Rebels for food freedom.

It is spring in Southern Colorado, the mountain blue birds have returned with their wives, the Crow murders are flying East to their spring nests in the high Meadowlands , the elk have come down the mountain to nibble the grasses coming up against the lingering snow and frost.

We’ve started adding the winters manure from the horse paddock to all the deep beds, cleared the coops of all the straw and replaced it with pine shavings.

All of the winters livestock bedding is mixed into the deep beds. The chickens are then released into the beds to help churn up the medium, eat any critters that may have moved in (from tasty red worms to large creepy grubs) over winter. While they are working and turning the soil the birds are also leaving behind amazing little gold nuggets in the form of chicken turds.

Once the soil has been turned by the flock, the beds are soaked with water and covered with black tarps to Solarize them.

Solarization helps speed up the composting system, kills bacteria and unwanted sprouts.

The Farmers Library

An old timer is keeping up the torch on sustainable, earth friendly farming by opening up his vast personal library to others.

He’s been farming organically since the 70s and has watched it all change. Creator of Friends of Trees, master arborist and farmer.

#sustainablefarming

#organicfarms

Understanding PTSD in humans has been a field of study for over 50 years. It was once called “shell shock” or “trench syndrome”.

Now the same thing that plagued my grandfather and myself is being understood through healing horses.

Equids & conditioned fear

Horses have the ability to heal humans, dogs anything with emotional trauma. Bring in their larger than life aura field is an amazing feeling. You can feel the calm radiating over ones body.

The pride and calm that comes from these beast transfers to the human, creating an embolus loop of spiritual and physical healing.

But what happens when the healer needs to be healed? Understanding the condition of fear is step one. As we as humans, come to help the equid; we’ve come to learn how to help ourselves through them.

Equids are prey animals. They have large eyes set in the side of their heads, long legs to move them over land quickly and efficiently.

Humans are predators.

We are upright, we use tools and we can can run for extended periods of time, wearing down our prey by chase. Our eyes are set forward, we have canines and independent digits on our hands. We can use tools and FIRE!

But somewhere along the way, the heavy breathing up right “human” made a long lasting companionship with the wolf, and the HORSE.

How does a predator and prey come to rely on each other? What could we possibly benefit from associating with a four legged tump roast?

Speed. Distance. Logistics.

The horse gave us freedom. Some will argue that the horse has only been part of our modern world for 10,000 yrs. I disagree. (That’s an entire blog on its own)

The relationship we have grown with the equids goes back much further than we as modern man are ready to admit.

But what happens when the horse and human enter the modern world? Our minds and bodies must adapt to a world we were once the masters, and queens of. Now, we are the serfs to technology.

War, poverty and the human condition spreads past the ghetto or big box grocery. It’s extending back to the source of our sanity, and destroying it.

Understanding where conditioned fears originates is how we as a species can come around, save ourselves and our planet.

Healing does not end with one, it leaps like a frog from one pad to the next.

Once and a while you have to leave the valley.