13 minute read
Good Reads
by Darcy Connor
Picture Book The Great Kapok Tree: A Tale of the Amazon Rain Forest Written & Illustrated by Lynne Cherry
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Journey deep into the Brazilian rain forest with your little one to find a man attempting to chop down a Kapok tree. Exhausted from his efforts, he sits down, and soon the sounds of the forest lull him to sleep. While dozing, creatures from across the forest visit him and whisper softly in his ear, teaching him the importance of the trees and how each living thing is dependent on each other. But when he wakes up, will the lessons work or will he continue his chopping until the tree falls down?
Preschool/Toddler Please Please the Bees Written & Illustrated by Gerald Kelley
As I get older, my fascination with the importance of bees grows stronger. Did you know that 75 percent of the world’s food crops depend on bee pollination? Without bees, food production would drop significantly for humans and animals. Bee populations continue to decline, so creating awareness for these essentials pollinators is paramount.
In Please Please the Bees, Benedict the bear has a pretty sweet life. Every morning the bees leave a jar of honey on his doorstep, which he eats throughout the day. Oh, how he loves honey! But one day the bees decide to go on strike and Benedict must figure out what he can do to help his friends, the bees, so that they can once again make him that sweet, wonderful honey.
Elementary School Judy Moody Saves the World! Written by Megan McDonald Illustrated by Peter H. Reynolds
Megan McDonald has published more than 60 books for children over her career, including the award-winning Judy Moody series. “My hope is that readers see themselves in Judy Moody, with her strong sense of fun and fairness, as well as her flaws and failures,” McDonald said in an online interview in 2018. “In connecting with Judy and all of her moods, I hope readers discover their own authentic selves. And laugh along the way.”
In Judy Moody Saves the World! Judy is determined to, well, save the world after studying the environment in her science class. She is shocked to learn of the destruction of the rain forest and can’t believe her own family’s “crummy recycling habits.” It’s time to roll up her sleeves and get something done!
Middle School The End of the Wild By Nicole Helget
Addressing the impact of fracking on the environment and communities, The End of the Wild follows the story of 11-year-old Fern where the woods near her home are a refuge for her difficult life. Her younger brothers can’t be controlled, her stepfather is out of work and it’s up to Fern to put food on the table each day. The woods are a place where she can lose herself to another world. But now a fracking company is threatening her sanctuary and she finds it’s up to her, and only her, to save it. A story of “life on the poverty line,” The End of the Wild explores the often difficult choice between environmental preservation and economic reality.
Adult Simply Living Well: A Guide to Creating a Natural, Low-Waste Home By Julia Watkins
This book, as author Julia Watkins describes it, pays homage to the generations that “solved all manner of problems” simply, slowly and sustainably. Replete with recipes, projects, good habits and easy tips, Simply Living Well offers practical guidance on living a more sustainable lifestyle in your home. Watkins also sprinkles in life philosophy to “simplifying, slowing down, working with your hands, making more, buying less, valuing quality over quantity, and living frugally, self-sufficiently, and harmoniously with the natural world.” The goal: we each do our part to help the planet and in the process we find a more fulfilling life. 5k FUN RUN
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Farm
Regenerative agriculture is all about patience
Story by Greg Girard Photography by Amanda Jakl
The start of the dirt driveway weaves its way through fields of pollinating wild flowers not yet ready to bloom. You then enter a quaint grove of trees as the drive curves gradually toward the first signs of a working farm. Then you see the goats and the edges of a barn the color of the clay that defines this region. The windows down, you hear the familiar welcoming bleats as the farm house comes into view. The pigs are next, but they don’t show you the time of day, at least as the car drives by. That’s when Potato and Molasses, well, mostly Potato, start barking. Potato acts tough, but a scratch behind the ear and he starts to warm to you without much fuss—just don’t mess with the animals lest you want to see his dark side. It’s not until Rachel Herrick comes out to greet you that the chickens, guinea fowl, ducks, cats, dogs, geese and pigs all begin to emerge, collaborating in a cacophony of farm life sounds.
Slow Farm, a 47-acre private regenerative farm in
Cameron, is run by Rachel and her husband, Carl Dyke. They purchased the land six years ago with the aim of introducing a more restorative method of farming—hence the vision of Noah’s Ark in the Sandhills as we chat on the porch.
We’ll get back to the animals in a moment. First, let’s talk regenerative agriculture, which aims to improve soil health by rebuilding organic matter through holistic farming and grazing techniques. Regenerative management is about encouraging soil health and carbon storage through natural means, like crop rotation, composting, rotational grazing and low/no till farming methods.
“We’re trying to be responsible about how much we give back and how much we take,” says Rachel. “What this farm lets us do is contribute in a specific kind of way to 47 acres and then, rippling out, we can help other farmers incorporate more regenerative, sustainable practices in their farms. And we can help people—everybody from
folks with a backyard to somebody with an apartment balcony—contribute to ecological success in our own small ways. And although that doesn’t get you to the macro scale that’s really going to make the huge differences, it makes people care about where their food comes from.”
That macro-scale of regenerative practices has become a hot topic in the agricultural world. Green America estimates that if 10,000 medium-sized U.S. farms converted to regenerative, organic farming, the emissions reduction would be equivalent to removing more than one million cars from the road. And the Rodale Institute, a nonprofit leader in organic agricultural research, has modeled that if regenerative agriculture was adopted globally, climate change would effectively be reversed.
Lofty goals, indeed, but it does highlight the real need for farming beyond sustainable practices, or beyond the goal of simply “maintaining” current soil health. The United Nations estimates that one-third of the world’s topsoil is “acutely degraded” and within 60 years a “complete degradation” around the world will occur if restorative measures aren’t implemented. Meaning sustainable farming, while a step in the right direction, won’t fix the impending agricultural disaster. It’s why regenerative farming or “reversing” the degradation of soil through natural methods is so important to discuss.
Rachel and Carl didn’t set out to become a voice or example of the regenerative farming movement, but there were seeds within them that were waiting for the right time to germinate. Carl is a professor of history at Methodist University, and he grew up in a household outside Philadelphia that emphasized environmental ethics and the social and ecological responsibilities of land ownership.
Rachel’s professional background is in fine art and conceptual sculpture. She grew up on a farm in Maine, so she understood the life even if her younger self wanted to escape it, and she found in adulthood that her art kept being influenced by her memories. So for both of them, the leap to regenerative farming as a lifestyle and business wasn’t too big, but that didn’t meant they came roaring out the gate.
“When we bought the farm there was just a lot of crappy scrubbiness and small saplings and brush. The first crop we knew we could be successful at on the farm was fire ants. We thought if we could somehow market that we would have been so rich,” Rachel says. “But really the first thing we did was we waited a minute. We looked at what the land was and what it had and what the critters wanted to eat. One thing that was important for us to do from the outset was to farm in a way that uses the land for what it is good for and not try to make this land something it just cannot be. So we got chickens first … they’re the gateway drug to farming for everyone. We got them for eggs and insect control.”
From there, Slow Farm began recruiting “a team of lovable livestock to help with our land regeneration efforts.” Every species they’ve brought to the farm, from brush-eating goats and free range poultry to the New Zealand kunekune pigs and guinea hens, has a specific job to help restore the degraded topsoil after more than 150 years of tobacco farming. But don’t expect any overnight results. Regenerative farming,
Carl Dyke and Rachel Herrick with Molasses and Potato at Slow Farm in Cameron
particularly on soil so degraded, takes time—and patience.
Everything has a place, everything is connected. The guinea hens are the “bug Roombas,” eating up the ants, ticks and grasshoppers. The goats and pigs graze on rotating acreage, naturally fertilizing the soil and stomping their manure into the ground. That natural fertilization attracts the dung beetles that “tuck some poop under the soil for ya,” which leads to the growth of mycelia, a nutrientabsorbing fungus. The mycelia means a return of the earthworms, which feed on the fungus and whose presence will further enrich the soil. Healthier topsoil creates better water retention, and so it goes.
A day to celebrate: Planting small apple tree saplings five years into their regenerative adventure in pasture they naturally nursed back to health.
“It’s an accumulation process,” says Rachel. “You start with what you have and then you improve it, so that it can support the next thing and then support the next thing. So for the apple trees, we felt the pasture was holding enough water and thought, let’s give it a shot. And that’s been true throughout the farm—all 47 acres are doing something.”
For now, Slow Farm generates revenue from breeding the kunekune pigs (see sidebar), but eventually Rachel sees revenue streams in planting native crops to apple cider and honey production. “One of the tricky things about regenerative farming is that what you’re doing doesn’t always mean immediate dollar signs. It’s a deferred dollar sign. So right now the big field over there, that was in part just straight up desert. It just can’t support anything. You need to bring it back to life before you can use it again.”
And as we stand near the picturesque pond and the ducks and guinea hens quack and chirp and the dogs and pigs jockey for attention and ear scratches, there’s a sense of the ideal—the farmer whistling in bliss as she goes about her daily chores and talking freely with all her lovable animals. And indeed, Rachel and Slow Farm seem to fit the bill, albeit with a healthy dose of practicality. Regenerative farming, and the challenges it brings, is a lifestyle Rachel chose because of how much she and Carl believe in it.
“I just think it’s important,” she says. “I come from the old school of farming. We didn’t do any of this hippy dippy nonsense. We sprayed everything with poison and everything was in a small pen. But, at the time, we honestly thought that we were doing it the right way. So I don’t feel the need to villainize anybody for doing anything they need to do, but it’s not what we do.
To that end, Rachel says, Slow Farm will continue working toward its four main objectives: Giving their herds and flocks a stress-free life; restoring the land’s fertility; working in harmony with native plant and wildlife species; and creating community engagement by sharing and teaching regenerative farming practices and techniques.
Due to COVID-19, Slow Farm has stepped back from hosting workshops and tours, but Rachel is targeting later this year to open the farm back up to the public. Visit slowfarmnc.com for future events and more information.
KuneKune Pigs
“coo-nee coo-nee”
Kunekunes are a rare, small to medium sized pig from New Zealand that can grow on average 24-30 inches at the shoulder and up to 400 pounds. Kunes are extremely friendly, social, and gentle pigs and will form tight social bonds with their fellow kunes as well as other animals.
The breed was developed by the indigenous Maori people as a lard pig and the name kunekune translates as “short and round” referring to its compact rounded physiques.
Kunes are a grazing pig, and unlike most other monogastric animals, their efficient metabolisms can extract nutrition from grasses and other roughage. Kunes have short snouts that are just the right angle for grazing but poor for rooting. This feature is extremely important for farms interested in soil regeneration as it allows mycelia, a fungi food source for soil invertebrates, to be undisturbed.
Kunes are diversely useful pigs and they are known for their rich, ruby red pork and creamy white lard.
SP
Opposite page: Brittany Raynor, Southern Pines Left: Abigail Niles, Pinehurst Above: Gary Flanagan, Southern Pines
RenewalA Photo Essay
As wave is driven by wave And each, pursued, pursues the wave ahead, So time flies on and follows, flies, and follows, Always, for ever and new. What was before Is left behind; what never was is now; And every passing moment is renewed.
– Ovid, Metamorphoses
RenewalA Photo Essay
There is symbolic as well as actual beauty in the migration of the birds, the ebb and flow of the tides, the folded bud ready for the spring. There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature—the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after the winter.
– Rachel Carson, The Sense of Wonder
