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Healthy Land. Healthy Food. Healthy Lives.
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to ACRES Magazine, and read articles on improving the soil with cover crops and compost tea. In 2007, I found Betsy Ross from Sustainable Growth Texas and had her come to tell me to what to do on my small plot of land and the first recommendation she gave me was to get the soil analyzed! So for the next few years, my practices were dictated by the results of soil tests, with much input from others. In hindsight, I never did BY CHRISTINE SENTER spend much time understanding some of the science/rationale behind was born in Argentina, raised in Brazil of British parents. Living in all that I was doing, so I was at the mercy of others interpretations/ third world countries, we sourced all of our food from the weekly understanding. Inadvertently, my little ranch was being steered by farmers market and our own garden. We had to make all of our others, and thankfully, I had placed my trust in wise counselors! food from scratch and learned how to make do when converting Fast forward to 2015, and via a Facebook post, I learned of American recipes (buttermilk was milk with a teaspoon of lemon juice, a Beginning Farmer/Rancher (BFR) course in Texas put on by chocolate chips were dark chocolate an organization called Holistic bars cut up into chunks!). Management International (‘HMI’) I came to the US (Michigan) that was starting within weeks. I for college, and was amazed at remember calling and talking to the abundance of processed and Peggy Cole about getting into the packaged foods, and soon fell in love class. I gave her a quick background with Kraft Macaroni and Cheese, of my agrarian experience and her Squirt and Snickers! As a poor college words were, “We’ll get you in! You’ll student and as I started my career, get so much help from this program!” these convenient and inexpensive Little did I know what a life foods were my mainstay. changing event this class would be! Ten years later I got sick. I went BFR taught me to take the reins to the doctor, and all he could give for my life and ranch, and set my me were prescriptions to treat my own course! The Senter Ranch provides healthy food at the local farmer’s symptoms instead of treating the HMI brought all the things I’d market. Christine’s journey from illness to health through a cause. This didn’t sit well with me, been attempting to do on my land healthy diet is behind the Senter Ranch’s mission. so I started researching and soon into a systematic decision making hypothesized that the food I was eating was making me sick. framework that encompassed all aspects I’d been struggling with, I started buying produce and meats, and cooking from scratch. I felt including some I hadn’t even considered! a little better. I worked through several issues while I kept improving the I had always had a vision of what I wanted my little farm/ranch to source of my ingredients and eventually started raising some of my own look like, but had never thought of formulating it into a Holistic Goal, food and healing my body. from which all decisions and actions were to be based on. A Holistic I was able to purchase five acres in Texas in 2005, and I continued Goal that encompassed my preferred quality of life, finances, land my quest to raise much of my food, while I worked a corporate job one management, community involvement, and other personal choices. hour away. The children and I had a milk cow, we raised chickens, and Most importantly, HMI taught me how to test decisions against my CONTINUED ON PAGE 15 we had a garden. Considering myself a homesteader, I was introduced
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