Welcome: We Farm In Nature's Immage using Holistic Management
Welcome to Sunshine Farm
We are in the business of harvesting solar energy & sequestering carbon with green growing plants to create healthy land, healthy animals, healthy people, and a healthy economy.
Our products & services include:
Navajo Churro Sheep: registered breeding stock, wool, felt,
pelts and USDA lamb
Bourbon Red Turkey: live birds sold at the farm gate
Fresh Garden
Produce and fruit: available at Dolores Food Market
(a local retail grocery)
Training & Mentoring: join our distance learning program
We Farm with a Holistic Approach:
We produce abundant life on our farm, using nature as our guide and practicing the holistic management of our resources. We generate real wealth in terms of solar dollars earned from collecting solar energy with green plants to create healthy food, people and animals. We also sequester carbon with green growing plants and turn it into soil with the aid of our grazing animals and poultry.
Working with nature to enhance our ecosystem includes promoting and sustaining healthy habitat for soil microbes, insects, animals, plants, and birds. We raise the majority of our our food as well as wool and other products. Participating in our local ood system is rewarding and enhances our economy.
You can taste the difference!
Managing for healthy soils means our garden produce and meat products are packed full of nutrition. Our irrigation water from mountain snow melt is fresh and clear. Each night cool, pine scented mountain air flows through our garden and pastures enhancing the sweetness and flavor of our produce!
Holistic Grazing Management Builds Soil
We use a holistic grazing plan that allows to be in the right place, at the right time, and for the right reason with our animals so our pastures and animals thrive. We monitor grazing on a daily basis and make adjustments as necessary to allow for enough recovery time for grass plants and provide optimum nutrition for our animals. Our animals are happy. They move around freely and always have fresh grass and water. An abunance of green plants harvest carbon from the atmosphere and our grazing animals serve as "tools" to help us turn the carbon into organic matter. This carbon will remain in the soil for 35 years!
Click here to for photo to see how
Holistic Management
Is Making A Difference
Join our Distance Learning Program
We have a lifetime of experience in farming and professional natural resource management to share with you. We offer training and mentoring via telephone for beginning and experienced farmers and ranchers.
Our training program is based on the Holistic Management Model developed by Allan Savory and includes decision making and problem solving skills, financial and enterprise planning, grazing and pasture management, land monitoring, whole-farm planning and ecosystem monitoring. We offer a distance learning program that allows you to stay on the farm where you are needed while improving your ability to see the big picture, respond to change, and become sustainable. We are also available for speaking and in-person workshops on a variety of topics.
Our approach is base on real life experience. If we cannot make it work, we have no business telling you how to make it work. We offer a free consultation so you may discover how you may learn from our experience.
Heritage Breed Conservation
We are adement about conserving endangered domestic livestock breeds to. These breeds enhance the genetic diversity of livestock and are important to America's rich history and culture. Without special care to conserve these genetics, we are at risk of loosing important characteristics and products these breeds offer.
We raise Smart Turkeys!
We have been breeding
Bourbon Red turkeys, a heritage turkey, for over 12 years. We
select breeding birds to favor their natural instincts,
intelligence, hardiness, quality of meat and breed conformity. We
expect several broods in 2010. Please note: We sell only live birds,
at the farm. These birds are suitable for breeding or for
butcher. We DO NOT ship chicks, adults or meat.
Click here to learn more about our smart turkeys.
Navajo-Churro Sheep are unique to the Colorado Plateau and are the first livestock breed to be developed in North America
Conservation of this sheep breed enhances diversity in domestic
sheep and is critical to sustaining traditional Navajo culture and
land stewardship. We promote the success of our fellow shepherds on
and off the Navajo Nation through networking, collaboration &
sharing.
Click here to learn more about our sheep.
Fair Trade is Important to Sustainability
Family farmers who use nature as their guide and practice sustainable approaches are able to conserve resources and enhance the ecosystem that sustains everyone. Likewise, fair prices in domestic trade sustain a healthy economy. The outcome of long-term pressure by consumers on farmers to squeeze more out of the land and their labor to provide a low cost to the consumer is environmental decline and poor economies. Please consider this the next time you visit your grocery store or local farmers market.
The Four Laws of Ecology
(not just for
farmers)
One: Everything is Connected to Everything Else.
There is one ecosphere for all living organisms and what affects one, affects all.
Two: Everything Must Go Somewhere.
There is no "waste" in nature and there is no “away” to which things can be thrown.
Three: Nature Knows Best.
Humankind has fashioned technology to improve upon nature, but such change in a natural system is likely to be detrimental to that system.
Four: There Is No Such Thing as a Free Lunch.
Everything comes from something.
Barry Commoner, from “The Closing Circle”, 1971.
Aldo Leopold's Conservation Ethic:
“Conservation is a state of harmony between men
and land. Despite nearly a century of propaganda, conservation
still proceeds at a snail’s pace; progress still consists largely of
letterhead pieties and convention oratory. On the back forty
we still slip two steps backward for each step forward….. In our
attempt to make conservation easy we have made it trivial. The
answer, if there is any, seems to be in a land ethic, or some other
force which assigns more obligation to the land owner.”
Aldo Leopold, from “The Land Ethic,” from “A
Sand County Almanac”, 1948.
Family farms and
ranches play a critical role in creating stable communities, secure
food systems and strong economies.
Fair domestic trade fosters
healthy land
and people.
To be sustainable, family farms must be able to
realize a fair social and economic return for
the products they produce and for the environmental benefits they
create with well managed land and
natural resources.
Navajo-Churro Sheep
Bourbon Red Turkeys
Garden Produce
Training & Mentoring
Contact us
You will find our
produce, like these sugar pie pumpkins and summer squash at the
Dolores Food Market in Dolores Colorado.
Click
here to find out more about our produce.
Quick Links
Article Links
Slow Food Events
We have Served
Irrigation Water:
Handle
with Care.
Eggs from grass fed chickens are bursting with Omega 3's, vitamins A & E. and protein.
Natural predator/prey relationships are encouraged as is evidenced by th toad and the blue colored dragon fly above it on the log.
This shallow water pond provides a great resting spot for migrating ducks, geese, food for herons, kingfishers and a home for muskrats and racoons.
Healthy land = healthy animals and healthy people!
This is a Bourbon Red Turkey tom grazing on lush brome grass pasture.
Well managed grass pastures sequester carbon with the help of grazing animals.
Find out about
Sheep Is Life 2010
June 18-19th in Tsaili AZ at the Dine College just east of Chinle.
