Abundance Thinking | The carbon pilgrim.
On a fine August day, I flew to New England in search of abundance.
I was on the road to visit Dorn Cox, a young farmer who lives and works on his family’s 250-acre organic farm, called Tuckaway, near Lee, New Hampshire. Dorn calls himself a “carbon farmer,” meaning he thinks about carbon in everything he does. Confronting agriculture’s addiction to hydrocarbons, for example, Tuckaway produces a significant amount of its energy needs on-farm. Dorn does it with biodiesel – canola specifically – which he and his family grow on only 10 percent of the farm’s land. This was big news, so I thought a visit would be worthwhile.
I met Dorn in a hayfield behind a home belonging to a University of New Hampshire professor, spreading wood ash carefully among a grid of study plots. He gave me a wave as I parked the car, putting the ash can on the ground. Farmer-thin, wearing muddy jeans, a yellow shirt, and a floppy straw hat that shaded intense blue eyes, Dorn extended a hand and gave me an energetic grin.
“What’s going on here?” I asked nodding at the gridded plots, though I knew it was part of his Ph.D research. “Just trying to figure out the best way to turn a hayfield into a farm without tilling it,” he replied. “And create a food and energy system that puts more carbon into the soil than comes out.” Was the professor okay with this? I asked. He’s fine with it, Dorn reassured me. “There are a lot of these little fields behind people’s houses. With some work they could be growing a great deal of produce,” he said. “We just need to figure out a way to do it without using a plow.”
As we walked across his study plots, Dorn explained his thinking.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
