AUGUST 15-18, 2025
Has it been a year?
Looking back one year ago to the Farm Gathering, I wondered what’s stayed with me? Perhaps that we had the courage to gather, to dream, to explore, to discover without a grand plan. That we trusted that our conversations would lead us. That sometimes it’s enough to simply bear witness.
Land transforms. Jud and Anne sharing their family (farm), its ins and outs and challenges here and there. The glint in Jud’s eye, the pride in his voice. Gideon stepping in to answer a question or two. Anne like a goddess who holds the universe together in her grace, listening in the background and only stepping forward if called upon. Ann Armbrecht encouraging us to listen deeply – to each other and to plants.
Sitting in circles. Simo talked about his reforestation plan to plant one million argan trees to secure the ancestral sovereignty of women’s cooperatives in his native Morocco. Patrick finding his way through conventional outputs to regenerative organic farming practices to restore health to his 33-acre family olive grove. Julius of his social-enterprise undertaking in his northeastern Ghanian village-home and its transformation by engaging with the community of women in a shea butter and baobab commercial enterprise. Elise the embodiment of Mother Earth and Jeff the dream-weaver incarnate: their simple presence an anchor and a guide.
From distant places we came. Morocco, Ghana, Oregon, Vermont, and California. We sat together. We contemplated in barns, fields, and under a one hundred year old tree. Did we learn about aromatic hydrosols, shea butter, argan, herbs? I’m sure. But for a couple days, time stood still. We thought together. Shared insights, concerns, advanced our hopes and dreams. We listened to those in the marketplace. Retailers big and little – New Leaf, La Montanita, Whole Foods, Natural Grocers, Good Earth, Jimbo’s, Merz and Cambridge Naturals. Many housed together with folks that hadn’t met before. Tables long. Laughter loud. Smiles big. More stories. Did we start new initiatives? We did. Our circle of stewards expanded. Did we change the world? Not in the way one might think. But ripples of care and concern and heartfelt engagement did in fact change my world – and extend outward to yours I’m sure. My community expanded. My heart connected to Cambridge, Chicago, Austin, Marin County and Santa Cruz to Lakewood and Albuquerque. For when all is said and done and I look back on what I value most in life it will be these relationships. With those who share the respect of the soil, the people who tend the land, those that put their sweat and tears into their labor. And those that want to share that passion with their community.
So when I look back a year ago, I say not bad. I’d do it again in a heartbeat.
What is regenerative agriculture?
I would say, in a nutshell, you’re putting back more life and health into the ground than what you’re taking by how you’re farming. The less tillage you have, the more bacterial population you have, the greater presence of those fungal populations that you have. And all of those things are holding on through carbon, life and interaction.
This growing charge, this life, this energy that wants to go somewhere. And if you put a plant in there and create the right kind of opportunity, they’re like, “Hey, let’s trade.”
Your plants will not only be healthier, they’ll have a greater presentation of nutrients and life in them. They’ll actually grow faster. Weed populations will not only change but diminish. Pest pressures go away with regenerative farming and what you’re doing with plants and what they can produce in a different type of soil and growing condition. Those things are going to be present in distillation or food or products that we’re able to produce. And in turn, the soil will also continue to get healthier and grow faster than what we can actually pull out of it at the same time.
So there’s a lot of interesting things that happen when you increase life in the soil, whereas tillage creates death. And even though you’re thinking that you’re preventing moisture loss, that you’re getting things incorporated, it’s like this reductionist theory.
It’s like we’re doing all those things, but it’s all bass-ackwards. It’s not really actually creating life. You’re just creating a sterile environment.
And there’s a Chinese proverb: “Clean water has no fish.”
- JUD CARLETON
