Revival of Rural America

The Beet: A Podcast For Plant Lovers

Epic Gardening

Home & Garden, Education, Leisure, How To

4.8 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 19 September 2023

⏱️ 17 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Regeneration of degraded land. Welfare to the animals. Re-enrichment of the local community. These are the three things Will Harris’ cattle company boasts, and those he is most proud of at White Oak Pastures. And people come to work on the farm, not because of the higher pay, but because of the principle behind what Will is doing. Epic Gardening Shop Homepage: https://growepic.co/3Pm1SBL Botanical Interests Shop Homepage: https://growepic.co/48aVtlL Book Collection Page: https://growepic.co/3rjlfUb EG Homesteading Book: https://growepic.co/3RnuRYM Connect With Will Harris: Will Harris is a fourth-generation cattleman, who tends the same land that his great-grandfather settled in 1866. Born and raised at White Oak Pastures, Will left home to attend the University of Georgia's School of Agriculture, where he was trained in the industrial farming methods that had taken hold after World War II. Will graduated in 1976 and returned to Bluffton where he and his father continued to raise cattle using pesticides, herbicides, hormones, and antibiotics. They also fed their herd a high-carbohydrate diet of corn and soy. In the mid-1990s Will became disenchanted with the excesses of these industrialized methods. They had created a monoculture for their cattle, and, as Will says, "nature abhors a monoculture." In 1995, Will made the audacious decision to return to the farming methods his great-grandfather had used 130 years before. Instagram Website Facebook YouTube Twitter Shop the Store As an exclusive for listeners, use code THEBEET for 5% off your entire order on our store, featuring our flagship Birdies Raised Beds. These are the original metal raised beds, lasting up to 5-10x longer than wooden beds, are ethically made in Australia, and have a customizable modular design. Shop now and get 5% off your first order. Get Our Books Looking for a beginner's guide to growing food in small spaces? Kevin’s book, Field Guide to Urban Gardening, explains the core, essential information that you'll need to grow plants, no matter where you live! He also wrote Grow Bag Gardening to provide you with specialized knowledge that can bring you success when growing in fabric pots. Preorder Kevin’s newest book Epic Homesteading if you are looking to turn your home into a thriving homestead! Order signed copies of Kevin’s books, plus more of his favorite titles in our store. More Resources Looking for more... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Those you listening know that I grew up in San Diego, California, didn't even grow up
0:07.7	as a gardener, have kind of gotten into this later in life, so to speak, in my late 20s,
0:13.2	starting to garden, certainly haven't lived in a small town, but our guest for this
0:18.4	week most definitely has.
0:20.4	In Bluffs in Georgia, a town of 105, we have Will Harris back on the show, a fourth generation
0:26.1	cattleman, and Will yesterday we talked about kind of your transition from an industrial
0:30.8	cattle ranch to a more regenerative ag one.
0:33.4	You mentioned you have 5,000 acres right now in a town of 105.
0:36.8	I'm curious how that has impacted the town.
0:40.4	Well, that's one of the things I guess I most proud of, you know, the three things that
0:47.4	we brag about, the only three things that we boast on our website is our regeneration
0:55.6	of degraded land, the welfare to our animals, and the reenrichment of our little community.
1:04.5	And the first two were very, very intentional, not in the light the way we were treating
1:11.2	the land and the animals, so I thought about it a lot, and put a lot of effort into making
1:16.4	changes to do it different.
1:20.0	But I never, ever considered economically benefiting the town, that we are, this town, like Moose
1:30.7	Rule, Agrarian Towns, have been in decline since World War II and World War II, that's
1:37.9	when that started.
1:38.9	You published with a rural America began, and I was born in 1954, when I was born I don't
1:48.3	think my parents realized the city was in economic decline in Canada, but it was in retrospect
1:57.5	looking back at war.
2:00.7	So I grew up here, and it literally, our population peaked in 1900, 1500 years before you
	...

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