Sun and Bloom Farms

10/14/2026

We are happy to share our "origin story"...how Lucian and I came together and merged our passions, interests, dreams, and goals. There is so much to expand upon from these slides and we will do so in the coming months in the form of case studies, articles, Substack posts and more.
We are grateful to the many of you who have been following and supporting our journey from the beginning. Many of you being our own teachers, mentors, colleagues, friends, and collaborators.
Cheers to this life, the community, and work we are committed to!
- Anna Maria and Lucian

10/13/2026

How do we actually fund in the United States?

It is a question that has become increasingly important in my and consulting work - and the answer is much more complicated than simply finding a grant.

Land acquisition, soil and water improvements, grazing infrastructure, agroforestry, livestock, equipment, storage and processing, research, and long-term stewardship can all require different kinds of funding from different institutions.

That fragmentation is exactly what pushed me to organize this research more clearly. If we understand what actually needs to be funded, we can begin asking a much better question: what kind of capital, program, lender, grant, cost-share, or institution was designed to support that particular part of the project?

To answer that, I’ve brought some of my recent research and project work together in a new Regenerative Field Note: "Funding Regenerative Agriculture in the USA - Which institutions fund what—from land and infrastructure to conservation, research, farm development, and stewardship."

The article organizes the funding landscape into seven major categories and includes a substantial resource section with direct links to USDA programs, agricultural lenders, nonprofit organizations, regenerative finance groups, conservation programs, research funding, and selected state resources so you can continue investigating the opportunities that may fit your own project.

If you’d like to read the full article, comment “FUNDING” below and I’ll send you the link. And if you know a farmer, landowner, designer, or organization working through these questions, feel free to tag them or share this post with them.

09/16/2026

A Closer Look: What Soil Management Can Look Like Below Ground

Earlier this week, we shared a longer field video from a large-acreage project we are working on, where Lucian walked through part of our soil assessment and the beginning of the transition toward management.

This 60-second clip comes directly from that larger video, and we wanted to pull out one moment that is worth seeing on its own.
These are two soil samples from the same property.

One came from a less-disturbed area where grasses and a diversity of plants had been allowed to grow. Under the microscope, we saw considerable biological activity — bacteria, protozoa, nematodes, and movement throughout the sample.

What we are seeing is part of the living soil food web at work. These organisms participate in decomposition and nutrient cycling, helping transform nutrients into forms that can become available for plant growth. Plants then capture sunlight, build biomass, feed organisms through their roots, shed leaves and roots, and continue feeding the system.

Life supports life, and nutrients continue cycling.

The second sample came from an area with a history of conventional management, including tillage, herbicides, pesticides, and synthetic fertility.

Under the same magnification, we observed dramatically less visible biological activity in the fields of view we examined.

It is only a small window into two soils, but it illustrates an important principle: How we manage land helps shape the biological conditions below ground (and as we will discuss in a future post, the life above it too, including human life).

And that leads to the question that matters most in regenerative agriculture: How do we create conditions in which soil biology, nutrient cycling, plants, and the larger ecosystem can thrive?

That is the larger conversation behind the project.

Learn the . Read what it is telling you. Then design the conditions for .

09/14/2026

Two Soils. Same Farm. Very Different Worlds. Which Future Are We Cultivating?

An Educational Reflection from Lucian:

I recently spent the day on a client’s large acreage property as part of Step 5 of our regenerative design process — the in-person landscape assessment. As part of that work, I brought my mobile soil-testing kit and collected soil samples from different areas of the property. I tested those samples, and then we looked together with the farmer at what they were telling us about the condition of the land. Later, at the farmer’s house, we put the samples under the microscope.

The two samples told very different stories.

Sample 1
One sample came from a less-disturbed area where grasses and a diversity of other plants had been allowed to grow. Under the microscope, there was visible life and movement - bacteria, protozoa, nematodes, and an active biological community.

What we were seeing was soil biology at work. These organisms are part of the nutrient cycle: decomposing organic matter, feeding on one another, cycling nutrients, and helping release nutrients into forms that plants can use for new growth. Plants then capture sunlight, grow new biomass, release compounds through their roots, shed leaves and roots, and help feed the soil community again.

This is one of the natural patterns we learn from and work to replicate in regenerative farming: life supporting life, with nutrients continually cycling through the system.

Sample 2
The sample from the conventionally managed field told a very different story. We saw dramatically less visible biological activity - very little in the fields of view we examined (same zooms as the other sample). Same property. Same climate. But very different management histories - and very different conditions below ground.

That is where the real conversation begins. The purpose isn’t to condemn farmers or simply point at a problem. The question is: "What created these conditions — and how do we create the conditions for life to return?"

Sometimes the answer may include allowing ecological recovery to happen naturally through rest, plant diversity, succession, and reduced disturbance. In other situations, we can participate intentionally and help accelerate that process by managing and farming land in ways that more closely follow the patterns through which living systems build soil.

That is regenerative soil management. We first learn to observe and read the soil. We test what is actually happening. We consider the land, climate, water, plants, management history, and the people caring for the property. Then we design fertility and management systems that fit that particular context.

If you’d like to go deeper, I’ve created several ways to support people who want to learn this work or apply it to their own land - from our Regenerative Soil & Fertility Systems book and Master Soil Course to multiple free educational resources and regenerative land and soil design and consulting offerings.

You can explore those resources and services through our new website. I’ll also place the links in the first comment.

Looking forward to feedback and a conversation on this video and text if you are interested!
Learn the soil. Read what it is telling you. Then design the conditions for life.

09/09/2026

Not every regenerative land project needs to become a business. But every regenerative land project has an economic reality — and every one of them has to fit the life of the people carrying it.

The land project may be a family building a homestead or farm, or it may be a school, church, nonprofit, community group, company, retreat center, or larger public initiative stewarding a landscape. The principle is the same: a regenerative vision still requires investment. That investment may come through money, family labor, paid staff, volunteers, grants, infrastructure, knowledge, relationships, or income generated by the project itself. Usually, it is some combination of these. If a project has no realistic defined way to sustain the resources it continually requires, even a beautiful ecological vision can eventually become difficult to carry.

The same is true of the human side: if healthier soil, more biodiversity, local food, water resilience, education, community impact, or other ecological and social yields depend upon continually exhausting the people responsible for creating and maintaining them, something important is missing from the design.

We have seen this land-life-economics interconnection from many directions over the years — working with individuals and families, farms and homesteads, school and community gardens, churches, organizational projects, corporate campuses, and municipality led public programs. It is one reason our approach to regenerative land design has continued to evolve.

Whether we are developing a complete land design and report, providing a focused consultation, or working with someone through design coaching, we don't only ask: What should we put on the land? We also ask:
- What is this project actually meant to accomplish?
- Who will carry it?
- What capacity do they really have?
- What will it require over time?
- How will those resources be renewed?
- And what kind of life — or organizational reality — will this project create for the people responsible for it?

Some projects need a true business model because they are expected to generate income. Others may never sell a single thing. But they still need an economic model: a realistic understanding of the money, labor, time, skills, infrastructure, management, and other resources necessary to create and sustain the vision.

This relationship between LAND + PEOPLE + ECONOMICS is already built into the regenerative design process we use at Sun and Bloom - it comes from permaculture design thinking. We share the general framework openly on our website because we believe people should be able to see how we approach this work. And we are beginning to bring the Life Design and Business Design sides of this work forward much more intentionally.

If you are developing a land-based project — personally, with your family, through a business, or inside an organization — we put together a short Regenerative Project Alignment Check based on some of the questions we use in our design work.

Comment ALIGNMENT below and we'll send you the link to download it for free.

If you'd like to share in the comments about your project, we'd also love to hear:
What are you trying to create — and which piece feels hardest to align right now: the land, the people, or the economics? (we will make sure to engage with your comments and provide some support)

And for people actively developing or refreshing a project, we are also opening a small number of 15-minute Project Clarity conversations to hear what you're working on and help identify the next question your project needs to answer.

This is the time to build resilience and regeneration systems into our land projects around the world - and we are here to help with that.

09/02/2026

A Season of Rest, Redesign & Renewal - We wanted to share an important update from our family and from Sun and Bloom Farms.

The last season has asked a lot of us. Alongside some health challenges and a demanding year on the farm, our teaching, writing, design, and consulting work has continued to grow. Eventually, we had to listen to something we teach constantly in regenerative design: "Living systems give feedback. Good stewardship requires us to listen to it."

For this season, we are taking a sabbatical from commercial farm production at Sun and Bloom Farms. The farm is not disappearing. We will continue stewarding the land, growing food for ourselves and those close to us, caring for our animals and perennial systems, and maintaining the tremendous infrastructure we have built over the years — high tunnels, gardens, irrigation, orchards, soil systems, farm facilities, a walk-in cooler, commercial kitchen, and much more.

We are giving ourselves permission not to force the farm back into commercial production until we understand what its next chapter should be and have the right people and management structure to sustain it well.

In many ways, we are applying regenerative design to ourselves. Because a regenerative project should not only regenerate the soil, water, plants, animals, and ecosystems. It should also support the lives of the people responsible for sustaining it. And that decision is creating room for another part of our work — one that has existed alongside the farm for more than a decade — to come much more clearly back to the surface.

We are expanding Sun and Bloom Regenerative Design.

Over the years, our work together has included much more than growing food.
We have taught permaculture, designed landscapes, worked with farmers and landowners, developed educational programs, supported organizations and community projects, built soil and fertility systems, and helped people turn scattered ideas into coherent, resilient projects. At the heart of that work is something we have learned repeatedly: "The land plan, the life plan, and the business plan must support one another."

A beautiful farm that exhausts the family is not regenerative. A wonderful vision without the resources or capacity to sustain it remains only a vision. And a profitable enterprise that damages the land or overwhelms the people carrying it is not regenerative either. Our work is about bringing those pieces into relationship.

We currently have capacity for additional projects through the remainder of 2026, including:
- Regenerative Land Design: Gardens • Homesteads • Farms • Orchards • Food Forests • Retreat Properties • Schools • Campuses • Community Landscapes
- Regenerative Soil Assessment & Fertility Consulting: Observation • Testing • Interpretation • Soil-Building & Fertility Planning

We can work locally, remotely, and travel when an on-site assessment is needed. And fall is an especially good time to begin: Observe the land. Test the soil. Understand the water. Study the property. Clarify the vision. Design before spending. Plan before spring.

If you have land you are trying to understand, improve, or transform, we would love for you to explore our work on our renewed website. And if someone comes to mind while reading this — a farmer, landowner, homesteader, school, church, retreat center, nonprofit, or family trying to figure out what to do next with their land — we would be deeply grateful if you shared our work with them. Sun and Bloom has grown for years through relationships.

This transition does not feel like stepping away from our work. In many ways, it feels like bringing the deeper work back into focus.

Land • Life • Business
Sun and Bloom Regenerative Design

Link to our website in our bio or first comment!

08/17/2026

The co-op that meets on our farm is open for registration for the fall session. Please check out the page for Bloom Homeschool Nature Co-op to learn about the program. Nature based, cooperative learning where children form friendships, explore nature and the seasons, and learn new skills.

At Bloom Co-op, we believe that a farm can become the classroom for the next generation. By creating a space for meaningful collaboration, shared responsibility, and creative problem‑solving, Bloom Co-op is a farm‑based homeschool enrichment and co‑op designed for families seeking a holistic, ...

08/11/2026

A regenerative project should restore both land and people.

We both (Anna Maria and Lucian) have seen this necessity repeatedly through the land projects we have helped design, and through the individuals, families, business owners, community projects, and teams we have helped design with, mentor, and coach over the years.

There is a moment in that work when we help a person realize that the problem they have been trying to solve is not actually a lack of knowledge, another investment, a better piece of equipment, a new business strategy, or one more system. The problem is that the people carrying the vision were never really included in the design.

We have watched people build ambitious projects around big goals while giving very little consideration to the human beings who would have to make those goals happen every day. That is why, as we design new systems with people, we invite them to look carefully at questions such as: How much time do they actually have? How much energy? What kind of schedule are they already carrying? What happens to their health, their relationships, their children, their need for rest and recovery, and their ability to experience joy outside of work? We have sat with people as that realization became deeply emotional—the recognition that the dream they were building for their children or community had gradually begun taking them away from being present with their children and community. That consideration changes the design direction.

A garden can be ecologically beautiful and still be too large to maintain. A farm can be productive and still overwhelm the family operating it. A business can be successful while slowly consuming the health and relationships of the people who built it. The same is true in community and organizational work. A regenerative landscape or workplace initiative may have excellent intentions, but it still has to work with the real schedules, skills, interests, responsibilities, and energy of the employees, volunteers, or teams expected to carry it.

Today, when we design, capacity, health, family life, relationships, rest, satisfaction, schedule, skills, likes and dislikes, and desired rhythms of life are not side considerations. They are design information. Sometimes people already know the kind of life they want. Sometimes part of our work is helping them see what another pattern could look like: better delegation, clearer responsibility, seasonal scheduling, protected family time, realistic maintenance expectations, more recovery, or simply fewer systems demanding constant attention.

This is one of the reasons our work has increasingly moved beyond designing land alone. If we are serious about designing a more regenerative world, we cannot regenerate ecosystems while reproducing exhausted people inside them. People Care has to be designed into the system.

We'd would love to hear from people who have experienced this directly:
Have you ever realized that something you were building for your family, business, team, or community was beginning to take too much from the people responsible for making it happen? What changed after you saw it?

08/06/2026

"I have been designing and planning land-based projects of different scales for more than a decade—from backyard gardens and multi-system homesteads to hobby farms, community projects, and productive farms with several interconnected enterprises. For the past eight years, I have also been developing and operating two farms of my own.

Across that work, I have noticed the same pattern again and again. People are often eager to begin with the visible parts of the project: What should we plant first? When should we start seeds? Where should the greenhouse go? Should we begin with chickens, an orchard, a pond, or a vegetable garden?

These are reasonable questions. But when they are answered before the project has a clear overarching purpose, they can lead to misplaced infrastructure, unnecessary expenses, excessive maintenance, and systems that never quite work together.

Some of the people I have designed for had already begun building and planting before we met. Others had not started yet, but naturally wanted me to tell them which feature to install first. In both situations, the deeper work was usually the same: stepping back and clarifying what the land was actually meant to become.

A property can accumulate many useful features and still lack direction. A pond, orchard, garden, greenhouse, animal system, retreat space, outdoor classroom, or farm enterprise may each be valuable, but a collection of good ideas does not automatically become a coherent design.

The same piece of land could become very different projects depending on the people involved, the purpose of the project, the resources available, and the kind of life the land is expected to support. A family seeking privacy and food resilience will make different decisions from a working farm, a community nonprofit, a retreat center, or an education-based enterprise. Purpose gives every later decision a reference point. It helps determine what belongs, what does not belong, what should happen first, and what may never be necessary. That is why designed landscapes need purpose first.

I am continuing to study how people describe the deeper purpose of the land they own, manage, or hope to develop, and I would value your perspective. Answering the question below may also help you clarify the direction of your own project:

What is the land you steward—or hope to steward—ultimately meant to provide, protect, or become?

Share as much or as little as you like. I will read the responses and engage with them, because the conversation itself may help reveal stronger questions, possibilities, and next steps."

Inviting you to create a more beautiful regenerative future for yourself and the world: Lucian Toma