Bringing Our Homestead BACK TO LIFE! Greg Judy Inspired Regenerative Agriculture Plan. 

So interesting! Learning lots. Thank you for having this channel. Your family is so wonderful. Good Godly people living the dream many people have. God Bless You All.

I don’t have horses but have always thought of them as beautiful animals. I find your channel very interesting and I could listen to you and your wife chat away for hours about something that I’ll never use in my life but still find it interesting! Does anyone else feel the same or are most of the viewers horse people?. Just curious!

I recommend the "Kiss the ground" and "Common ground" documentaries for any non-experts interested in soil health. ❤️

Research more in regenerative farming. Check out more about Greg Judy, also Gabe Brown, Ray Archuleta they will lead you to others for more information about regenerative farming & soil health, how to improve soil so that it absorbs more water. Gabe & Ray's videos really amazed me. They both are part of organizations that do a lot of teaching & provide help to farmers all over the world. Though they deal mostly with ruminets they may have some advice about equines. You may need to consider rotating your sheep, goats & cattle to this area to build the soil up. Please don't use chemical fertilizers, other chemicals. They will negate what you to build the soil. I hope you you got the improvements you want but it can take a long time to accomplish this. Years in some cases, but you should see a gradual improvement. Get as organic materials as you can on the ground. Try to get as much native grasses/plants as you can that are good for horses if you are buying seeds. I found your channel at the auction where you found Oliver. Started watching & subscribed then. I enjoy all videos I have seen & watching older ones too. I'll continue to to follow for Oliver's videos & others too

I'm Australian from generations of farmers, and as you were discussing your story, i was reminded of an Australian horseman and pioneer, a man called Peter Andrews and how he turned his land into an oasis. If you look him up, he had spearheaded a program here called natural sequence farming. Australian story has several episodes on RU-vid about what he did, but the 2017 one tells his entire story. Different country, different land, but i know it will resonate and you will get some pearls from it. His horses were an instrumental part of how he started to think about his land needs and how he then managed to regerate his soil, as was how he was able to capture and hydrate the soil by going against the grain and building up natutal catchment areas that existed prior to colonisation. It's a fascinating story regardless but it certainly echoes in part what you are planning to do. 😊

You have a big plan, and lots of work ahead. Once the work is done, you'll be much closer to achieving your dream for your farm. From now on, every decision will be made based on whether it advances your long-term goals. A difficult lesson to learn, when accompanied by a heaping helping of humble pie, but the lesson will 'take', because of it. You've got this, sir.

OMG such a lot of work. we will be watching the progress!!

Lots of great plans! It will be fun to watch!

Take a look at Paddock Paradise system. I run my horses on a hybrid PP track with rotational grazing. The improvements to my land, the soil and my horses health has been amazing 😊👍🏽

Be careful what fertilizer you use because it can ultimately make the problem worse. And remember that tilling alone releases a percentage of the soils carbon back into the atmosphere. There is a reason that agriculture is taught in collage and one can get a degree in it. Best of luck! I know with hard work you will get it where you want it!

I'll be watching to see your plan in motion....good luck..

Good luck for all your projects 👍🐎👍🐎👍

I'm a big Greg Judy fan too. Looking forward to seeing how your farm progresses.

Wonder if you can have someone's goats or some pigs work on those areas to offset having to " fertilize" Chickens will help to .. do a little rotational grazing in areas Also if you plant some native grasses and plants on your property to increase native diversity it will decrease your weeds. Check out what Flock Finger Lakes is doing with that property she has a great youtube where they are restoring a huge property.

You could also check out Richard Perkins in Sweden how he rotates his cows/sheep/chickens to regenerate his soil. Joel Salatin might be another one. Or you could have a look at Justin Rhodes Cow/ sheep system, he basically has two sets of fences and builds two paddock's. You could try that for the ridge fields you don't need to fence in everything at once. Build two paddocks. Let them eat down the first, get them into the second paddock. Take down the first fence to build the third paddock and so forth. I would use a perimeter fence, I guess, so the paddocks work with two strands of electric, so it is easier to build and take down (but we have a small herd of mares only, no ponies, no foals). I'm trying to implement some rotational grazing at the livery yard where my horse lives at the moment, too, at the other side of the world. Good luck with your plans! Nice to see some horsey homesteaders🙂

it takes time but you will get a good pasture going. We also do as much of what Greg Judy recommends as possible. We did have horses but now run our dairy herd on the pastures, rotating as needed. They fertilize and disturb. The plants that grow are indicative of the soil condition. Phosphate fertilizer kills soil microbes so we didn’t do that. We did have the stump areas graded at first because we removed trees. We seeded, but due to the wild turkeys in our area, we spread hay in all of the more bare spots. I each year, not letting it get eaten down too far, the pastures improved. Unlike cows, goats don’t like the tall grass so we mow high two or three times a year which allows it to grow back quickly and keeps the soil covered with the all important organic material. Best to you!

Been watching Greg Judy for years and it really encourages me that so many are turning to regenerative agriculture. I’d love to see him do a consult on your place cause (from what I’ve heard on his videos) he’s not a fan of using horses to improve pastures (too much compaction) but if you’ve only got horses there must be a way! Feed and nurture the soil and the other components will be well! Best of luck

This is very interesting! Step One in every project is to have a long term plan. I think you have good ideas!

Love the education you provide!

Don’t till it because you’ll bring up all the rock that’s in the ground and cause more problems. Also don’t use fertiliser as it messes around with the soil biology. Also look up compost tea 👍🏽 Look into horse safe native grasses .. remember rye grass is cow food and not horse food. 👍🏽

I'm excited to see the improvements! I love getting nerdy with farming and pasture development. When I was younger working and training horses I would walk my fields daily looking at how the grass was growing or not and coming up with ways to help the horses eat down some parts and let the favorite parts grow more! I'm blabbing now but I'm excited to watch!

Happy you have found regenerative! Good luck for the change!!!! 👍👍👍👍 (I am a huge Gabe Brown fan....)

Love Greg Judy. I'm glad you're starting to do the work needed, learn and do different, I say. Best wishes!

He grew a beard on his way down the hill 🤣🤣

This suburban lady had no idea the challenges of developing pastures. I cant get my lawn to grow, but not a priority for me. Gives a whole new meaning to A work in progress, and long term planning. If at first you dont succeed, try it again, but dont do the same thing.

I like the plan

Cross Timber Bison Ranch, Dusty Baker, in Sulphur OK. Has some great videos on his channel. He is definitely about rotational and natural pasture usage. He might be able to give you some insights and people in MO to contact. BTW I love you guys and Shae in MI.

You need goats or Scottish Highland cows , those animals eat anything . I am new to your channel, funny thing though horses are beautiful but they scare the bejesus out of me...haha Enjoy your videos .

You need to let landscapers dump leaves, clippings and wood chips. Also if they are building any roads, commercial projects/buildings in your area you can get them to drop off topsoil if its closer than there yard so they save gas money!

I use a lawn tractor / ride on mower to do this type of work in the horse pasture. I drag 2 tires around and I also have a dump trailer I fill with water and composted manure then dump it in the field It spreads out about 15' from were I dump it then do back and get more. I also just run over the manure piles when I'm mowing the weeds down. All of this works well to keep the field lush and green. I only have 2 acres total. so the horse field is 1.5 acres, maybe a bit more I gave them part of my lawn lol I just have the one horse and a mini and my mini stays on a dry lot with a goat. I was throwing out hay but I ended up throwing hay out that had buttercups in it and now that's a problem. The butter cups seem to like the swampy areas so I was thinking of doing a lasagnia type treatment in those areas. cardboard with composted manure to choke it out. the hay I have now is mostly white clover and grasses I don't see alot of buttercup so I can spread that out over the seed. I've been watching greg for years

You could use the part with the brush as hunting leases to make money for the land

You could try premixing your seed stems into your composted manure Before you go forwards making two passes if I hear right. The weight of the top dressing Will draw the seed down to grade better if it’s premixed some. Theory.

have you considered mix-seeding your grass with turnips? When my uncle passed away 10 years ago in Iowa, I spoke with the ISU Agriculture studies department and they suggested turnip planting (specifically, just seed casting) on the worn out pastures. The turnips are nitrogen fixers and horses can freely eat the turnip greens. You can disk the turnips or pull them and use it for your sheep, cows, goats and horses. It took about 4 years to completely regenerate each of the pastures after 3 years of turnips and a year of rapeseed- which you can use or sell as silage.

Late to the party but some goats would clean that up including roots.

Have you checked into Electroculture? It's a method used widely before the big chemical companies showed up after WW2.

I took you this long?? I just found your channel and I've known this for years... I trained a MFT once, great gelding! I've had KY Mtn horses. But have an ex Amish Dutch Harness Horse now.

Hey JR it is called green foxtail, sectarian viridis, poaceae family!

I have the Burning Bug in me too but it was done by the women in my family. (I'm not being Mean by saying Field Burning ISN'T Women's work)

How’s your plan going? Is it spring there yet?

What kind of grass are you planting , can you plant ryegrass? For winter coverage? Wow lucky has grown ❤😮😊

Why not put your manure pile to the field. It might help enrich the soil of your field before you plant and then have them turn the dirt so that it mixes in. My also help after you put the manure pile over it.

Start researching organic methods.. never too late to fix things.. maybe you need to borrow a lot of pigs..!

Maybe one of your viewers will be able to help you out with those expenses...?🙏

0:18 Do you have any updates on how your fields are responding to the regeneration efforts?

How many acres do you have in your horse farm