Regenerative Agriculture: How We Improve Soil Quickly without Costly Equipment

Our video “Why I Don’t Farm Like Joel Salatin, Greg Judy, or Gabe Brown” is the second part of this video. It responds to early comments and talks about the long term goals for the 10 acre field. Check it out. It was published one week after this one. Thanks for watching!

We do improve our soil by:
1)Chop & drop
2)Mulch
3)chickens
4) water dripping
5) Water from well using solar system. Unfortunately, it's a little bit of salinity

the rye grass U have cultivated is still either exteemely small or the the remaining dry stems of previously harvested grass is much greater in amount # 👍

My garden spent 10 years as an adobe floored horse corral. Trampled hard, in the desert, I’ve been working on it for 5 years. I added multiple layers of horse manure, straw, leaves, wood chips. I’ve been building raised beds with purchased soil and saving as much biomass as possible for the compost pile. I collect coffee grounds from a local restaurant, usually two 5 gallon buckets per week. I’m starting cover crops of clover, rye grass, oats, barley, cow peas—all started this spring. I’m disabled and very heat intolerant due to a neurological disorder. So earthworms are doing most of the tilling here, although the current chicken yard will grow fine corn and melons next year. The chickens are a tiny flock but they till pretty nicely. I’m about to plant their next digs with a variety of cover crops to till in after we move them.

Thank you for this. I now own a small property that we will homestead and the soil is very poor. I’ll will look to adding compost and cover crops to help bring this soil to live and better health.

I just found your channel and read your backstory. Thank you for sharing. We left TX and bought 13 acres in Humacao, Puerto Rico. Our name comes from 2 Cor 5:17. It's nice to know there are more of us.

Nice work. I urge you to see if crab grass or goose grass will work for a warm season forage. The goosegrass is prolific for me and puts up more biomass than dallis or bahia. Yellow sweet clover also does well here and will get 6ft high if allowed to. I have a friend in southern VA that swears by crabgrass as being the cheapest high nutrition summer grass he can grow. and grows a lush knee high stand of it, just beautiful. He makes baleage for a dairy herd.

In my hilly, rocky clay region, ponds are everywhere and fescue is king. You will not believe how many cows are in the ponds trying to break fescue fevers on cold mornings. Ergovaline is the toxic alkaloid that the fescue endophyte produces. Even my goats and pigs wont touch it this time of year. Theyll bust out with a 10inch tall stand of fescue remaining.

I would have thought the pigs would have destroyed the root system...interesting video.
Enjoyed it...wish we had the obvious rainfall you have..
It sure would make it easier to prepare.

One thing I do when I garden, even indoors, is I shred up any dead plant matter and add it back into the soil either as a mulch or mixing it into the ground. I did this with some celery that looked like it was dying due to nutrient deficiencies. I took the celery out of the pot, removed the outermost leaves, dead flower stalks, and whatever plants that were dead, shredded them into tiny pieces with garden shears, and mixed it into the soil before putting the celery plants back in. A few months later, they were thriving!! I think one reason is simply the nutrients in the dead plants, which decomposed into the soil, was being reused by the celery. I basically created an organic material loop.

To laude
To much useless words. Sorry u are To loud e.

First time I ever seen pigs with a wool like coat. Interesting 18 minutes

Your garden area looks amazing. One thing I want to focus on next is soil compaction.. I need to figure out a plan to water and feed cattle so they don’t gather in the same place everyday. Especially around water trough’s. I’m also going to try meat chicken and Turkey,hopefully not to time intensive.
I like how you pasture and rotate the pigs along with your seed broadcasting to cover..

Thank you for sharing, I enjoy seeing the creative process farms like yours go through. We bought a home on 3/4 acre urban property with woods, creek, and a weedy/clover lawn over squishy clay. After watching shadows & flooding we have identified an area for growing vegetables. I’m expanding the forest border by stopping mowing, poking acorns/tree seeds I find on hikes, and planting 5 native trees I picked up for free. Last year I bought an old small chipper mulcher so I can keep all the tree droppings on property and also balance my two compost tumblers with a stockpile of brown litter. We are growing vegetables in bags made of poly tarps filled with our own compost. I’m doing research for a few projects I’m hoping to get underway before the summer heat kicks in. 1 build a chicken coop & run, 2 import and spread carbon (arborist mulch) to build soil for expanding our vegetable garden next year. Right now, I’m learning about broad forks, which may help to drain some of my squishy clay yard?

I recently made raised bed gardens where I rent and row gardens at my moms with wood chip pathways she has chickens but I can let them in the gardens if they would destroy my pathways so what I did to increase the biology and fertility of the soil I compost the chicken bedding with fresh hay leaves wood chips fish waste and wood and bone char in a Johnson su bioreactor it’s an amazing biological inoculant for my cover crops and vegetables use it for seed treatments and extracts also spray foliars with the Johnson su compost extract and add fungal foods like my home made fish hydrolysate and kelp getting the plants to produce more sugars to feed the biology more root exudes

New here, so you may get this a lot. But the ruts you're showing from using a tractor are what Greg Judy talks all the time about not doing. Using a four wheeler and his bail unroller will keep the pastures from getting chewed up by heavy equipment.

So instead of tilling and fertilizing those areas you're using the animals to turn over the soil and their waste to improve the soils conditions? Is that the idea?

Please excuse my ignorance, I am not a farmer but I am interested.

We have a sorghum infest field, how best can we manage it?

Honestly ...... Hay equipment is expensive ? I have my own complete line of round baling equipment to harvest my hay. The cost ? Less then 13,000 dollars ( not including the tractor ) My equipment is very efficient not junk. Been farming for 45 years.....dairy. Too often people thing they need expensive equipment. Such as a high schooler needing a 60,000 dollar truck...when he / she could be riding the bus.
So...question is...whats the price on your truck ? Mine is an S -10 2002 . My second vehicle in my life time..... Im 65 years old and enjoy the easy going farm life ! Consider rethinking equipment costs !

Does your country extension/nrcs/USDA office have no till drills available to rent?

If you can find a rotary ditcher run you want around your property to relieve that water

Great video! Can you explain to a non-farmer, why you broadcast the peas/seed before you move the pigs off the pasture? Is it to have them help get the seed into the soil without any equipment or are there other reasons?

I belive you should also dig deep border channels. It was mandatory and common practice in the past.
Pigs will have water and mud, it will put down soil water table, you will get grogs as pest control units .

You’re doing everything I would do. The only thing I might suggest would be to plant something to attract as many pollinators as possible as close to where you’re planting cover crops as you can, if that makes sense. I would try planting some native wildflowers in an area the animals can’t get to in an effort to encourage the cover crops to seed and reproduce. Other than that, very well done and enjoyable video.

Greetings from Tennessee. I grew up farming winter wheat and soybeans. While we kept our fields somewhat level, we still had a few problem wet spots. After 5+/- years of no-till, we would deep plow and that helped for a year or so. An older farmer told us he eliminated the same problem at his place by pulling a sub-soiler through his fields. After years of farming, no matter crops or livestock, the soil 12" or deeper gets compacted to the point it won't allow drainage into the aquafers and just runs off or evaporates. You can go even further by adding a small tube to the back side of the t-post to deliver compost tea to the newly opened soil attracting deep grass roots down that far. Once there, they will spread out looking for more nutrients naturally loosening the soil. Also, it allows the rain to soak in deeper allowing fields to stay greener longer in the summer. If you don't have one or a tractor big enough to dig down that far, perhaps you could barter with a neighbor and trade a spring piglet or two for services rendered. Just a thought.

If the land is mostly clay don't you need to add sand or something to improve drainage?

How many cows do you run?

Oh I wish I had a friend like Bubba. You’re blessed to have him. I use dump trucks full of fresh Wood Chips. i’m in Palm Beach Florida. not too far from the beach. I also use seaweed , Grass clippings, organic alfalfa pellets ,wood ashes, charcoal, five different kinds of worms. I also have my ladies/chickens. They do a lot of the work. Tilling ,debugging ,sanitizing ,fertilizing. They making sure everybody’s happy on the property. Thank you for taking the time out to make your video have a good day and God bless y’all.

How dare you!

id see if i could do a little trading with somebody who could knife in a couple drain tiles itd do quite a bit I bet for production

nice video!

Could you plant sorghum Sudan in the non improved pasture & allow the cattle/pigs to graze on the crop during or @ the end of the crop growth period? Would allow the growth, also the rapid decomposition & intergeneration into the soil.

The plan for the east field vs the red field is not very useful.
The red field is wetter , dryer more or less acidic ? Planting different things why ?

30-40 a bail delivered! Wow where looking at 135 for a 6' and 80 for a 5'.

I am paying $240.00 per bale in se Idaho where are you getting $30 to 40 round bales?

I feel like you are doing a lot of things well, but that you should avoid disturbing the soil-especially when the conditions are wet. If you can let the sod develop and not destroy it every year you would make better progress. I have the same struggle with some of my ground.

how much is seed bill

City boy trying to cultivate soil on 0.4 Acres, covered by pine and sweet gum with 4 cats, 3 chickens, a dog, and a frog. Some days I wish I was as crazy as y'all. Turning a compost pile by hand every week sometimes makes me dizzy.

maybe soaking your seeds before broadcasting such as in the "Dr's Johnson - Su and followed up by "Young Red Angus" on his farms in Kansas.....just a thought

another source to look at for soil health is the "JDAM" method..this is also known as "Korean Natural Farming"...just a thought.....

New to grazing and cows, this is super encouraging thanks!

Great video thanks 😊.

GREAT VIDEO. THIS HOW OUR ANCESTORS DID IT BEFORE CHEMICAL FERTILIZERS BECAME POPULAR BECAUSE IT WAS EASIER

definitely subscribed!!

Awesome!!!!!!! Great content

I'm in central Texas clay limestone soil. I'm turning it into 5" of dark earth worm gold. It's on my latest video. You may really like the technique i used!

what did you do with the pigs during that arctic blast?

I see photos of "regenerative" soil that don't look all that great, but your thumbnail shot made me click right now

I used wood chips.I prefer summertime for the green leaves, break down faster. They are free and my clay went to rich black healthy soil in just two seasons

Noce

ya you only need about 7000$ worth of cattle and pigs lol