Bruised Heel Ranch

Bruised Heel Ranch Building a regenerative, bio-diverse, community ranch in the rural East of San Diego. Our goal is to learn, produce, and share.

Before you throw on your tux to ring in the new year or while you're waiting for midnight, come shop our Bruised Heel Ra...
12/31/2021

Before you throw on your tux to ring in the new year or while you're waiting for midnight, come shop our Bruised Heel Ranch clothing pre-sale! Free shipping, plus a 15% off discount code for today only. Get some gear on sale and help us start the new year off right! Enter code NEWYEARSEVE21 at checkout.

https://shop.bruisedheelranch.com/discount/NEWYEARSEVE21

Excited for the holidays to improve on our ham recipe from last year. Thinking we'll stick with the same brine of brown ...
11/06/2021

Excited for the holidays to improve on our ham recipe from last year. Thinking we'll stick with the same brine of brown sugar, salt, black pepper, mustard, clove, cinnamon, bay leaf, coriander, and vanilla, but leave it to cure even longer to work through the meat, preserving it, and amplifying flavor and moisture. The glaze too I think we'll keep at brown sugar, apricot jam, maple syrup, whiskey, vanilla, salt, black pepper, mustard, but this year we'll be smoking the ham start to finish over hardwood charcoal and oak from the ranch. My hope is, by this time next year, we'll have our new pig breeding and pasture program in full swing, our ideas of a ranch-share program built out, AND this ham recipe dialed in and be able to offer these to anyone interested to enjoy for the holidays... And for those REALLY interested, maybe a few days of hands-on experience going from pasture to plate.

Morning planning meeting. I love the combination of pajama pants and serious workhorse equipment.
10/20/2021

Morning planning meeting. I love the combination of pajama pants and serious workhorse equipment.

10/20/2021

We raise our pigs entirely outdoors, as wild as possible while still helping them thrive. They are free to graze and forage what they can find + given a steady supply of alfalfa, wheat, oats, barley, sorghum + supplements of clay, salt, minerals, diatomaceous earth, garlic, and cinnamon at times. No antibiotics, no hormones, no soy, and nothing artificial. We are currently raising American Guinea Hogs which are a heritage American breed, valued for their resilience, grazing and foraging abilities, smaller manageable size, and excellent mothering skills, able to carry, birth, and care for their litters almost entirely without intervention.

"Trust me, you'll never regret building a road on your farm." So far, this statement from Joel Salatin of rings true wi...
10/20/2021

"Trust me, you'll never regret building a road on your farm." So far, this statement from Joel Salatin of rings true with us. We used to only drive 100ft through the front gate and had to stop, now we have over 2,000ft of road allowing us driving access to around 6 acres. Our roads help us invision future projects and zones of the ranch, they serve as safe walking trails for the kids, and maybe most importantly they are all built at least 16ft wide (another Salatin tip) providing not only two-way traffic, but also strategic fire breaks across the property. We've stepped up our road building and especially a full perimeter road after the Valley Fire swept through large portions of our property around a year ago.

Glad for the opportunity to run these bad boys from to upgrade our dirt roads. Using the track loader to smooth and gra...
10/19/2021

Glad for the opportunity to run these bad boys from to upgrade our dirt roads. Using the track loader to smooth and grade the dirt. Then after soaking the road with water, the roller compactor will...compact, and harden the dirt. Back to the track loader to spread the class II road base, which is leftover concrete that's been broken up into the consistency of gravel and finer particles. We finish up with the roller compactor after wetting the road base. With enough water and compaction the road base turns into a hybrid concrete/gravel road which is very stable, durable, and easily maintained.

Nothing like seeing hard work and late nights turn into new adventures and memories for friends and family. Case in poin...
10/19/2021

Nothing like seeing hard work and late nights turn into new adventures and memories for friends and family. Case in point, what used to be head-high brush and a dead end for these two, now is a new dirt road to explore and new areas of the property to discover.

10/19/2021

Using our workhorse two-wheel tractor with the flail mower attachment to cut though some very tough brush, in this case to clear the way for over 1,000ft of new road. We also use it in places where'd we struggle with bigger equipment on steep slopes or uneven ground, or when less disturbance and compaction is needed. The fact that is shreds anything it runs over into mulch let's us also use it to establish and maintain pastures, clear areas for wildfire prevention, and to turn sparse and eroded hillsides into mulched hillsides — all of this helping to rebuild the topsoil, reduce rain runoff and evaporation, and keep water in place longer to be used more efficiently and ultimately replenish more and more groundwater.

I love that when we first got the land my wife forgot where she parked our car haha. I'm sure that had something to do w...
10/18/2021

I love that when we first got the land my wife forgot where she parked our car haha. I'm sure that had something to do with us not having any roads or landmarks yet, and maybe her sense of direction, but I took it to mean we had enough land to work with.

10/18/2021

A 750ft hole in the ground is all we had to start with when we made our offer on the property. No well pump and no water tests meant we had no idea if we'd have drinkable water, if any water at all. We decided the risk was worth it, so we moved forward with the offer and immediately had a well pump installed and a water test done. This showed we had 700ft of clean drinkable water under our feet, that could refresh itself at a rate of 10,000+ gallons a day, much more than we could have hoped for. Our goal now is to use this source of water wisely as we simultaneously replenish and increase it through regenerative land management.

The beginning of Bruised Heel Ranch. Looking out over a mostly wild twelve acres, imagining all the possibilities, excit...
10/18/2021

The beginning of Bruised Heel Ranch. Looking out over a mostly wild twelve acres, imagining all the possibilities, excited by the potential, and praying for direction. Almost three years later and a lot realized, we still love standing on the hills and doing the same.

Spared no expense 😂😬
10/16/2021

Spared no expense 😂😬

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Jamul, CA
91935

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