Entries by Cathy Svejkovsky

Spotlighting Carbon Farm Planning

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By Elise Haschke, Climate and Agriculture Program Manager, and Darron Gaus, Sustainable Agriculture Specialist It’s early Fall on New Leaf Agriculture, a USDA-certified organic, diversified, specialty crop farm in Central Texas. New Leaf grows vegetables, fruits, fiber, and natural dye plants, along with raising pastured eggs. We’re walking the farm alongside its director, Matt Simon, […]

NCAT’s Martin Guerena Honored With “Golden Pliers” Award

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By Rich Myers, NCAT Outreach Specialist When the winner of the Golden Pliers Award was announced at this year’s EcoFarm Conference in Monterey, California, it caught NCAT’s Martin Guerena off guard. “I wasn’t really paying much attention,” Martin said, “but about two minutes into the introduction, I thought, ‘Hmmm, this sounds like my resume.’ And […]

Cover Crops, Green Manures, Pre- and Probiotics: Soil Amendments, Fertilizers, or Both?

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By Andrew Coggins, NCAT Agriculture Specialist The last 12 months have seen an almost unprecedented increase in synthetic fertilizer prices, due in part to war and problems with global supply chains. This has led to increased interest in more sustainable cropping and ranching systems that reduce input costs, decrease reliance on supply chains, and produce […]

Counting Plants Is Fun and Easy—And It Helps Track Your Regenerative Grazing Practices

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By Lee Rinehart, NCAT Agriculture Specialist In the summer of 2004, I was a cooperative Extension agent in southwest Montana. A county agent’s job description is as big as the Montana sky… almost infinite. Sometimes organizing educational events or visiting remote ranches to take forage samples. 4H club meetings and weighing steers at the county […]

Chelenzo Farms: A High Mountain Desert Oasis

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By Darron Gaus, NCAT Agriculture Specialist Chelenzo Farms began from the unique relocation of a physician and a writer from New York during the height of the pandemic. Health concerns and a need for a cleaner lifestyle motivated Chelsea Hollander and Lorenzo Dominguez to seek a healthy relationship with the land in Cerrillos, New Mexico, […]

The Life and Death of Lucy the Sow

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By Nina Prater, NCAT Agriculture Specialist “Farms are businesses,” we at ATTRA often say at workshops or webinars. If you want to succeed, you have to treat it like a business: keep records, watch your cash flow, pay attention to things like depreciation, be financially savvy on several fronts. And of course this is true. […]

Beekeeping: Overwintering Bees in Warm Places

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By Justin Duncan, NCAT Sustainable Agriculture Specialist I recently drove 250 miles to teach some new beekeepers how to ensure their hive survived a brutal cold snap. I hear too many tales of beekeepers losing hives to this or that. I myself lost one this past summer because I added sheep to the homestead, and […]

Improving Profitability: Sheep, Goats, and Cattle

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By Linda Coffey, NCAT Agriculture Specialist As I write this, it’s the last week of 2022. I am thinking about upcoming tax information to file and looking at the barn to see if our hay is going to last longer than winter. I’m looking at our pregnant ewes and wondering: “Was this a good year? […]

Rangeland App: Modern Tool for Graziers

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By Darron Gaus, NCAT Agriculture Specialist Rangeland managers, whether grazers or wildlife conservationists, have many decisions to make about vegetation in their fields and the soil sponge that the vegetation covers. These decisions can be overwhelming when planning and learning from past data. The University of Montana, through funding from multiple U.S. Department of Agriculture […]

What’s In a Name? Challenges and Benefits of the Term “Regenerative”

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By Nina Prater, NCAT Sustainable Agriculture Specialist  Here at ATTRA, we promote the use of sustainable agricultural practices for long-term success. Over the years, though, the terminology around what I just called “sustainable agriculture” has evolved, split, converged, become more nuanced, and maybe has become more complicated and confusing. People describe their farms, practices, and […]