From the Board Chair

BY WALTER LYNN

Recently I have been thinking about how the visibility of Holistic Management International and the spread of Holistic Management has been the result of people making an effort to share what they know with others. When I think of the Holistic Management® principles and framework, I think of the parable “light is to be revealed, not concealed.” As practitioners, Certified Educators, and supporters, we have a responsibility to share the story of how Holistic Management impacts our lives, revealing the light.

In particular, I am grateful for two amazing individuals, Gary Reding and Judith Schwartz. In the mid ‘90s Gary Reding read Savory’s Holistic Management: A New Framework for Decision Making. It is still a foundation for him some 25 years later in his international consulting work. Gary originates from southeast Indiana but now lives in Fort Collins, Colorado. Through his consulting practice, he works with many diverse farms–marijuana, hemp, fruits, vegetables, and grains. His family farm in Indiana was converted from a conventional row crop rotation to one where he was a leading organic producer.

That conversion started when Gary was flipping pork chops at a friend’s retirement gathering and he began chatting with a Holistic Management practitioner. The practitioner was the one that pushed Gary into the deep end of the pool. After his four-year study and planning for his family farm, Gary’s detailed plans always included animals as part of the system he was committing his time and resources to improve. His financial results were stellar when compared to his old model.

Here’s what Gary has to say:

• The framework methodology applies to more than farming and ranching; it applies to any business or organization.

Resilience in Times of Uncertainty

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1 natural disasters.” However, as stressful situations continue to draw on, this ongoing great uncertainty can lead to chronic stress and burnout.

To combat this stress and burnout, we have to acknowledge that we are facing a time of great uncertainty and we are still figuring out how to adapt to this new reality. While there are numerous people predicting how long COVID will be a global risk, no one really knows. Likewise, as the personal response to various policies and regulations developed to address COVID seems to generate more social conflict, we begin to fight each other rather than fighting a common enemy. This fuels further uncertainty and creates ambiguous loss—loss that is unclear and doesn’t have resolution. Moreover, we have multiple losses—of trust, freedom, rituals, and ways of life, so we grieve these multiple losses (or react to them with some emotion like anger or fear).

So how do we take care of ourselves in these uncertain times?

Michael Maddaus writes of developing a resilience bank account. We create this resilience first by recognizing that we don’t know when this time of uncertainty will end. We need to take time for self-care, which includes building and maintaining relationships, now. In particular, we may need to build new relationships to help us with these new times. Many farmers and ranchers are building cooperatives or new retail markets to replace their restaurant markets that have dried up. Likewise, they are building new enterprises to address new needs or interests as people begin to realize the importance of a local food system and the agriculture producers who want to feed their communities.

• Farmers and ranchers use what they are sold.

• Marginal return analysis was a key piece of his economics before any action was taken on his farm. His economic analysis was for a minimum of five years and on one engagement it was for 18 years.

• Today, Gary stands for improving world health one farm at a time.

Recently, I listened to an interview of the regenerative agriculture author, Judith Schwartz. As chairperson of HMI, Judy’s fabulous endorsement of Holistic Management warmed my heart. She commented about how our Certified Educators are working in their communities to resolve land and water issues.

But HMI is also working to address social issues. Recently, Kathy Harris, HMI Program Director and Certified Educator Jeff Goebel coached 18 participants on the benefits of building consensus to resolve complex issues for a family business, a board, or a group needing facilitation to get a mutually agreed upon next action. I was able to participate and feel this social tool is greatly needed within our community. I have found that the social issues are often what keep us from making the most of our financial and natural resources.

I was deeply saddened to hear a recent story from one of my great mentors in my accounting career. We had a conversation where he shared about a client grandmother’s death. The pallbearers for her funeral were all of her grandsons, except his client, who was the eldest grandson and had not been contacted about his grandmother’s death. This level of dysfunction has got to be addressed if we are going to more effectively manage our businesses and create healthy land and thriving communities. We have seen many practitioners, like Gary Reding, make these kinds of changes and achieve incredible results. I hope you will share this tool with others, as well as the results you are getting—bringing light into the world.

But if you are not in the action or adaptation stages noted above and are experiencing the stages of anxiety, depression, anger, and burnout, berating yourself for not being a better, stronger, more capable person is not going to help. So many people are struggling right now. Now is the time for compassion—for self and others. It is through identifying what we are feeling and getting the help we need that we can build our resilience bank account and have the resilience in our land, businesses, and families to then be able to reach out a hand to another when they need it—creating healthy land and thriving communities even in times of uncertainty.

Reader’s Forum

Challenging My Food Beliefs Through Pasture Raised Poultry Processing

BY STEPHANIE VON ANCKEN

Ididn’t think I would participate, but I was invited by people that I respect and I knew it would be an important learning experience even if I was just an observer. These were my thoughts as I drove down NM313 through Sandia Pueblo towards Bernalillo and Tierra Sagrada Farm. A few weeks before I had been put in touch with Sage and Andrea, owners of Tierra Sagrada Farm, through a mutual farming friend. They seemed like the farmers I had been searching for.

Tamara Gadzia, a long-time supporter of Holistic Management International, owns a few acres with her husband and Certified Educator Kirk in Bernalillo, New Mexico, just a few minutes’ drive from Tierra Sagrada Farms; this was all her idea. She noticed that much of the agricultural land in her neighborhood was not in production, and through conversations with several neighbors found they were all interested in keeping their land in production, but had various barriers to overcome to do so. Her solution was to create the Urban Edge Project in partnership with HMI. Urban Edge connects homeowners in urban/suburban agricultural communities with eager, self-starter type young farmers who can farm/ranch their land and help to build community around agriculture in these areas.

My job with this first pilot project in Bernalillo was to find these young farmers. When I first spoke with Sage on the phone, he eagerly outlined their enterprises and techniques and values and who he was reading and what he was hoping to do next. I knew it was a good “fit” and immediately called Tamara to set up a meeting.

Fast forward a couple of weeks: Sage and Andrea are already starting to work with Tamara and Kirk on their property, with plans to expand to other neighbors’ properties depending on how this project progresses and how the CDC restrictions change for COVID-19. Having made fast friends with Sage and Andrea, I was invited to participate in their first poultry processing planned for the coming Wednesday along with Kirk and Tamara and Tamara’s sister, Suzan. Andrea is expecting their first child in September so she didn’t join us in the process, but came out a few times with big smiles and lots of encouragement as she photographed us at work.

Sage is warm, intentional, and exuberant about regenerative farming and all its possibilities. So it was no surprise that when we arrived at 8 a.m. he had an assembly line all set up: the tent where the harvesting would happen, the scalder to loosen the feathers, the plucker to remove the feathers, the eviscerating stations with clean cutting boards, knives, buckets and cleaning supplies and three coolers all with incrementally colder water temperatures to quickly chill the birds once they were finished.

Sage led us through the entire process with the first bird. There was so much to learn. He moved quickly and deliberately; you wouldn’t have known it was his first time. (He later said he was so thankful that all of us were there to encourage and support him.) After that first run through, I created a sign with the evisceration steps to help Tamara and I as we learned the process. And after our respective fifth birds we both had it down; oil glands, pull out neck, remove craw and windpipe, cut backside, pull out all insides making sure not to break the intestines or gallbladder in the process, remove lungs, save heart, liver, gizzard, and neck, make sure inner cavity is cleaned out, spray down with water, place in first cooler of water.

There was a sense of gratitude and reverence in every step of the process. We didn’t plan it beforehand or even really discuss our different expectations around how this was going to be done, but every one of us, in our own way, thanked each bird during every step of the process. There was a calm throughout the day, even when things didn’t go exactly to plan, a kind of expectation that what we were participating in was sacred. A sacrifice of an animal to feed a family.

I had never felt that before. And I’m ashamed to say, even when I was eating meat regularly, I had never taken the time to learn more about how that meat got to my plate. Society had taught me an “ignorance is bliss” mindset where I assumed I wouldn’t want to continue to consume meat if I knew where it was from. This is half true. Because if I had learned about our factory farming techniques, the assembly lines, the medicines, the chemicals, the cages, the filth, the unsanitary and unsafe working conditions for workers of communities made vulnerable, I would have been repulsed and perhaps have never eaten meat again.

But perhaps if I had been taught more about the small scale farmer, the way their birds are raised, the time and love that goes into their care and processing, I would have had a deeper respect for the food I was consuming and more gratitude towards the animal that was sacrificed for my benefit. And in that respect and gratitude, I most likely would have looked at meat as something more sacred and special, that one eats perhaps a few times a week, instead of every single day.

After the birds were cooled down, we vacuum packed them and put them on ice and then to the freezer. 30 birds in total. 27 that came out perfect. Three that were the “learning birds” which will be going to stock. All the feet will go to dog food, the insides and feathers went to a big compost pile, and the 27 perfectly processed chickens will feed the community.

I went home a changed person. I don’t