06/11/2026
While Penny is interning at the National Stud ram sale with Willoughby Online Sales and Frank and Jackson are holding down the fort back at the farm, I took the opportunity while in Sedalia here to visit a maintained prairie. For me, Farmer Whitney, these beautiful ecosystems are the intersection of my passion for horticulture and the foundation of so much theory of regenerative farming and ruminant management. In the space of about an hour I tagged 48 different plant species, 7 different species of birds, bees and butterflies let alone how many different grasses. These prairies are protected lands and are maintained through occasional controlled burns. Seeing how plants populate and repopulate a prairie educates and informs how we not only add forage plants to our fields on the farm but maybe more importantly continues to teach us how to ‘see’ our pastures back home.