Rae lives and farms on Barr Farms with her family. She loves cooking healthy food, trying new things, deep conversations with friends, reading, learning, and playing, especially with her three children.
It's not a problem... it's an accomplishment! The sight of an integrated farm system.
This is what good, integrated organic agriculture looks like: animals grazing a cover crop.
This brings the soil into balance, it helps us keep nutrients on the farm and minimizes the need to purchase organic fertilizer (like compost) from other farms, and it's part of a healthy ecosystem.
Since we started farming, our goal has been an integrated system: where the animals we raise help nourish the fields and provide nutrients for the veggies we grow. The chickens are often in fields that get turned into veggie fields in following years. We rotate veggie and cow fields to allow time for rest and regeneration.
Ideals and methods spelled out on paper can be more difficult to implement in real life. We've had problems with the cows needing to move more quickly than the chickens, balancing what's best for the veggie fields with what's best for the cows, etc.
So for us, seeing the cows in the veggie fields is a big accomplishment. It makes us feel proud: and gives us a sense of accomplishment that we're really doing what we set out to do when we started farming many years ago.
Systems change over time. Veggie fields move; we change the direction of the layout of the fields because of water flow and drainage, or other factors.
Sometimes it takes many years to develop and re-develop systems... try them out, then revise and try it again a little differently the next time. It's true of cooking, work life, parenting, farming... almost every aspect of life.
What's something you're proud of that's taken time to develop?
