It’s been a pretty eventful summer, so much so that actual blog updates were the ones who suffered from neglect the most. So in the interest of catching up, for starters, our endangered butterfly habitat were recently showcased on the Farm Service Agency’s blog. And, as Val mentioned, we were recently awarded Yamhill Conservation Landowner [...]

Last summer we installed our ram pump to get us more water for the farm. Our well pump recently failed, which drove me to write up the details of this recent project. Our property is split by 4 seasonal creeks, one of which is nearly perennial. Work in the past has focused on increasing the [...]

(Part 1 is here) One of the downsides of managing a property that has been abused in the past is dealing with erosion issues. But, as the old saying goes, crisis = opportunity. Our property was overgrazed heavily in past years, to the point that some of the wet areas were eroded over 10 feet [...]

This started out as a single post, but I just kept rambling, so I’ll be dividing it into 2 parts: a background on erosion in general, and gullies in particular, followed by part 2, actions that we’re doing here on the farm to mitigate their impacts. Comments are appreciated A gully is a response that [...]

Allan Savory of the Holistic Management Institute spoke recently in Ireland…the full video sat in my browser for a couple of weeks until the holiday madness subsided. Things have calmed down a bit, finally. Here’s an exerpted version Allan Savory – EXTRACTS – Keeping Cattle: cause or cure for climate crisis? from Feasta on Vimeo. [...]

With the Copenhagen climate talks stuttering along, it seems like past time to throw in some quick comments The effect of livestock on greenhouse gas emissions are often overrated, if not entirely exaggerated Pasture is part of the solution to the carbon issue Some farms are doing it right And the systems exist to fix [...]

Our friend Clare was interviewed on KBOO recently along with Joel Salatin…quite a coup. I found it especially interesting to hear Joel talk about the massive gullies that were on his land when his family arrived there, since we are dealing with similar legacies of past land abuses. They talk about land, farm cooperation, and [...]

Here’s a pretty interesting article from the European Space Agency: Satellite images aid implementation of agricultural reforms This is one of those applications of remote sensing and GIS that I have mixed feelings about. As a guy sitting at a computer, it’s pretty cool, being able to get so much information about a location with [...]