How The Pros Read Soil Health

This week, we met up with Blake Alexandre of Alexandre Family Farms — the largest regenerative dairy operation in the world.

Next week’s newsletter will tell the story behind five generations of farmers who helped pioneer the regenerative agriculture movement.

Today’s article is just a tiny snippet of goodness from our walk around the 9000-acre ranch (with commentary from an OG permaculture designer, Geoff Lawton).

On this week’s deep-dive, we talk about:

Why “Weeds” Are Nature’s Misunderstood Signals

For the last century, the agriculture industry told farmers to get big, get mechanized, and get chemical.

Blake Alexandre grew up within that paradigm. He was taught about synthetic fertilizers and mechanized tillers. He was instructed to douse his pastures with nitrogen, phosphorous, and potassium — the now ubiquitous NPK fertilizer treatment used around the world.

But he’s not a practitioner of this big-chested approach to growing food.

With over 9000 acres and 5000 cattle, he owns one of the largest grass-fed dairies in the world. Unlike his contemporaries, his grass is nutrient-dense, luscious green, and vivacious. It grows thick, and it grows fast.

Alexandre is an artist swimming against textbook-driven currents, and his pastures speak volumes about his mob-grazing methods.

Blake Alexandre does many unique things. At the forefront of them all, he pays attention to what nature has to say.

Reading Nature’s Signals

As I step out of Alexandre’s mud-covered ranch truck, he points to a pasture on my right.

It’s a new addition to Alexandre Family Farm. A little over a year before, it was used by conventional ranchers who never moved their cattle. As a result, the ground was compacted and overgrazed.

The sprawling field contrasts starkly against the deep-green paddocks we were standing in minutes before.

Big clumps of grass are already popping up, but they’re sporadic amidst the weeds. Dandelions and tansy are abundant.

Those weeds, Blake tells me, are one of the key signals he looks for.

If we asked a ‘modern’ farmer what to do about them, they’d give a modern answer — pesticides, tilling, and synthetic fertilizers. Weeds are a problem, and they should be handled with aggression.

Blake Alexandre, on the other hand, listens to them.

“They’re a sign of low fertility. They’re trying to repair the soil, so I need to help them, not destroy them.”

Geoff Lawton, one of the earliest practitioners of the permaculture movement, has a nearly identical response.

“If we look at weeds carefully and observe where they fit into a reparative sequence, we can read the landscape. We can rebuild ecosystems by speeding up that sequence, moving it forward in time, and we end up with an abundant, productive system.”

Stewarding Soil Health

Every plant we call a ‘weed’ has a mission. We can understand their mission by observing tendencies.

As Lawton says, “Germination conditions determine what seeds germinate.”

In other words, a square foot of soil might contain thousands of different seeds, but the soil conditions determine what sprouts and survives.

The dandelions on Alexandre’s new pasture, like the dandelions that pop up on city lawns, are solving a specific problem. They grow on compacted and depleted soil.

A dandelion’s taproot pulls minerals up to the surface and massages the soil to create air pockets. Over time, the soil returns to its proper ‘sponginess’, and dandelions disappear.

And different weeds serve different purposes.

A Texas pasture dominated by honey mesquite, for example, is likely low on nitrogen. The mesquite has a symbiotic relationship with nitrogen-fixing bacteria in its roots that pull nitrogen from the air and deposit the gas in the soil as nitrates.

On Alexandre Family Farm, Blake assists the dandelions and tansy by applying the ‘human factor’. He stewards the succession to healthy soil, and the weeds are replaced by strong-growing grass.

Real World Change At Alexandre Farm

The cows are the biggest piece of Blake Alexandre’s regenerative puzzle.

He digs into their inherent strengths by rotating them between pastures. As we discussed in previous articles, they graze the top portion of grass but aren’t around long enough to eat the plant to death.

The grass stays in photosynthesis, pulling carbon from the air and depositing it as sugars and roots in the soil. The roots dive deeper, and soil builds up.

But rotational grazing isn’t his only trick. Out of necessity, he’s now one of the largest composters in California.

Alexandre turns free wood chips, fish waste, and local microorganisms into fungal- or bacterial-dominant compost. When his cows are off-pasture, he applies that compost to support the “livestock under his feet” — worms, fungi, bacteria, and nematodes.

On the pastures that have received Blake’s care, weeds are nowhere to be found.

Now, they’re covered by beautiful grass that shimmers with every gust of wind.

As I look over the mob of cows to the Pacific Ocean, I’m reminded that I’m looking at the perfect symbol of regenerative agriculture.

It’s a practice that combines farming and artistry.

With it, Blake Alexandre created a living masterpiece.

Have questions? Leave a comment!

See you next week, fellow earthlings.

— Permacultured

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