15 minute read
TONY MALMBERG
never an end to the honey-do list inside or in the barn, but the list isn’t assigned to either one of us. We just keep a running list, and we each tackle what we can, when we can. It is a joy to have such a supportive husband who is helping bring this educational farm dream to life. I could not do this without him or our two children who also help out immensely as well.
Getting the Word Out
In the beginning of marketing the farm, I created my website after learning how to do so on my own. I created a social media following, and work hard to provide relevant connections for people to make with the farm from afar. This requires a lot of time, and I look forward to handing off the marketing task someday so that I don’t have to choose whether to plant more tomatoes or fill social media with photos and stories about farm happenings. I love providing the connection for folks, but in order for the farm to actually work, I have to have time to actually farm.
HMI’s Beginning Farmer Training Program does provide helpful insight into marketing decisions. The holistic goal plays a big role here as well. This is my current challenge. It’s an issue of creating balance so that quality of life doesn’t take a hit. Marketing can take up so much time if we let it, so I am working on rereading and supplementing my learning on how to create efficient marketing strategies that allow for more time outside doing the farming.
One way I have learned to get the word out and market the farm easily is to attend functions where I am invited to set up a booth to advertise the farm. If the clientele at the function will be my ideal customer, I love to set up booths and talk to people and invite them to get involved on the farm. When the media contacts me about writing a story for a local magazine, or the news wants to interview me for a broadcast, or a radio show invites me as a guest, I do everything I can to say yes because that is free marketing!
I recently won a $7500 grant from the Austin Food and Wine Alliance to be put toward summer camps and the teaching gardens at Hills of Milk and Honey. Not only is this funding from this incredible organization an absolute blessing, it has also provided opportunities to continue to spread the word about the farm and everything we are offering to our community.
Now that the farm is about one year old, I have again asked the community what they crave from Hills of Milk and Honey.
Overwhelmingly, folks tell me they just want to come be on the farm, experience it, volunteer, work, get dirty, plant gardens, care for the animals, and live the life of a farmer for even just a little bit. Every time I hear someone tell me that, I get the chills. That is how I feel about the farm every day, and I get so excited when I hear people tell me that’s what they crave too. We are not currently able to offer ‘open’ hours on our farm for people to just come by and visit, Amy has a herd of Nubian and Alpine goats that are part of her grazing but we hope to get to that point plan to improve soil health. She uses guardian dogs to protect them someday. In the meantime, we and integrates the goats with her other enterprises, including teaching hope to meet people at one of people how to make goat’s milk soap. the many workshops we offer that are taught by me, or an expert in the community. Or, we hope folks will join us for one of the many other programs we offer on the farm, including film screenings of relevant documentaries related to small scale farmers. And, lastly, we hope to inspire our community to support local farmers by buying their food from farmers they trust. We will work hard to earn that trust, and in turn will provide nutrient-dense fruits, veggies, nuts, eggs, meat and honey for our community while also creating an inclusive place for us all to learn from each other. Come visit us at Hills of Milk and Honey the next time you find yourself in Central Texas. We look forward to meeting other Holistic Management practitioners! To learn more about Hills of Milk and Honey contact Amy Milliron at: amy@hillsofmilkandhoney.com or 512.829.1003.
Being Without Prejudice
BY TONY MALMBERG
Prejudice pervades every pore of our existence. We have prejudice concerning race, sex, social status, culture, experience, inheritance, learning and who knows what other influence?
If aware and receptive to others, we may be aware of some of our prejudice, but we most likely have some lurking beneath our conscious thinking. We must constantly delve into our core being and behavior, peeling back our callous layers of indifference, justification and excuse protecting our prejudice, if we are ever to empower decisions at the soil surface.
The practice of Holistic Management asks us to propose actions “without prejudice.” Ideally, the process of selecting tools, proposing actions, and using the context filters, or testing questions will help us mitigate our prejudice. However, in my experience, most practitioners pay simple lip service to this critical step in the Practice of Holistic Management. We need assistance from people outside our clique, if we are to effectively smoke out our prejudice.
Are You a Racist?
is racism. Thirty years ago, I was confident in my opposition to affirmative action. I was eating lunch with my hired hand, Pee Wee, and a friend of ours, Leslie, after we finished working some cattle. We were discussing what we wanted to be after we grew up.
I started off with a story about wanting to be a game warden just because an older boy I went to school with wanted to be a game warden. But I never seriously thought about anything other than being a cowboy.
Leslie followed and she could never remember wanting to be anything other than a cowgirl.
with the idea of a “steer pasture,” the “fall pasture,” etc. We assume yearlings and cows need to be in separate herds and the first calf
Pee Wee started off, “Well, when you heifers need to be pampered. One of the worst are an Indian, you can’t be much. You can’t bottlenecks in land management comes with be a cowboy. You can’t be President of the the cavvy. We overgraze our horse pastures, so United States.” they are handy.
Pee Wee, of A good example the Shoshone of this mentality was tribe, was one recently experienced at hell-uv-a hand. the Diamond Cross ranch, And he was near Birney, Montana. a really-good We spent an afternoon guy and friend working on grazing plans, of mine. His starting with 2–3 hours on statement really the preliminary big-picture shook me and discussions. One of the I became an primary probes in our advocate of bantering came down affirmative action. to consolidating herds. We might talk We didn’t get far on that equality but in topic, because there were reality, young reasons based on water people need limitation, breed up, and someone to seasonal work that each look up to and Tony’s ranch hand, Pee Wee, helped Tony herd was being run the identify. Just as explore the challenges of prejudice. way that they were. plant density and As we finished the day, diversity leverage sunshine, minerals and water, I asked the crew to sleep on it and see what different human perspective, life experience, surfaced. We’d pick it up the next day. and knowledge leverage our resource base. As Holistic Management practitioners
It is not good enough to assume inclusion. know, fewer herds can be one of our greatest We can consciously seek out the input from Marginal Reactions. By concentrating cattle, we those that we have dropped through the cracks. concentrate labor. Actually, we leverage labor, After racism, my thought of prejudice goes because we can see all of the animals regularly to sexism, which demonstrates how powerful rather than some of them occasionally. We can subconscious, cultural influence can be. By that, get around some fence, without having to get it I mean that I have been surrounded by very all done. One FTE can handle 750–1,000 Stock competent women my entire life, yet my culture Units or more. Once the infrastructure gets set has assumptions about a woman’s place. up, we are more efficient and it takes much less Go figure. labor than running many small herds over huge
But then my prejudices become more subtle areas. But just like Pee Wee couldn’t imagine and lurk in the shadows of my psyche. One of being President, ranchers have a hard time the most detrimental—being tradition. seeing things differently. It takes effort. Back to the Diamond Cross. Matt and Alecia Traditional Prejudice manage Hanging Woman Creek, one of the
William Faulkner delved into southern racism ranch’s three units. Hanging Woman Creek’s and the traditional mantra of the wealthy, white- range climbs off the creek and stretches nearly southerners loving the individual, while hating 11 miles west, and that’s as the crow flies. It the Negro race. This deeply ingrained reality sprawls through rough, pine and juniper breaks became cultural. Neither tradition, culture, or over 45,000 acres. It’s steep. It’s rugged. A “just because” can excuse or justify what we do. saddle horse works better than an ATV when So how does this happen? popping cattle out of the brush. Matt and Alecia
Maybe traditions develop because of a know this country and how cattle deal with decision to do something that worked very well. its character. Because it worked so well, we do it again the next year and then the next, until it becomes Get ‘Er Done a habit. They showed up to the second day of
Most of us in the ranching culture are familiar grazing planning, with the intention of making things work.
“You know, we were up all night calving heifers and we thought about this,” ventured Alecia. Matt continued, “We can put all of our yearlings in one herd, if we can run the cows in the Anderson. But to do that, we need to get that old fence on the south side of the pasture repaired and split the pasture with a cross-fence so we can get the cows bred.”
Matt and Alecia demonstrated a cowboy’s greatest asset. Once we see what needs to be done, we get ‘er done. They thought through the situation and asked what they needed to merge two herds into one. They got more information. Information, facts and data can lift our mind past our prejudice.
What Do We Need?
In 1987, I came home from my first Holistic Management seminar and went to see my Bureau of Land Management (BLM) range conservationist, Roy Packer.
“What do you think of Holistic Management?” I queried.
Roy never batted an eye, “Any management is better than none.”
“What do I need to run more cattle in Hall Creek?” I asked.
We both knew the allotment had grass not being used but the riparian areas and lower slopes were getting thumped. He paused. I could tell he was thinking. The key is asking the question, so you don’t get a flat “No.” If I had asked if I could run more cattle, the answer could have been no. By seeking more information and asking what I needed to run more cattle, we were without prejudice.
Roy continued, “We need to establish some permanent trend and condition transects. If we can document that the range is improving, yeah, we can run more cattle.”
We did just that. We established 5 permanent trend and condition transects and after 5 years we read them and the rangeland health had improved. We got an increase in our permit. We got another increase in 10 years and the third increase in 15 years and our stocking rate grew by 260%. All because we asked a question, “Without Prejudice.”
Values or Beliefs?
There may be times when we go down the road of gathering more information and come to a juxtaposition. For example, we might ask our banker, “What do I need to get a loan and buy the neighbor ranch?”
He might say that you need another $1 million of equity. Maybe that means getting a partner and giving up a stake in ownership. We
may not be willing to go there but our decision wasn’t due to prejudice against having a partner, but a personal value of not wanting to give up ownership.
When sorting through our prejudice, it is important to clarify what we “believe” and what we “value.” By remaining without prejudice, we continue gaining information, until we see a way to proceed or a value based reason not to proceed.
If we can train ourselves to ask questions about our beliefs, yes, our prejudice, our tradition, and our habit, we will gain a chance to change. If we can’t combine two herds, because the cows won’t get bred, is that real or prejudice? What does herd size have to do with cows getting bred? If we can’t combine herds because we don’t have enough water is that real or prejudice? Can water be developed? Can a fence change to access a river? Prejudice blinds the obvious.
We can take inspiration from Matt and Alecia and ask, “How can we…” They did this in-spiteof a massive workload, shortage of time, and sleep deprivation.
Being Lazy
A shortage of time falls into the scarcity mentality, another sneaky form of prejudice. Scarcity causes us to dwell on what we don’t have. A scarcity mentality can appear around the lack of money, lack of friends, and one that our ranching culture embraces—lack of time. We call this, “working hard” but it is merely a symptom of our prejudice in what’s important and how we do things. We find comfort in keeping our nose to the grindstone and getting up each morning to repeat what we did the day before.
In my experience, we find the ultimate laziness in busyness and working hard. I once left a $250,000 calf sale check on my kitchen table for a week because I had to go find a bull, put in a fence corner and turn on an irrigation ditch. It was the late ‘70’s inflation era and my loan kept chomping away at 21% interest as I stayed busy. I’m sure I groveled to my banker how hard I had been working, when I finally went and paid down the loan balance.
Our ranching culture wears hardship like a badge. Once we get into the rut of being busy, our senses numb, until we only think about what we are doing. The prejudice of working hard blinds us from the “why.” If we can take a step back and check in on our holistic context, the “why” we are likely to see more clearly a path to “How” we are approaching our work. Finally, much of “what” we are doing falls away as irrelevant, or as we see it for what it is, a selfrighteous busyness. So how do we get in these lazy ruts?
A thought initiates action and if the action works, it becomes behavior. Behaviors become traditions and eventually shape our culture. Sometimes our behavior and traditions get us in a rut. Being without prejudice takes work and introspection. The work involves pushing ourselves away from those, who confirm or even excuse our beliefs. So how do we know, when we have been surrounded by those supplanting our prejudice?
As I look back on my life, I have been prejudiced against town kids, Indians, Russians, Californians, Democrats, Environmentalists, and in later years, Republicans and season-long-graziers. When I think about my behavior and those around me, when I was in these ruts, it was pretty similar. We excluded those of difference, we chastised and ridiculed those who differed, and we defended those in our clique even when their behavior violated our values. We were lazy.
Those Who Dare!
It came down to exclusion vs. inclusion. It resulted in a shrinking whole rather than a growing whole under management. It involved
defending positions rather than our principles. Look around at the people in your circle. Who is coming in and who is going out? Are decisions based on the past or the future? Are leaders being defended or promoted? Are accounts growing or shrinking? Are people victims or empowered? As we shrug off immature beliefs, our inherited prejudice and owned prejudice, we begin to dare. When we first began practicing Holistic Planned Grazing, we went from six herds to three. As we settled in three herds went to two and I noticed a big difference in the work. We no longer dragged our ass into camp in the moonlight. We no longer needed a string of 5 or 6 horses looking like gutted snakes. We had time. Our work was more intense and more focused, but we would be done in a few hours and the horses got fat. We started seeing willows sprouting along the creek bank, Basin Wildrye flourishing on the benches and Service Berry stretching up the slopes, as our stocking rates increased and expenses declined. Life became more pleasant, as we lingered into the evening conversing, going to our kids sporting events and having company over for an afternoon. Being without prejudice allows us to think and consider different behavior. Our new behavior will build more diverse plant communities, more diverse social communities and a more diverse stream of income. Our changed thoughts and behaviors will build a culture grounded in our values. Being without Tony Malmberg prejudice allows us to DARE! Being without prejudice presents possibility. Being without prejudice empowers others in our resource base. Being without prejudice empowers decisions at the soil surface. This article was written by long-time Holistic Management educator and practitioner, Tony Malmberg and was originally published at Holistic Management.guide where you can read more of Tony’s writing: https://www.holisticmanagement.guide/blog/.
