Fighting Complexity

The weather is getting colder, and we’re anticipating getting all of our projects buttoned up before the snow flies. Winter is kind of like that test in school that you got busy and forgot about, but you have to take it so you just show up and wing it… we’ve known all along winter is coming but it always seems like we’re not quite ready for it.
        I’ve been thinking about the concept of “natural farming” quite a bit this year. Another farmer recommended the book “One Straw Revolution” by Masanobu Fukuoka to me. Masanobu was a pioneer in the concept of farming to mimic nature, and his book has brought a lot more thoughtfulness to how I run Alden Hills. Masanobu believed that nature could not be left to its own devices for the best result BUT that by creating the best conditions for his crop and then letting nature thrive was the best way to farm. It’s more like harnessing nature as opposed to attempting to control nature.
        There are a few ways that we have been able to implement natural farming successfully. We changed how we winter our beef herd a few years ago. Instead of keeping them near the barn where we had to deal with collecting and spreading the manure each spring, we moved to wintering them out on pasture. All of their manure gets deposited on the pasture by the animal, which allows the animal to do the work for me. Hopefully, in a few years we can get to the point where we are winter grazing and don’t even do hay. We’ve noticed that even this year we made it all the way to mid-December before having to feed a bale. This tells me that we are distributing the manure better through the different seasons.
        Another way that I’ve learned to farm naturally is using movable chicken coops. These shelters are portable greenhouses that we keep our chickens in on the pasture. This allows us to create ideal conditions for the chickens (fresh pasture daily, safety from predators, shelter from weather but also access to sunshine and fresh air). It also lets the chickens lay down a very concentrated amount of manure which has been having a remarkable result on the fields!
So what I’ve learned is that I can’t leave nature to its own devices because that won’t always give me the best result. But what I can do is structure the farm in such a way that we work with nature and allow it to do the heavy lifting for us.