No Pesticides, No Fungicides, and Limited Herbicides
We are focused on optimizing soil health. The soil is a community of living organisms. Herbicides and pesticides harm and kill the most beneficial members of the soil community. For that reason, we only use them if we think that the benefit outweighs the damage we know they will do to the soil. There are two instances where we will use herbicides on our farm. We will use herbicides every other year, along with other mechanical tools, to keep vegetation from overtaking our permanent fences. The other instance in which we may use a herbicide is to prevent tallow trees from overtaking the farm. These trees are a beautiful part of the plant community on the farm, but unfortunately they have a tendency to completely take over if allowed to. When they do, it is nearly impossible for any other plants to grow underneath them. We try our best to control them by browsing them with herbivores. If that doesn’t work then we try to control them mechanically using a mower. But if they are in an area that we can’t reach with the mower, we may choose to use an herbicide. Again our focus is on optimizing soil health and creating conditions for life to flourish on the farm. As our soils continue to heal, we hope that our need to use herbicides to control tallow trees will diminish with time as the plant community evolves. We never use pesticides.
