Chicken Grit Farms

05/14/2026

making land productive again without synthetic input is no easy feat. But damn, what a pleasant experience knowing we’ve drastically increased water holding capacity AND we’ve combatted replant disease without loosing out on revenue streams from that block. we strongly believe that a living soil can solve many of our problems we face as stone and pome fruit production on the westerns slope of Colorado, and we use livestock integration as our key tool. our sheep grazed the block twice after no-tilling in a diverse polyculture conservation crop, littered with green tillage, green manure, trap cropping, and low growing clover under the trees. keeping the ground covered prevents “weed” pressure, and baiting bugs to the ground; we feed the chickens and that removes the need to spray pesticides. who doesn’t want a never ending self licking ice cream cone?!

05/03/2026

Out there educating the community on regenerative agriculture and the benefits it can provide in any area as a support to and Thanks to for cooking the pig, prepping veggies from .farm and beans from while leveraging the commissary from La Plaza, and displays by

04/23/2026

as a new farmer, it can be pretty difficult getting land access IF you are going for productive acreage. we find it’s pretty easy to get access to land at the moment, but the land is depleted and needs massive reclamation. Here’s our latest process to get something growing so we can graze animals on it in the fall.

04/16/2026

Looking forward to collaborating with Robert J. Andrews Jr. here in the next week on getting rid of our old tree wood on one of our properties. Stay tuned for more details.

04/11/2026

in the face of the most unprecedented drought of the century, we prepare by building soil. in order to build soil, we add organic matter by applying compost, planting and grazing our orchard. Build soil or die.

04/05/2026

a VERY small percentage of farmers are first generation. it’s not impossible and we think it just takes hard work and asking for mentorship from the generational farmers. ask them questions and hustle like no ones business… they will eventually respect you as long as you respect their generational grit. Learn more at the and May 2nd, 2026.

03/28/2026

true winter addicts talked all winter of the terrible ❄️ year, water managers are talking about water restrictions even if you have senior water rights. our drought plan is heavily focused on biological diversity and increasing organic matter. Build Soil or Die.

02/09/2026

you just fold it in… just fold livestock into your operation… you build soil and make money building living soil. regenerate or die.

02/03/2026

we’re learning that livestock integration is the one step most farmers leave out when implementing the soil health principles. we dove straight into livestock as our only hope. to date, we have used egg layers as our white glove service cleaners, our broilers are the soldiers dukin’ it out in the trap crops where all the bugs have been baited, our sheep give us fermented 💩 and our pigs root up dead spaces on the land.

01/31/2026

We’ve been dabbling with the idea of trap cropping mustard to bait the aphids away from the peach leaves, where as here, they’re looking at trapping the root eating nematodes below the soil.

Regenerate or die.

When California walnut grower, Daniel Unruh, noticed his trees were suffering in 2011, he began researching methods of rebalancing the high population of nematodes found in his soil.

Unruh found that vegetable growers in parts of Washington, Idaho and Oregon were utilizing mustard cover crops for their nematicidal properties so he added mustard to his cover crop, terminated it with a custom built roller crimper and saw nematode population reduce by 40% in his soils.

You can read Daniel Unruh's full story written by Kevin Loria here: https://zurl.co/WnZYA

Photo courtesy of Unruh Walnut Farm