- Location
- NSW, Newstralya
White Oak Pastures
"Nowadays, I love the term “teeming with life”- however, that was not always the case for me.
I spent the first half of my life searching my pastures for something to kill; weeds, insects, fungus, parasites, and any other living thing that was not part of the monoculture that I was trying to create. Maintaining a monoculture is difficult. Nature abhors a monoculture. You have to fight her every day to maintain one.
I fought her with "cides". Cide - as in pesticide, insecticide, fungicide, etc., is from the latin word "to kill". I literally scouted this farm daily looking for a problem that I could correct by killing the symptoms. In retrospect, it was a badly misguided way to operate an ecosystem.
Now, we make our living by keeping the cycles of nature operating optimally. The attached video helps me make this point.
As we do not commonly mow our pastures, what this video demonstrates surprised everyone, even me.
For some context, we are working to manage a really problematic, non-native, invasive weed called “tropical soda apple”. Animals only eat the fruit and it quickly dominates the native plants. We have found that we can get partial control by spraying it with apple cider vinegar, which works best if we mow ahead of it. We are mowing small sections of the pasture at a time.
And damn! Look at the insect life that is thriving in our pastures! It is no wonder our bird population is thriving when our pastures are teeming with life. Plants, animals, insects, microbes, and the cycles of nature are rocking at White Oak Pastures!
The circle of life is birth - growth - death - decay - and repeat in perpetuity. We thrive by supporting this cycle in every way that we can. Fighting it is futile and results in terrible unintended consequences."
- Will Harris
#radag #regenerative #soilhealth #animalimpact #regenerativefarming #regenerativeagriculture #holisticmanagement #pastureraised #radicallytraditionalfarming #healthysoil
"Nowadays, I love the term “teeming with life”- however, that was not always the case for me.
I spent the first half of my life searching my pastures for something to kill; weeds, insects, fungus, parasites, and any other living thing that was not part of the monoculture that I was trying to create. Maintaining a monoculture is difficult. Nature abhors a monoculture. You have to fight her every day to maintain one.
I fought her with "cides". Cide - as in pesticide, insecticide, fungicide, etc., is from the latin word "to kill". I literally scouted this farm daily looking for a problem that I could correct by killing the symptoms. In retrospect, it was a badly misguided way to operate an ecosystem.
Now, we make our living by keeping the cycles of nature operating optimally. The attached video helps me make this point.
As we do not commonly mow our pastures, what this video demonstrates surprised everyone, even me.
For some context, we are working to manage a really problematic, non-native, invasive weed called “tropical soda apple”. Animals only eat the fruit and it quickly dominates the native plants. We have found that we can get partial control by spraying it with apple cider vinegar, which works best if we mow ahead of it. We are mowing small sections of the pasture at a time.
And damn! Look at the insect life that is thriving in our pastures! It is no wonder our bird population is thriving when our pastures are teeming with life. Plants, animals, insects, microbes, and the cycles of nature are rocking at White Oak Pastures!
The circle of life is birth - growth - death - decay - and repeat in perpetuity. We thrive by supporting this cycle in every way that we can. Fighting it is futile and results in terrible unintended consequences."
- Will Harris
#radag #regenerative #soilhealth #animalimpact #regenerativefarming #regenerativeagriculture #holisticmanagement #pastureraised #radicallytraditionalfarming #healthysoil
"Nowadays, I love the term “teeming with life”- however, that was not always the case for me. I spent the first half of my life searching my pastures... | By White Oak PasturesFacebook
"Nowadays, I love the term “teeming with life”- however, that was not always the case for me. I spent the first half of my life searching my pastures...
fb.watch