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Your farmers took a morning off to go on a farm tour of a regenerative dairy farm! They are already a regenerative beef farm, and they are planning to breed their desert-sturdy beef cows with Jersey dairy cows for a more resilient (and grass-efficient) animal. We were excited to see farmers flipping the model of high yield, maximum holding capacity, push push push, to one that is soil focused (!) with consideration for their cows and employees workloads. It was supposed to be 100+ temperature day and like a miracle of sorts it rained and stayed cool the entire time! The farmer actually started crying before he could start giving the tour because he was just so touched by how many people came out to the tour. We totally empathized with that- whenever folks make it out to the farmstand, a tour, garden club, or our other events, it feels like a huge sense of relief, belonging, joy, excitement. I can only imagine that compounded with a project that is so long in the making, with so many large investments, so many hoops to jump through, and no consistent farmstand customers to keep your head up. It reminded me so strongly how important each and every person is in making change in our food system. It is the community around each farm that makes it work. Sure, that farmer loves cows, but when he saw and felt his community around him (not just people willing to buy his product but the people willing to drive and spend on time on his farm on a Saturday morning… sound familiar??), some of that weight of the whole venture lifted off of him and became shared with his community.
Cheers to everyone for your presence in this movement! <3
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