We are excited to invite you to join us for our 6th annual Seeds of Hope Celebration in Southwest WI to hear about the work of our 2025 Seed Money recipients and share a meal featuring locally sourced ingredients. We look forward to hearing about our recipients' achievements and how they helped us realize our goals of expanding access to local food, educating on sustainable farming, addressing food security, and bridging the rural/urban divide.
To learn more about our recipients, see short descriptions here.
This event is free and open to the public. A suggested donation of $25 will help offset the cost of lunch.
Register here. Deadline is Saturday, October 25th. If you have any questions, please contact Trudi Jenny, trudijenny@yahoo.com.
By Roger T. Williams
Does soil have soul? The second annual Soul of the Soil Conference made a compelling case for this idea by weaving together that when soil, the basic building block of all life, is functioning properly, it leads to healthier plants, people, and communities. The conference was held September 5-6 at Sinsinawa Mound and was hosted by the Fields of Sinsinawa, a farmer-led learning center in far southwestern Wisconsin.
Anne Bikle, one of the first presenters and author of What Your Food Ate: How to Heal Our Land and Reclaim Our Health, stated that routine tilling and extensive use of chemicals and fertilizer is destroying our soil. Thus, the nutrient density in our foods has declined dramatically over time (copper down 76%, iron, 27%, calcium, 46% and magnesium, 24%). Bacteria, fungi and protozoa are out-of-sight, out-of-mind, yet they are essential for soil health. Integrating animals onto the land is one of the best ways to improve this “microbiome” of the soil.
Many of the other conference sessions focused on basic principles for soil health: 1) minimize soil disturbances, 2) maximize soil cover, 3) provide continual living roots, 4) increase biodiversity, and 5) integrate livestock on the land. Wisconsin farmer Peter Allen emphasized the importance of a paradigm shift: from farms as factories and humans disconnected from the land to farms as ecosystems with humans as a Keystone species, managing the land with these principles in mind. Monte Bottens farms in Illinois, without the use of fungicides, insecticides and GMO seeds, argued that farmers should not be morons (putting “more on” the land every year)! Kelly and DeAnna Lozensky agree. On their farm in North Dakota they have transitioned from a “conventional big ag farm” selling commodities. Now they “grow actual food” and sell it through their own food company as flour, pasta and grains. They emphasized that their mission now is to feed and protect the soil as well as to feed and protect their family and community.
The second annual Soul of the Soil conference would not be complete without a return visit by the Minnesota musical group Six Feet Deep. Their humorous, yet thoughtful lyrics added just the right touch to a wonderful thought-provoking conference. Here are the opening lines of their song “Back to Soil:”
Well, if you study history, then you’ll know
The empire falls when the topsoil goes.
The signs today are pretty clear to read
Soil’s looking bad and we’ve lost six feet.
But here’s the news, we could build it back
And I heard about farmers with a plan for that.
So, I paid one a visit, we sat to chat’n and that
one cup of coffee set me on a whole new track.