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“Our Turn at this Earth” airs weekly on HIgh Plains Public Radio.
Over the past few weeks I’ve been talking a lot about regenerative farming techniques. “But could they work where I’m from?” I kept wondering. In order to find out, I spoke with Michael Thompson, a sixth generation farmer from Norton County, Kansas, who grew up thinking, like I did, that wheat ground had to be fallowed every other year and kept bare to accumulate moisture for the next crop.
“Our Turn at this Earth” airs weekly on HIgh Plains Public Radio
When it came time to plant a new windbreak on my family’s farm back in the 1980s, my father wanted just junipers or elms, while I wanted both of those, plus lilacs, Russian olives and plums, not in rows, but all mixed together randomly, like in a real forest. We fought over those trees the way close family members will do,
“Our Turn at this Earth” airs weekly on HIgh Plains Public Radio
Last month, my partner and I, having become mutually deluded, decided to go backpacking in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Al had done this many times as a younger man. Now 67, he likes to remind me that he is two whole years my junior. I had only backpacked a few times in that long life of mine,
“Our Turn at this Earth” airs weekly on HIgh Plains Public Radio.
This May, when I paid a visit to the North Dakota farm of the well-known Soil Health advocate, Gabe Brown, I felt particularly blessed to take part in a conversation with the insightful soil scientist, John Norman. Although he retired some time ago from university teaching and research, John had agreed to oversee a study of the soils on Gabe’s farm.
“Our Turn at this Earth” airs weekly on HIgh Plains Public Radio.
“This farming has gotten so industrialized and out of hand,” Gabe Brown said. We were sitting in the shade on his North Dakota regenerative farm, watching several hundred chickens scratching in a field of mixed cover crops. They provided ready contrast to the ills Gabe was describing. Most chickens these days live in cages so small they can’t even spread their wings.
