Goals for 2021

Farm Goals

2021

It comes as no surprise that a farm never truly reaches it's "finished state".  Rather, farms are always evolving, growing, and developing, in a constant state of "rebirth".  Because our farm is so new, we have many ambitious goals that will truly transform the farm from its current state.  Realistically, some of these are decades-long goals, but 2021 will see many important first steps in this transformative process.  Below are some of the main goals we'll be working on in 2021.

• Plant out multiple rows of trees (hundreds, if not thousands)

As we all know, California gets little rain in the rainy season, and zero rain in the dry season.  We enjoy our beautiful green foothills in winter and spring, but they quickly turn to brown as we approach June.  As the grass turns, it also loses some of it nutritional value, as proteins and lipids break down and decay, leaving lignified straw in its place.  Farmers are in the business of harvesting sunlight, and to do this, we need live, photosynthetically active plants.  But instead of green, live vegetation, our peak months of sunlight are met with dead, dry grass.  This greatly reduces the amount of healthy, high quality forage available to the animals, and greatly limits the amount we can produce from our land base.

What doesn't turn dead and brown in the summer is trees.  As the grass is drying up and losing its nutritive value, trees are just getting underway for the season, producing lush, green solar collectors, collecting minerals from deep in the soil, forming fungal relationships, shading the soil, and acting as wind breaks in our windy area.  Later in the fall, the trees drop their leaves, providing yet another meal in the late fall, and providing a nutritional boost before the dark winter months.  The benefits of trees are hard to overstate, and we are excited to embark on this long tree planting project.

• Improve paddock fencing

Rotational grazing is the heart and soul of an operation like ours, allowing us to increase forage availability, improve soil organic matter, improve plant diversity, and ultimately increase the quality of the finished product.  To date, we have installed thousands of feet of fencing to manage our rotational grazing, but we still have much to do.  Furthermore, some fencing that we have installed relied on inexpensive, light gauge wire that will soon need to be replaced.  This year will see extensive updates and improvements of our fencing.

• Build an animal handling facility

Although animals largely self-manage and self-regulate, there are some key moments in the growth and lifecycle of our animals.  Routine maintenance tasks include hoof trimming, teeth checks, body condition scoring, checking eyes and eyelids, etc. have so far been done without a convenient way to gather/collect and hold the animals.  This creates stress on both the animal and the handler alike!  This year, we will be building an animal handling facility to greatly streamline these tasks.

• Expand the farm's capacity to produce feed on site

The majority of our land is already dedicated to grazing area for the animals.  However, as we've described before, the grazing land dries up mid summer, and leaves a vast amount of photosynthetic energy unutilized.  By using certain areas of the farm for feed production, we are better able to utilize summer solar energy, provide healthy, fresh feed for the animals, and grow powerhouse feeds like sunflower and sorghum grass to supplement the animals.  This type of production is not cheap, and it is quite time consuming, but the benefits far outweigh the drawbacks. 

• Improve water use on the farm

An early goal that we had at Turning Leaf Ranch was to be as water wise as possible, and build our systems with efficient water use top of mind.  Early on, we researched many water storage options, to be able to store rainwater for later use in the dry months.  Water storage, however, turns out to be extremely expensive, and the economic payoff only happens after many(!) years of storing and using the water.  It turns out, however, that nature has already created the perfect water storage device, as long as we use it properly; it's called the soil!

Depending on the properties of the soil, it is possible to store thousands and thousands of gallons in the soil, that will be slowly used up during the dryer seasons.  Things like high clay content, high organic matter, high porosity, etc. are all factors in how much water can be held in the soil.  At Turning Leaf Ranch, we have begun installing water features to help slow the rainfall, and allow it time to sink into our soil.  We have embarked on a project for increasing organic matter over time, through both additions of woodchips and leaf mulch, as well as growing deep rooted species like trees, shrubs, and dense perennial grasses, and also through adding compost and biochar.  Through these steps, we hope to at least double the water holding capacity of our soil.

We'll also be developing certain rain water catchment tools, though we now recognize that this is truly a drop in the bucket compared to increasing the water holding capacity of the soil.