Dirt Rich Episode 57: Fundamentals of Adaptive Grazing
Today, a presentation that our Soil Health Specialist Jonathan Kilpatrick gave on adaptive grazing at a recent field day. He’ll bring you through the fundamentals, always keeping in mind the importance of context in grazing management. Jonathan believes that grazing is one of the most powerful forces we can have to regenerate our soils. A topic…
Read MoreDirt Rich Episode 48: Grazing Cattle to Restore Oak Savanna
Using livestock to restore landscapes may seem like a contradiction, but oak savannas thrive with disturbance. Grazier Doug Voss and PhD candidate Austin Yantes are involved in a project at the Sherburne National Wildlife Refuge, studying the results of carefully managed cattle grazing, tree thinning, and burning in striving to meet Sherburne’s ecological goals. The Sherburne…
Read MoreDirt Rich Episode 47: Four DIY Soil Health Tests
Sarah Lindblom returns to Dirt Rich today to share four soil health tests that you can do at home to gain insight on the soil’s physical, chemical, and biological function. These tests can be valuable to gardeners and farmers at any scale, and can be done using simple materials from your recycling bin: Infiltration test…
Read MoreDirt Rich Episode 41: Studying Soil Health
Dr. Anna Cates, the State Soil Health Specialist for the Minnesota Office for Soil Health (MOSH), discusses the roles and interplay of both scientific research and anecdotes in soil health education and implementation with host Jared Luhman. In her opinion, both are quite valuable in making the case for using soil health techniques on the…
Read MoreDirt Rich Episode 27: Home on the Tree-Range
Tony Wells and a few partners are years into developing a regenerative and resilient poultry production system that provides opportunities for small farm profitability, which they’ve implemented on a 40-acre farm. The model attempts to replicate a forest habitat for poultry, incorporating perennials like hazelnuts and elderberries into a silvopasture system. Not only do the…
Read MoreDirt Rich Episode 24: Restoring Oak Savanna
Tyler and Stephen pick up their conversation on oak savanna from our last episode: How do we restore oak savanna? What does it take? Where have we been and what’s been missed in prior restoration attempts? According to Stephen, “restoration is restoring the processes that maintain the desirable vegetation.” He dives into a variety of…
Read MoreDirt Rich Episode 23: Origins of Oak Savanna
Stephen Thomforde, farmer, Stantec Senior Ecologist, and expert in fields of oak savanna research and restoration takes us on a deep dive into oak savannas. Throughout the episode, he describes the patterns of this ecosystem’s growth across geographical space and time, all the way back to when mammoths and mastodons walked Minnesota. In short, a…
Read MoreDirt Rich Episode 12: Bringing Your Food Safety A-Game
Sarah Lindblom and Josh Reinitz join Dirt Rich to talk about how they’ve been growing food for their communities with food safety in mind–through the pandemic, and always. Sarah runs Solar Fresh Produce, a three acre 40-member CSA farm outside of Buffalo, Minn. and has a small flock of laying hens. An hour south, Josh…
Read MoreDirt Rich Episode 11: Herbalism for Everybody!
Sarah Lindblom has always grown herbs for her CSA. She started off growing some popular favorites for her shares: basil, parsley, cilantro. A workshop with herbalist Connie Karstens soon sparked an interest in medicinal herbs. She began cultivating holy basil, marshmallow, calendula, and lemon balm–just to name a few. Now Sarah sells both fresh and…
Read MoreDirt Rich Episode 10: Implementing Silvopasture
Jared Luhman and Tyler Carlson return to further discuss Silvopasture: “the intentional integration of trees, forage, and livestock into one intensively managed system.” Formerly a trope to “keep livestock out of the woods,” now farmers have the tools to properly manage their impact. By intensively managing trees to optimize the growing environment for the forage…
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