Doing the Most Good through Regenerative Farming.
During college I took a trip along the West Coast. I hitch-hiked up through the Redwood trees in California and spent the better part of a week tromping about the huge, dripping trees. I continued hitch-hiking up the coast on the way to Seattle. Along the way I got to see the Oregon Coast for the first time. It was rough and wild. Ferocious breaking waves were coming in and there were tide pools full of weird sea life.
After walking around for a while I realized that there were very small snails on the rocks in great numbers. They were jet black just like the rocks themselves and very, very small. So small that I hadn't even noticed them up until that point. Once I was aware of them all, I tried my hardest to walk back to the beach without stepping on one. It was impossible. They were everywhere. The best I could do was minimize my damaging footprints and get off the rocks in as direct a way as possible. It was a life lesson in the making.
Fast forward 20 years. I now own a meat-based snack food company dedicated to making the world a cleaner, greener, more vibrant place.
At first, our philosophy was doing the least harm, but we quickly realized we could do so much better than that. We nurture the land, take care of the rivers close to us, encourage grazing behavior by our pigs and implement regenerative practices. We even teach these practices but after a decade of raising pigs on pasture we've decided it's not enough to do the least harm. We want to do the most good. We've decided that "sustainable" isn't good enough. We want to be regenerative.
In 2021, we are committed to sequestering more carbon than we've ever sequestered before. We're planting hundreds of apple, pear, chestnut and acorn bearing oaks that with time will help us to build healthy soil even faster. We're making compost on an enormous scale. We're planting willow trees along sensitive creek banks. Imagine in 5 or 10 years a herd of pigs grazing clover in the alleyways and apples under the trees!
Since beginning our regenerative management of our farm in coastal Maine, we have watched the wild, grassland loving species populations explode and come back to life. Ground nesting birds, coyotes, foxes and about a million small mammals are living here in greater abundance than we have ever seen them. The pastures around our house are getting louder and louder as more wildlife sings and croaks and howls on summer nights.
The result of our pigs living and grazing our fields has made the wildlife more abundant, the creeks are cleaner, the grass is thicker, the carbon in our soil is greater, and the entire ecosystem is healing!
This is one of the many examples of how human beings can be a positive, nurturing influence to the earth.
We invite you to come with us on the journey and learn with us as we go.