Enlightenment Acres, Fort Loudon, TN (2026)

04/10/2024

Mater Matters

03/24/2024

How Farmers make beds....

03/19/2024

Generally speaking, if a farm is doing right by their worms they are growing good food! Earthworms eat and breakdown organic matter in the soils and excrete them in a form more available to plants. These minerals and nutrients make the plants healthier and in turn make us healthier. We consider ourselves a biodynamic farm mostly because we do things that helps these guys out. We practice minimal tillage and shallow cultivation. We fertilize with compost, manures, cover crops, and alfalfa pellets. Soon, we will be intensive grazing again which in itself can be a planet saving miracle if its ever accepted by mainstream agriculture or demanded by consumers. There is more living creatures in a tablespoon of healthy topsoil than there is on the whole surface of the planet. Surely, the best ecology is the best economy in the long term. Thank you for supporting us with your hard earned dollars.

03/17/2024

The things we do for worms

03/04/2024

The Story of HoneyComb the chicken ... So many times the lines between mind and heart become fuzzy when using farm animals (aka. livestock) as a way to make a living. I have been in Lakota sweat lodges and I have done rituals withe the Maori but the best spiritual awakenings and miracles have happened to me when dealing with teachers that had feathers or fur. It seems there is always been one there to remind me to live in the heart. Here is the story of a sweet little chicken named HoneyComb.

Our meat chickens get shipped to us from the hatchery in groups of 200. We get the colored broilers because the white ones have been bred for the industry to not be able to walk well. They are packed so tightly together in the commercial buildings they couldn't move if they wanted to anyways. So we did not notice there was a special little red fuzzball in the multi - colored mass of cuteness. The meat chickens grew normally and quickly out grew their special mate. She was a layer chick that somehow got mixed in. I was loading the meat chickens to take to processor and just left HoneyComb behind. I hooked her up a heat lamp and her own little water and food in the barn. It was a good place to get through the winter after which she should be big enough to go in with the older layer chickens. I knew that this would not be an easy thing to accomplish because of chicken politics. They can be brutal to newcomers. I waited until the time was right and eased her in with the big flock after distracting them with scratch. I put her up on their roost and she spent the night with them. I was hoping that they would accept her as their own when they all woke up together. I checked on her throughout the day and things seemed to be going pretty well. They were working out a pecking order with what I considered to be an acceptable level of violence. You see, having an extra chicken to take care of separately takes extra time and is an inefficient financially. The next day things had taken a turn for the worst. A gang of the ruthless feathered brutes had HoneyComb cornered and all she could do was cower and try to hide her face. I bent over and started swatting chickens with my hat. She first thought that I was joining the attackers and dodged me. I saw her stop and realize that I was trying to help her. The brutes were not backing down and I kept swatting as HoneComb went around behind me and flew up onto my back. I straightened as she climbed up onto my shoulder looking down at her former assailants as if too say. "I told you my Daddy would come for me!" She rode my shoulder on out of harms way and back into her comfortable digs. I promised her that she now had a home here on this farm for the rest of her days.