Gabe Brown’s book Dirt to Soil was an epiphany, so much so, it helped get us going in the right direction with our 22 acres.
In it, Brown talks about the difference between dead dirt and living soil. He explains how we’ve created dead dirt with tilling and chemical fertilizers and mono-cropping (growing just one kind of crop year after year, like corn).
And he explains how he accidentally learned how to build soil…then set out on a journey to learn more and teach others. As the subtitle says, it’s about “one family’s journey into regenerative agriculture.”
Inspired by his book, we are changing our hayfield into a field for rotational grazing and we are planting cover crop for the first time (with the plan to do it annually from now on). And that’s only one of the changes in mindset Gabe Brown has brought about at Literal Road Farm.
If you have a farm or just acreage, please read this book. If you don’t have either, consider reading it anyway. It will change how you look at industrial agriculture and how we’re raising food in this country over the past half century, and why that needs to change.
It might seem like a boring topic, but Brown is a good storyteller and it’s an easy read.
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