The Healing Power of Collaboration – Timber Ridge, Stavely, Alberta
Glen and Kelly Hall have been managing Timber Ridge Ranch, a 480-acre farmland situated an hour south of Calgary near Stavely, Alberta, for over 40 years. Their approach to agriculture involves regenerative practices and the conversion of their land back to perennial coverage, including the cultivation of multi or polyculture crops for swath grazing. Their operations primarily consist of a cow-calf program with approximately 200 mother cows, and they also custom graze calves from fall to spring.
Since 2018, the Halls have been on a mission to collaborate with local organizations to rejuvenate their land, which was previously subjected to conventional farming methods involving fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides. Over the last four decades, they have seeded an impressive 5,000 acres, aiming to enhance biodiversity both above and below the soil.
We spoke to the Halls about the challenges of ranching in Alberta’s drought-prone “banana belt” and how they’re adapting their practices to “drought proof” against increasingly warming temperatures and extreme conditions.
EP 70 Maximizing Soil Function – SoR Part Three
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Soil is very much alive. And hungry too. Some estimates go as far as saying that there is more life in a teaspoon of healthy soil than there are people on the planet. You just need a microscope to see the vast majority of it. Or you do what grain farmer Blake Vince did, and bury a pair of “tighty whities” (underwear) in the soil to produce proof of the existence of this vast and diverse soil microbial community.
In the soil, you’ve got well-known critters like earthworms, bacteria and fungi and lesser-known ones like protozoa and nematodes, who have this tendency to eat the bacteria and fungi.
In this bustling environment where a lot of things are eating each other, there is an exchange between soil organisms and plants so both sides of the equation get what they need to survive and thrive and produce food for the rest of us living above ground. This interaction between the soil and plants is something that fascinated Blake Vince, who farms mainly soya and corn in southwestern Ontario, it fascinated him at a young age.
