Leave It Better Than You Found It
Back in the day, Adam and I moved around the country a bit. During that season of our lives, we started paying closer attention to our food – where it came from, how it was produced, how much it cost. Documentary after documentary and book after book led us to the same conclusion: What we eat matters and where it comes from matters more. Food is only as healthy as the land that it comes from and the people who grow it. From this conclusion, we resolved that wherever we landed, we would prioritize growing our own food and stewarding the land.
Wanting to steward the land and knowing how to do that are two different things. At the beginning of our Tramonto journey, our goal was to grow most of our own food – so that meant we needed to focus on how to properly care for a variety of different crops and animals. We experimented a lot. We watched more documentaries and read more books. From all we had learned, we knew we did not want to use any pesticides, herbicides, etc. We aimed to work with nature rather than against it. So, we started looking into the various shapes these practices take from companion planting and beneficial insects, to nitrogen fixing trees and shrubs, to rotational grazing. Little by little, we added to the farm: chickens, ducks, sheep, rows of raspberries, blueberries, and a small orchard. Then a vegetable garden plot dotted with flowers. Over the years, we’ve found what we like to take care of and what we don’t, what fits with our family and what is a burden, and have adjusted our goals and enterprises as our farm has evolved. The small balance corrections we make allow us to focus on the things we do well and enjoy the most. Though we’ve experimented and tried many methods over the years, creating and supporting biodiversity on the farm has been paramount.
Currently, we grow chickens for both eggs and meat but purchase other types of meat from local farmers. We’d love to raise all of the meat we eat, but are in a season of life when supporting other farmers makes more sense. We still grow raspberries, blackberries, blueberries, and maintain an orchard with apple, pear, plum, and cherry trees. We also still grow many of the vegetables we eat seasonally during the year, and this past spring we added bees to our farm. Then, about four years ago, we shifted our focus to grow more flowers.
Throughout the farm, we’ve thoughtfully placed fences, native plants, and water sources so that we can encourage habitation and care for the pollinators and birds. All of these intentional plantings invite a wide range of wildlife and in turn, makes Tramonto more resistant to climate shocks, pests, and disease. It’s hard to quantify the impacts that these additions have made especially when the effects will likely be measured over decades and not seasons but in our short time establishing this farm the biodiversity has noticeably increased year after year.
There’s still so much to learn – but little by little we’ll continue to make improvements that help nurture the life around us. In our next journal, we’ll talk about soil and how we prepare our garden beds.
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