Recently I attended an HMI (Holistic Management International) workshop at Montesino Ranch in Wimberley.
The focus was on water, and how to holistically manage a farm/ranch situation to adapt to our changing water circumstances.
Speaker number one asked if any of us had heard of the tree ring study, which actually I had... any way here is the gist of it....
Scientist were able to examine the rings of a a very old tree from central Texas. By looking at the rings they were able to get a pretty accurate idea of rain fall patterns from pretty far back, if I remember the tree was at least 500 years old.
Any way, what they determined is a little scary....
Our area of Texas has actually been experiencing an unusually wet period. The last 150 years, since the arrival of Europeans has been quite wet when compared to the period of time before...
So what this means is we actually don't have an accurate idea of what normal rainfall is in Central Texas, and we need to relearn how to live in this soon to be very dry climate.
Enter farmers and ranchers. They have an extremely important task... how to raise our food and manage the land as rainfall becomes more scarce.
I could bore you with the details, but one of the really interesting points made was the role of livestock and grazing and the recently discovered value of grazing animals for the land,
please take a moment to look at the video in this link.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxgDcBHTFm4
A lot of this information I already knew, but I enjoyed meeting some like minded individuals,
saw a gorgeous ranch on the Blanco River and felt
like the principles I learned could be applied even on a small scale.
I have to admit, the whole workshop was positive,
it's nice to be around people who understand.
