EYG Landscapes home base is Artemis Fields Farm, in Barnardsville, NC.  We currently raise cows for meat production and greenhouses for leafy-greens-in-the-winter production.  We are currently planning to expand our production with 100 ducks for eggs, starting in the spring, with production estimated to begin in the fall.  The ducks will be an understory for an orchard of 22 fruit and 5 nut trees that will ultimately occupy the space, with production both for personal consumption as well as for sale to the general public. 

We want to manage our ducks with a rotational pasture, as that is the best way to foster duck health and land health at the same time.  We plan to seed the duck pastures, or paddocks, with a mix of red and white clover, which is like candy to the ducks, and also increases fertility of soil by fixing nitrogen and creating a healthy dose of organic material. 

When we moved to the property in 2011, we milled a bunch of dying trees, and have a massive pile of mill scraps that has been sitting in our pasture for 4 years.   We don't want to burn that material, because that just releases C02 into the atmosphere, and we also don't want to move it far, because there is probably 30,000 pounds of junk wood, and that is heavy.

Our plan is to combine the power of cows, moisture, bacteria, fungi and time, to create the perfect storm to take advantage of all of these materials in the way that is the least amount of effort on our part, and we get the greatest return on investment possible.  That's always the goal, right?  

The plan is as follows.  

1.  Spread the mill scraps on the ground in the area where the ducks are going to love, I mean live.  
2.  Feed our cows their hay in the feeder over the mill scraps.
3.  The left over 10% of hay stays that stays over the mill scraps provides a decent refuge for...
4.  Fungi take over and devour the wood, and bacteria that live in the cow shit devour the fungi...
5.  Seed a combination of red and white clover seed into the mess of organic material that covers our red clay soil and...

Boom.   

Ducks eat the clover, and are rotated thru paddocks so that the clover has time to recover... and once again...

Boom.   

We made something out of nothing.  Land becomes more fertile, while we sell duck eggs, and provide food for the masses of people that tend to be hungry for healthfully produced farm products 2 or 3 times a day.

Doing our best to do our part.

Reading the news about the recent Paris climate change talks was a little confusing and depressing. " World leaders" got together and concocted a plan that from all reasonable scientific accounts is too-little-too-late.  At the same time, we should be happy that they came up with an agreement at all?  

Here in North Carolina, this winter is too warm.   70 degrees while  playing soccer on a sunday morning in mid december isn't normal, but no one talks about it.  We just say, "glad its not colder".  Well I wish it were colder.  I wish the weather this winter were more like a winter 50 years ago, because we would make do.  It can't always be 70 and sunny, and make everything happy.  This is not normal.  

Carbon.  C02.  Drive your car and you release it into the atmosphere.  Heat your home with wood and you release it into the atmosphere.  Burn a brush pile, order something off amazon prime,  or mow your lawn and you there is carbon burning off and going up into the atmosphere that is compounding the greenhouse effect and global warming.  

Want to stop doing that?  Try really hard, and feel the ways that are possible to do it.  Can you drive less?  Probably not.  Can you take time out of your life to not buy the things that you and your family need to survive?  

​No.

So what are you supposed to do?  

Plant fruit trees.  Plant nut trees.  In the 12 years that I've been striving to learn to live on this planet in a way that  doesn't destroy it, that's the best that I've come up with.  It isn't a top down solution, and it won't change the way you live in the short term, but we as a collective group of people trying to live our lives got into this mess with a mind towards the short term.  

I can't stop global warming.  You can't stop global warming.  We are all pawns in this great confrontation between civilization and planet, and none of us hold a power to change the whole.  

What we can change is ourselves.  What we can do is a simple act, planting a tree, that will capture carbon, and in a few years, will begin to produce food for us to eat, something essential, that we won't need to drive for, and won't take energy to produce and ship, and in the meantime will give us something hopeful to look forward too, and provide nectar for the bees, and god knows the bees need all the help they can get.  Lets make sure they get it.