Understand Regenerative Soil Building Philosophy

hey there folks this is josh stoney ridge farmer welcome back to another beautiful sunny day here on the stoney ridge farm we're out here just rolled out some hay to the cows and today we're going to talk to you a little bit about the dollars and cents of why we are not bailing hay and taking from our land and feeding our cows while we're buying hay and bringing it to the farm and whether it makes sense for you on a small scale or even a large scale farm to build your land up by bringing carbon to your farm so come along today we're going to kind of go through the dollars and cents of all this we're going to go through the common sense of all this and we'll talk a little bit about what we're doing to build our soil here on our regenerative farm here in the foothills of the blue ridge mountains of north carolina all right guys the ever pressing question do i buy my hay or do i bail my own hay do i buy a hay cutter do i buy a tedder do i buy a rake do i buy a baler do i buy a round baler do i buy a square baler what do i want to feed my animals do i plant grass seed year after year like orchard grass do i plant native grasses so that native grasses are what grows up and it makes a beautiful bale of hay for next year do i spread fertilizer do i spread lime all of these things are pressing thoughts that went through my head when we first bought our property here in north carolina now we have somewhere in the neighborhood of 125 acres of cleared pasture land meaning cleared land that will be fenced in for pasture and could be cut for hay what you don't hear a lot about is the old-time farmers talking about this vicious cycle of spreading expensive fertilizer and expensive lime out on the land because you simply cannot take from the land without putting something back around here in north carolina we're in the piedmont region of north carolina we don't have a lot of topsoil you go out to missouri or someplace like that and you've got six foot deep topsoil awesome you've got great top soil you're not having to spread lime every year you're not having to spread fertilizer every year but odds are if you're buying a piece of property and if you're raising cattle on it or if you're raising sheep or if you're raising any sort of ruminant animal that land has been farmed before and it's most likely been completely farmed to death in other words when you send off your soil sample it's going to say you need everything so what do you do you call up your local co-op you…