On Feb. 6 and 7, Paicines Ranch welcomed visitors from across the western U.S. and even as far as New York and Wyoming for a land and ecosystem management workshop with agroecologist Nicole Masters. With 95 attendees, the workshop, titled “Reading the Land,” featured two days of discussion and field demonstrations encompassing the soil, plant, animal and human interface that makes up agricultural lands.
Masters is an author and an educator, as well as the director of Integrity Soils, a company that provides educational resources on land and soil management for different groups and producers. Her interactive approach and dynamic delivery of complex concepts brought clarity to the relationships between animals, plants and the soil microbiome, exploring the topic from a cellular to a physical level.
Serving as a cross-section of agricultural professions, the workshop provided education and practical application of biological concepts for agricultural purposes. Viticulturists, ranchers, farmers, teachers, and gardeners alike engaged in a meeting of minds and a sharing of experiences.
Lisa Marie Gerhard and Andrew Whitehill both traveled from Marin County to take part in the experience, each bringing their own perspective on ecosystem regeneration.
“For me, education about soil and soil health is most important for everything,” said Gerhard, a landscape and small food garden manager. “For the environment, the animals, and products that we eat, the health and well-being of the planet and our bodies.”
The workshop took its name “Reading the Land” from Master’s focus on recognizing indicators within each individual ecosystem, then being able to react appropriately.
“The specific information about some indicator species and what they may be pointing towards in terms of deficiencies in the soil is super helpful because I was actually able to make connections to what’s happening on the land or what I’ve observed on our ranch,” said Whitehill, a ranch manager.
Attendees not only had a chance to look at several case studies and listen to Master’s informational, energetic lecture material, but they were also able to apply those concepts in field activities at Paicines Ranch.
“Rather than watching a webinar or a recording, there’s a lot more opportunity in a hands-on and personal workshop like this to ask more questions, to get direct feedback from other people who might be in similar situations and as a result of that be able to apply what we’re being exposed to more directly to our own situations,” said Greg Richardson, Paicines Ranch’s director of research and monitoring.
Paicines Ranch has been hosting workshops like this one since 2010, both as an educational opportunity within the agriculture industry and a way of guiding their own efforts as an agricultural producer. Paicines Ranch raises sheep, cattle, turkeys and hogs, grows wine grapes and farms around 300 acres of cropland. In 2019, the Paicines Ranch Learning Center was formed as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization to further support the ranch’s educational efforts and to reach a greater audience.
“The idea was to bring the people that we wanted to learn from to this part of California. We started with holistic management educators and since then have branched out to a wide variety of people,” said Paicines Ranch owner Sallie Calhoun.
The ranch is constantly evolving with respect to its growing and ecosystem management practices, learning from the experts it brings in along the way.
“We practice holistic management which we learned many years ago,” said Calhoun. “It influences everything we do and we’re just trying to learn from the people who are trying to figure out how to make a transition in agriculture so that agriculture can be better for ecosystems, so we can regenerate ecosystems while growing food and fiber rather than degrading them.”
On the second day of the workshop, attendees got a chance to take a look at the compost program that Paicines Ranch utilizes, an area that Richardson oversees. Compost treatments were one of the topics Masters covered when discussing methods of stimulating growth in a way that doesn’t harm the living biome.
“I feel like Paicines Ranch sees benefit from working natural systems as sort of the engine that drives the productivity of our landscape, and from that, the agricultural products that we produce,” said Richardson. “Some of the resilience that comes with biodiversity actually helps to support a more not only resilient system but a more productive one in a lot of ways too.”
“We are just trying to be part of a larger community that is asking all of these questions,” said Calhoun. “We’re all on this journey together. We don’t bring people who have answers, we have people who hopefully spark curiosity and help other people.”
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