Calm before the storm

I'm sitting on a screened porch of our friends beautiful Georgian mansion, listening to the birds sing and basking in the sunshine.  March is coming fast and with it the busyness of the season begins with seeding in the greenhouse, preparing the fields for planting and the barn for new critters.  A new commitment of mine is to get away every February for a little rest before the excitement of the new season is upon me.  This time we headed south with many stops along the way.  I won't bore you with tales of our time on the beach but instead tell you a bit about our first stop at the Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture annual conference.  What an inspiring group of farmers!  I took in many workshops on topics from beekeeping to apple orchards to post-harvest handling techniques.  The one that blew me away the most was one on mob-grazing by Greg Judy.  He's a farmer who brought himself back from the brink of bankruptcy by implementing this new type of grazing on his land.  Basically it involves concentrating a fairly large number of livestock on a fairly small portion of pasture....which may not sound like a great idea.  But the trick is he moves them so frequently to new pastures that the animals always have more then enough to eat.  The benefit you ask.....the natural processes of livestock grazing heavily on an area while also depositing large amounts of manure and working it into the ground with their hooves revitalizes the soil and stimulates the microbes so much that a mediocre pasture soon becomes first class and your ability to graze more animals without increasing your landbase is constantly on the rise.  This fellow grazes cows, sheep, goats and pigs all together in his mobs and has found a very profitable way to raise very high quality meat.  Needless to say this workshop left me ruminating about all the possibilities on the pastures at reroot organic farm.....