You Can Farm...Or So they Say

Like most things in life, our venture in farming has multiple causes. Erica and I are firmly in mid-life, maybe even on the down hill side. Like most people we already have incredibly full schedules: two kids; a law firm and a real estate title insurance company with four offices spread across the state; a house and yard bigger than we need (except for the anticipation of grand-kids coming often and filling up the space); public service obligations - the list goes on.

But therein lies part of the motivation. The kids are nearly launched into the world. After ten or twelve hours a day staring at computer screens at work, we really need to spend part of our day doing something else. And don't grand-kids like animals?

Anyway - we are both foodies and enjoy raising things to eat. Why not add some animals, too?

We live in the Blackland Prairie region of Clark County, Arkansas, and our farm is adjacent to Prairie Ridge at Terre Noire, a property owned by The Nature Conservancy. TNC is working to restore the prairie by utilizing prescribed fires to kill the non-native cool season grasses and replace them with native warm season species. We are working with TNC to burn our property as well, but we have added pigs to the mix. Rotating the pigs through our pastures and forests creates just enough disturbance to clean out the vines and weeds and germinate the native species in our seed bank.

We spent two years researching, thinking, and talking, which we will discuss in later posts. Suffice it to say for now that we saw a book -- which neither of us read -- that was entitled something like You Can Farm. We'll see. We did everything but actually start. That is until our son basically told us we were all talk and would never do anything. So challenged, we unloaded the pigs on the farm the next week.

Our goals are simple: