Stop Copying Someone Else's Farm

This might irritate some people. That's fine.

Alec Solimeo runs cattle near Boulder, Colorado. I run Katahdin sheep near Columbus, Ohio. We talk regularly. We think alike. We grew up in the same small town in New Jersey. We share a design philosophy. But we have very different areas of strength and if either of us copied the other's operation, we'd be bankrupt inside a year.

That's not exaggeration. It's math.

Alec lives in what is practically a mountain desert. This past winter, Colorado barely saw snow. He's already anticipating a record drought/wildfire season, because there's no snowpack to slow it down. It's not unusual for people in his area to pay for water or hay year-round. His entire land management strategy is built around capturing moisture and holding it in the ground. He's a whiz with keyline design and earthworks. And his clientele views ponds as drought insurance and fire suppression. Every drop matters. He moves his cattle across large stretches of land because the forage is sparse and recovery is slow.

Katahdin sheep grazing early spring, first flush of grass in Ohio

I'm five states nearly 1300 miles east, starting mud season. My problem isn't finding water. Quite the opposite, it's managing the relentless excess of it. Seep springs. Erosion from torrential runoff occurs in heavy rain. Water ponds in fields and cannot drain. My clients don't want ponds for drought protection. They want ponds to control flooding. I rotate my sheep every two or three days in tight paddocks because the grass gets ahead of them if I don't stay on top of it. 

My challenge isn't scarcity. It's abundance moving too fast. 

There are mountain lions in Alec's climate. I have black vultures bobcats and eagles picking off newborn lambs. He references plants I've only seen mentioned in Zane Grey novels. I talk about fruit tree varieties he's never heard of, let alone seen growing. He designs water systems to capture and hold. I design water systems to slow and direct. Same principle! Respect the water, but with completely opposite execution.

We are partners, peers, friends, and livestock farmers. We would struggle to successfully run each other's operations for a single season.

And yet.

I watch landowners do exactly this. They see a beautiful silvopasture operation in Ohio and try to paste it onto heavy Virginia clay. They watch a YouTube video about managed intensive grazing in New Zealand and assume the same rotation will work on their forty acres in Tennessee. They try to grow cherries in Alabama. Or apples in Florida. Or maybe they've read about a food forest in the Pacific Northwest and want one installed on a south-facing slope in the Piedmont that bakes dry by July. 

The design looks gorgeous. The inspiration is real. And the land doesn't care.

Your land has its own soil biology, its own water behavior, its own parasite pressures, its own predator reality, its own frost timing, its own economic context. It has a history. That's what it was asked to do before you owned it, how it responded, what it's still recovering from. None of that transfers from someone else's Instagram feed.

I lamb in January and February. That's not tradition. It's a calculated decision based on two biological pressures specific to my farm: parasite loads that spike in warming spring pastures, and aerial predators that return in mid-March. He calves based on his own timing based on Colorado's factors. And it's very different than mine. 

The timing isn't transferable. The thinking is. And this is the whole thrust of this article. 

That's the difference between copying a farm and designing one. Copying takes someone else's answer and drops it on your land. Designing starts with your land's actual truth. It takes into account the water, the soil, the biology, the economics, and the human vision. And builds a system that belongs there, on that land, in that context. 

I've spent years watching inspired people pour time and sweat into plans borrowed from properties that have nothing in common with theirs except the word "regenerative." 

The plans aren't bad. They're just not theirs. And the results are predictable. 

Your land is not a content board. It's a living system with its own rules, its own capacity, and its own version of what will actually work. Chances are, your land would benefit from something that you've never seen on YouTube or Pinterest. 

Read it first. Then design for it.