The Good Ground Natural Farm

09/22/2026

Thanks for the conversation, Real Talk!

09/05/2026

Cows are THE animal of regeneration, chickens provide daily eggs and fast growth, but there’s something about pigs in the forest on a fall day that feels so…right…

This morning as the sun was coming up, I walked up to the 1/2 acre paddock, and…there were no pigs in sight. Usually there’s some milling around the feeder or getting a drink. This morning, nothing…

A bit of a heart stopping moment - I decided to check the electric fence to see if it was down anywhere, and the pigs had escaped. It wasn’t.

Instead, ALL the pigs were spread out through the paddock, snuffling for acorns and hickory nuts, contentedly grunting and munching.

It’s one of those things that can’t be explained, it has to be experienced.

***
We still have a few pigs available for fall orders, to be filled in October. It’s coming up fast! Reach out if you would like to order!

08/20/2026

07/01/2026

This is a huge setback to our original vision of a diverse, locally marketed farm with a market garden as the central component.

The irrigation pond we dug last year is loaded with E.coli (over 1600 CFU / 100mL, or very high). Thankfully, we discovered this just before we started selling any vegetables, but it meant that all the growing crops had to be tilled under.

Right now, I actually don't have a solution. I'm thinking through various options:
Treatment - hard to design a system that is food-safe but doesn't negatively affect soil biology
System redesign - use drip tape (similar to soaker hose) instead of sprinklers. The tradeoff is drip tape is much slower to work with, and I still can't grow crops that would be contaminated by the water. Tomatoes, peppers, etc. would be fine, carrots, beets, onions, and even low growing lettuces would be high risk.
Drop the market garden - focus more on animals and tree crops (fruit and nuts). The challenge here is I don't really have enough land to do animals alone profitably, and tree crops is a very long-term development. Trees were on my radar anyways, but the vegetables were supposed to cashflow the short-term.

The hard truth:

I'm not sure what the future direction is yet. Any water treatment ideas (including the weird and wacky) are welcomed, as well as other thoughts.

For this year, we are still committed to the animals we have (pigs, cows, egg laying chickens, and meat chickens). All are doing quite well, and are not dependent on the pond for water. Next year is far less certain.

Side-note: we still have pork available for order. We also have pastured eggs available, and we can sell a few meat chickens later this year. Let me know if you're interested.

Thanks for your support!

05/28/2026

More challenges…pigs this time…on the plus side, this is making us consider breeding our own animals.

05/28/2026

Just some clover doing its thing repairing the soil…and looking beautiful while it does it…