When the Grass Has No Business Being Green

A few weeks ago I wrote to you about purpose. The time it shows up the most is when the going gets tough.

I have a confession. Not often, but a few times over the years, I've wondered why we keep doing this to ourselves.

A few weeks ago we hit a stretch of brutal heat with no rain. The people were miserable, the critters were miserable, and everyone was just trying to survive another day. We spent the whole week checking water and shade, making sure every animal had somewhere cool to stand. And on top of that, Cody's been in Montana since March (except for four days in June, and he's home a whole week right now!), and somewhere in the middle of all that heat, I got to feeling a little sorry for myself. I forgot the bigger picture for a minute. Extreme heat will do that to you (drink more water!).

Sometimes it's just hard, and there's not much point pretending otherwise.

But a stretch of weather like that is also a test of all those years of trying to give this land more than you took from it.

Every year we've spent building the soil here was for a week exactly like that one. One of our pastures tested at 2.7% organic matter back in 2013, and five years later it was up to 3.7%. That's one percentage point, which doesn't sound like much until you know what organic matter actually does. It's the spongy part of the soil, the part that soaks up rain and hangs onto it instead of letting it run off down the hill. Every percentage point means an acre hold about 20,000 more gallons of water, roughly what you'd find in a backyard swimming pool.

So in a dry spell, that pasture is living on rain it would have lost years ago. That's what all the slow work buys you, and in a week like the one we just had, it's the difference between brown grass and green.

That's why we do it this way. Not because it's easier, but because there's nothing more important than raising clean, healthy food for our families and for yours, in a way that leaves this land better able to handle the next hard year.

We're trying to change the world one meal at a time. That sounds a lot more grand than it feels at a hundred degrees in August, or out in a freezing February rain, and neither one gives you a day off.

Got the field where our three cattle (Sullivan, Caramel and Caramela) and the horses have been, bushhogged.

So we keep going. That's how a percentage point gets built, a year at a time, mostly on the days you least feel like it. And then one August you look out at that pasture, and it's still green when it has no business being.

Thank you for being on this journey with us. And if you've had a stretch this summer where you wondered why you keep doing your own hard thing, leave a comment and tell me. I'd love to know I'm in good company.

Your Farmer,
Andrea