single farm benefits both the land and the animals.

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Last week, walking over the coastal grasslands south of Half Moon Bay at Markegard Family Farm, nuzzling up against a six month old Appaloosa foal, learning about a careful return of ruminants to the perennial grassland, and how that return has restored soil health all felt exciting and hopeful. Belted Galloway cattle dotted the hills. We watched a pig and its piglets poke around among native shrubs; two piglets had found their way past the fence and darted through our legs to run back to mama.

Doniga [Markegard's] deep observation experience aids in her ability to monitor grassland health, biodiversity and to manage land based on the principles and patterns found in nature. Doniga is passionate about large-scale restoration of Western Rangelands through cattle grazing. The Markegard Family has forged partnerships with some of the largest land trust groups in California, private landowners, as well as regional open space parks. Each ranch has a grazing plan and conservation management plan developed in conjunction with landowners and the Natural Resource Conservation Service. She is dedicated to finding ways to regenerate lands and community through ranching practices that build soil, sequester carbon, capture and purify water and enhance habitat.

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If you look really hard at this photo, just to the right of center, you can see the chicken shelters for the pastured Freedom Ranger chickens.

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My friend and I toured Davero Farms and Winery earlier this summer. We expected to learn about farming, but we didn't realize we'd have our minds blown. Everything the farm needed came from the farm itself. After exploring the farm, we sat in a cave built from living willow trees, woven together to be a green cupola above us. The wine we tasted came from small vineyards that grew on soil that pond algae, chicken, sheep, and pigs had worked together to feed and tend.

Grow what belongs here. Be patient.

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Markegard and Davero are not cost-effective places to buy meat and wine. They are impractical for most people and are not a world-wide solution to our problems of pollution and animal welfare that plague our farming system. Even the much more extensive production at Harris's White Oak Pastures isn't large enough to make prices reasonable (or products available) to an average consumer. Instead, they're hints at what may not be probable but might just be possible.