Totem Ranch Co

Heritage breed pork sausage for many dinners to come. We will be working on more dry salami recipes and sausage styles in the future. Lately weekends have been about finding the time to process local food. Let us know if you want to participate and enjoy # localfood #farmfreshfare #pork #ojai #totemanimals

greenhouse winter vibes

Organic produce is simple but not easy. So we work hard but not arduously. We require that the land gives but still praise it whenever she does. Our principle is to feed the soil, and the soil around your plants particularly. Shortcuts lead to flare ups, and let downs, so keep up and grow it up with organic practices #earthdayeveryday #ojai #soilhealth

our orchard maintenance crew is energized & looking cute

Sun is shining. Weather is hot. Let’s get some rain El Niño or not!

Late afternoon gardening, a time to calm the mind, collect your thoughts, and revisit the tradition of gardening. Gardening is so different from farming because it is essentially what we do for pleasure and with any luck also for food. If your garden wasn’t as productive as you hoped, try adding some composted manure from animals nearby, or get some animals yourself for their awesome manure. Or maybe just find some blood meal, bone meal, guano or kelp and mix in each hole right when you plant! Awesome results can be attained in ground that has never been in vegetable production before. Not only will you grow food, but your will grow your soil and that will help the trees and animals that are close by!

Orchard raised kune kune enjoying a little shower and fallen mexicola avocado. This sounder of swine is our most dependable farm compost system. We depend on them to make use of the otherwise wasted food while they feed the soil in return! #ojaibiodynamics #pigs #fourlegsgood

The future of orchard management may involve more drones. Here we are administering an ACP and fish fertilizer. In the future we might want to use these UAV helicopters to spray compost tea and biodynamic preps with extreme accuracy and in areas otherwise unreachable. #pleasedontshoot #droningon

Making pallet tree planters is easy and fun. Remember every tree has the potential to sequester hundreds to thousands of pounds of carbon, so planting them could be an essential part to stopping the increase of carbon in the atmosphere #climatechange #bethechange

feeding the runt

Lately these summer days have revealed the underbelly to our acclimated and rough weathered skin, our well tanned hides. They compel our dreaming of cerulean pools and iced electrolytes, but alas another day of farming behind us. We strive to make our plants comfortable and while it usually requires getting up early and staying out late, we are still energized afterward and ready again tomorrow because the synchronous and impelling quality of mother nature’s rhythm stirs us again #naturesrythm #groworganic #homeoutdoors #lifewithoutwalls

This is a thankfulness post...because this happened when we were standing a few feet from the trunk. because bad news sells and there is always plenty of chaos so here goes with a post about when things fall apart... life’s drama unfolding in front of you is rarely dull