Generational farming knowledge. What a wonderful thing to have, something I wish I was privy to.
While our land has been in my family for almost 200 years, the farming knowledge we have is all “new.” My great grandparents were the last to truly farm this place and they were unfortunately long gone before I was born. All of our experiences with livestock were through my dad’s memory, the brief interactions we had with neighboring livestock as kids, and a whole lotta research. Everything we know about what works and what doesn’t is through trial and error.
Many of the farmers we’ve come to know over the years have that generational knowledge I desire, and hope to instill in my kids. How when something goes awry they immediately know the problem and have several solutions on hand to fix it. That’s something we’re working on too. As we grow and learn, we put new methods and more knowledge under our hats. But that knowledge has come at a cost at times.
The ag community has been so focused on chemical inputs in farming for so many years, that we’ve been conditioned to believe that we can’t farm without them. But can we? After all, livestock has been domesticated since biblical times and survived thus far without our intervention. There were no vaccines, chemical wormers, or pharmaceuticals just 150 years ago. All of those are relatively new when you really think about their existence versus the existence of animals.
In our ten years of farming, I feel like we know less now than when we started. The more you delve into the world of regenerative agriculture and animal health the more you realize there is so much to still learn. Our goal is for our operation to be a positive impact on the earth by using natural methods to revitalize the soil, but it will take some work to get us there.
Over the past two years we’ve been able to truly clean up our operation. We’ve always treated our animals holistically, through the use of oils and herbs. In 2021 we were able to start baling our own hay and source any outside hay from farmers that don’t spray. We purchase minerals that are mined from the earth instead of a laboratory. We’ve never used herbicides or pesticides on our fields. And most recently we’ve explored new feed options that are completely organic as well as ways to improve our pastures through rotation and native species of grasses.
Have we chosen the hard road of farming? Absolutely. It would be so much easier to take things at face value and feed/grow/give what the general ag population does without question. It would result in less frustration and loss over the years, but there’s also something to be said about going against the grain and doing something others said couldn’t be done. After all, God gave us plants and rocks for every ailment. Shouldn’t we use them?
