Striving to empower the individual through profitable and regenerative land use.
Our Story
Dream it.
In the late 1990s we began to dream of living a more resilient and purposeful life. We eventually made the move to west Georgia in 2003 to run a farm supply business and see if living in a rural area would offer what we were looking for. In short order we realized we did like a rural lifestyle and “working” with the land. Working the land in order to provide sustenance seemed like a mystery. I tried the large gardens and after failing at that with industrial means I began to meet customers who were going the “organic” route. I assumed the organic methods were pie in the sky and only well-meaning hippies did that. I soon met many people growing food and managing livestock with no chemicals. This intrigued me. I spent the next few years reading everything I could that was in support of organic and natural methods of raising plants and livestock using only natural methods.
Build it.
There is a big difference in reading and practicing. I believe in both and that preparing is integral to success however, doing it yourself is the best way to learn. We planted gardens, raised chickens, fish and began our journey. We had some success but more importantly we had a lot of failures and of course those are the real teachers. After several years of raising and breeding pigs it became obvious, we did not have the infrastructure to do anything of scale. But what is the infrastructure needed? What is the desired scale? I needed to answer these questions.
Silvo it.
I had been reading a lot of material and books; grazing strategies, soil health, animal husbandry, forage applications and many more. Each discipline has benefits and is worthy of time and practice, but I felt a little overwhelmed. I wanted to implement each strategy and discipline but sometimes I felt like I was contradicting one while attempting to implement the other. Was there a way to do them all and not in a way that required me to separate each practice from the other? Could I raise my plant materials and proteins at the same time and lighten the work load on all involved. The short answer is there is a way to do this. Silvopasture is an agroforestry practice that integrates livestock, forage production, and forestry on the same land-management unit.