Herbicides, pesticides, and plowing degrade soil health, biodiversity, and nutrient availability. Plowing in particular leaves soil susceptible to wind erosion and eventual disappearance. And as we’re all learning at a global level, plowing also disrupts the sequestration of atmospheric carbon. Plants take in CO2 for photosynthesis and, through their root systems, store it in the soil. Plowing releases that CO2 back into the atmosphere. A major tenet of regenerative agriculture is that soil is our most powerful potential tool to help end the climate emergency. The farmer can play a vital role in doing all he or she can to sequester carbon by building soil. In 2018 we heeded this call and stopped plowing our Big Field. A year later we went no-till in our Little Field as well.

But these steps are only the beginning of building soil health. In 2020, we decided to invest heavily in improving our compost program. With the help of compost consultant Gregg Twehues, we now have a custom recipe of ingredients from kelp meal to molasses to keep our microbes busy and bountiful. We are harvesting a natural byproduct of our spirits distilling (spent mash) to further enrich our fields. We’ve also begun working with compost tea sprays, which are thought to help plants absorb compost nutrients more readily. As with so many things on the farm, we’re learning that as we plug into one natural cycle, we discover even more.