Welcome to Our Farm
We are in the business of harvesting solar energy & sequestering carbon with green growing plants to create healthy land, healthy animals, healthy people, and a healthy economy.
Our products & services include:
Navajo Churro Sheep, wool and USDA lamb
Bourbon Red Turkey - live birds, and feathers
Market garden produce and fruit
We produce abundant life on our farm. We use nature as our guide and practice holistic management of our resources. We sequester carbon by "capturing" it with green growing plants and turning it into soil with the aid of our grazing animals and poultry. We manage for biodiversity, wildlife habitat, healthy soils and a functioning water cycle. And we participate in our local / regional economy and food system. We are engaged in the conservation of endangered domestic livestock breeds.
You can taste the difference! Managing for healthy soils means our produce and meat products are packed full of nutrition. Our irrigation water from mountain snow melt is clean and clear. Each night cool, pine scented mountain air flows through our garden and pastures enhancing the sweetness and flavor of our produce!
Training & Mentoring
We have a lifetime of experience in farming and professional natural resource management to share with you. We offer training and mentoring for beginning and experienced farmers and ranchers.
This includes holistic decision making and problem solving skills, financial and enterprise planning, grazing and pasture management, land monitoring, whole-farm planning and ecosystem monitoring. We offer distance learning and mentoring, so you can stay on the farm where you are needed while improving your ability to see the big picture, respond to change, and become sustainable. We are also available for speaking and in-person workshops on a wide variety of topics.
Substance comes first on this farm. The word substance originates from the Latin word "substantia", literally meaning "standing under". If we cannot make it work, we have no business telling you how to make it work.
We offer a free consultation so you may discover how you may learn from our experience. Contact us for details.
Massage Therapy
Need a break? Why not come out and enjoy a relaxing massage at our farm. Our Registered Massage Therapist practices various techniques to meet your specific needs, whether for relaxation or ease your tired muscles. And you just may leave with an armful of fresh produce and flowers.
Farm Notes:
This
is a Bourbon
Red Turkey tom on brome grass pasture. We have developed genetics
over the past ten years based on the natural instincts of these
birds for intelligence, hardiness, and breed conformity. We expect
several broods in 2009.
Click
here to learn more about our smart birds.
A Navajo-Churro ewe and her lamb check out pumpkin treats.
Conservation of this sheep breed enhances diversity in domestic
sheep and is critical to sustaining traditional Navajo culture and
land
stewardship. We promote the success of our fellow shepherds on the
Navajo Nation through networking, collaboration & sharing.
Click here to learn more about
our sheep.
You will find our produce, like these sugar
pie pumpkins, at the
Dolores Food Market in Dolores Colorado.
Click here to find out
more about our produce.
We
manage to create biodiversity. This includes creating and sustaining
habitat for soil microbes, insects, animals, plants, and birds.
Natural predator/prey relationships are encouraged as is evidenced
by this toad and the blue colored dragon fly above it on the log.
This
shallow water pond
provides a great resting spot for migrating ducks, geese
and a home
for birds such as kingfishers.
To the left, we are setting up up temporary electric fencing according our grazing plan. We plan to be in the right place, at the right time, and for the right reason so our pastures and animals thrive. We monitor grazing on a daily basis and make adjustments as necessary to allow for enough recovery time for grass plants and provide optimum nutrition for our animals.
Each
year we plan to increase productivity and
diversity in our pastures by managing the natural cycling of
nutrients, minerals, and carbon through healthy plant roots and soil
microbes. Carbon will remain in the soil for up to 35
years with good management practices.
food systems and strong economies.
Fair domestic trade fosters healthy land and people.
To be sustainable, family farms must be able to realize a fair social and economic return for the products they produce and for the environmental benefits they create with well managed land and natural resources.
Family farmers who use nature as their guide and
practice sustainable approaches are able to conserve resources
and
enhance the ecosystem that sustains everyone. Likewise, fair prices
in domestic trade sustain a healthy economy. The outcome of long-term pressure by consumers on farmers to squeeze more out of the land and their labor for less cost is environmental decline
and poor economies.
Please consider this the next time you visit your grocery store or local farmers market.
Pasture Raised Chicken Eggs
Eggs from grass fed chickens are bursting with Omega 3's, vitamins A & E. and protein.
Chico is a Miniature Donkey,
Chico is our newest addition. He is in training for packing and driving.
Quick Links
Grass Fed Angus Steer
Well managed grass pastures sequester carbon with the help of grazing animals.
Holistic Grazing Plan Chart
Four Laws of Ecology
One: Everything is Connected to Everything Else. There is one ecosphere for all living organisms and what affects one, affects all.
Two: Everything Must Go Somewhere. There is no "waste" in nature and there is no “away” to which things can be thrown.
Three: Nature Knows Best. Humankind has fashioned technology to improve upon nature, but such change in a natural system is likely to be detrimental to that system.
Four: There Is No Such Thing as a Free Lunch. Everything comes from something.
Barry Commoner, from “The Closing Circle”, 1971.
Conservation Ethic
“Conservation is a state of harmony between men and land. Despite nearly a century of propaganda, conservation still proceeds at a snail’s pace; progress still consists largely of letterhead pieties and convention oratory. On the back forty we still slip two steps backward for each step forward….. In our attempt to make conservation easy we have made it trivial. The answer, if there is any, seems to be in a land ethic, or some other force which assigns more obligation to the land owner.”
Aldo Leopold, from “The Land
Ethic,” from “A Sand County Almanac”, 1948.
