“God Almighty first planted a garden. And indeed, it is the purest of human pleasures. ”
Our home, HawkTail Farm, was a heap of sand and goat’s head thorns, when we moved on to it. The previous owners had nine horses on the five acres. If you know much about horses, you know even the best five acres of pasture in the world can’t support nine horses. As a result, there is no topsoil. None. Once perennial prairie grasses have been torn out by the root, (as horses will do, once the easy grazing is gone) nothing remains to hold the soil in place. Strong winds and heavy rains strip mine the fertility and air mail it to Kansas. Here is a cross section of the first six feet of earth, on the farm.
"Soil" profile
This is the cut I’m making for the root cellar. Do you see the dark line of topsoil, at the top of the cut? No. No, you don’t, because there isn’t one. Just sand. It’s a beach. If you have gardened in a variety of locations, you know that sand is difficult to keep sufficiently hydrated to support plants. Excessive clay has the opposite problem. Plants drown in wet times, and grow slowly due to the trouble their roots have spreading out. Ideally, a mix of sand, clay, and organic matter is what you want. I started with one of these.
The goat’s head thorn is one tough plant. Initially, I hated it. Every time one kneels down on this earth, five of these demonic seeds perform random acupuncture on your knee. Set down a shovel and the handle is studded with them when you pick it up. Forget being barefoot, ever. I have come to respect this herb, however. This thing grows without irrigation, fertilization, or cultivation. It clings to desecrated ground like barbed armor. One seed can spread a vine over 50 square feet of ground that will support nothing else. It is a legume, so it mines nitrogen from the air, and fixes it back into the soil. Even a goat with a bad attitude won’t eat the stuff, so it just sits there, repairing the wounded earth. It’s nature’s last-ditch remedy for the worst conditions. Here it how it looks, and a close-up of its daemon seed. Note how even its thorns have thorns. This cluster breaks into five pieces. The geometry of each section is such that, however it lands, one spine is pointing straight up. This is like nature’s “keep off the grass” sign.
The paddock I use for chicken pasture was mostly barren, save for a smattering of goat’s head, last spring. After enslaving 600 chickens, working six 7 week shifts, the character of this pasture has changed. The birds cleared the vines and other rugged things growing. They even cracked the thorny hulls of the goat’s head pods and ate the seeds. They cultivated and fertilized the whole pasture. They also bought feed for all of the other livestock, and paid for a fine young Angus steer. Over the winter, I frost seeded the ground with a poly culture of grasses, legumes, and taproot plants. Here is a close-up of what the whole thing looked like in the last week of April, 2016, and a shot of Lambchop being majestic in the same pasture during the first week of May, 2017.
The goat’s heads did not come back, in that area. Instead, tall grasses and lamb’s quarter predominated. Some of my seed took, but was quickly over run. Most importantly, even after a 90 degree June, without rain, there is still greenness out there. The soil is not nearly as exposed, and a good rain will bring a flush of life. An experienced land regenerator can look at the weeds growing in a place and tell you exactly what a soil test would report. Every plant has a role, and shows up when needed.
When we first arrived here, my neighbor came by to make introductions. He had owned this place for decades and raised hogs here before the horse people bought it. He asked what I was planning, and I told him as we walked around. He waited until I’d laid out my design, and then matter-of-factly informed me, “Oh, you won’t be able to grow anything, out here.” In my head I said, “Watch me!” That was all the doubt I required to inspire the hard work required to restore the fertility of this little spot on the high plains.
I didn’t expect much from our first year gardens. As it turned out, I was able to grow enough to provide for about 80% of our food needs. We raised plenty of meat, and still have a few winter squash tucked away. I ran out of garlic, potatoes, and onions about mid-winter. We gave food away, and had a good variety from which to choose. Some things worked, most were mediocre. For the market gardens, I simply piled beds of cow compost on the sand, and planted into it. I over-head watered everything. I thought the sand would allow things like potatoes to penetrate the ground, but it was too hard packed. Putting the garden where the round pen used to be probably didn’t help. I had limited mulch, so I used it sparingly in the walkways between beds. By September, the garden was lush, and I was happy. After harvest I cover cropped, and left it for the winter.
Come Spring, this year, my lovely wife bought me a broad fork. I forked all of the beds down 15 inches. The resistance the sand gave the tines of the tool surprised me, and reassured me that what I was doing mattered. I liberally top-dressed every bed with compost, as I now had a several hundred square yard mountain of it. I had some wood chip sources (much of which required hand loading) so I was able to deeply fill the walkways, and top mulch the new beds I established for cane fruit. More importantly, the garden beds had had a full year to develop a biome. Using a no-till approach preserved the integrity of this biome, complete with the library of predatory insects that nap in the soil, over the winter. Tilling pulverizes these guys, while turning up a fresh menu of weed seeds, virtually requiring the farmer to resort to chemical pesticides. The power of an active and healthy food web cannot be over stated. In the discussion of radical gastronomy, this is as radical as it gets. Soil health is crop health, is our health, period. Below are two pictures taken from the same place, on the same day, in each of the last two years. On top is June 25th, 2016. On the bottom is June 25th, 2017.
In addition to these improvements, we have added over 400 trees, installed farm wide drip irrigation, and are picking away at the esthetics. Trees from last year are getting big, and may fruit, next year. The new plantings are getting established, and look great. Eventually, these new trees with form living hedgerows, dividing the large pasture into a paddock shift ready rotational grazing paradise!
In short, things are progressing better than we could have hoped. Every day brings new lessons, and the chance to grow closer to the land, the ecosystem, and our livestock. Having a full grocery store within steps of the kitchen is a chef’s dream. Allowing the natural progression of the season to dictate the menu feels right. It fits neatly into our needs and cravings. If you have never gardened, I encourage you to start. Even a few seeds in soil, and a sunny window, shall bring you a renewed respect for the magic that is in the world!