McCauley Family Farm receives grant for regenerative agriculture

Marcus McCauley has an ambitious personal mission "to heal people and the planet with delicious food."

The farm manager and founder of McCauley Family Farm is working toward that goal in a practical and strategic manner, by building a farm in rural southwest Longmont.

"We're doing that on this farm by building a regenerative farm that is sustainable, ecological, and economical for generations," said McCauley.

McCauley is one of the seven recipients of the recent Boulder County Sustainable Food and Agriculture Funds grants. His farm comprises 40 acres of rotating annual and perennial crops, interspersed with fermentation, local seeds, fruit trees, pastured chickens, sustainable honey, sheep, pigs, alpaca, and a llama.

The $40,000 grant was awarded to purchase two multi-species pasture regeneration systems that each include a shade structure, water trailer, and solar trailer. McCauley described the system as the "kind of mobile structure we need to move animals around on the land."

Building a sustainable regenerative agriculture farm in Boulder County is no small task, and local farmers face a number of challenges related to weather, the dry climate, soil degradation, and the vagaries of nature itself.

McCauley said, "One thing that people might not realize is that this land, it wants to be grasslands. It wants to be short-grass prairie interspersed with trees." Then he added "How do you eat from that?"

For McCauley, the one thing missing from the landscape in Boulder County is a healthy population of ruminants "that were grazing the grasses for millions of years creating soil."

It's been awhile since large mega-herds of bison and other ruminants regularly grazed the high plains in the shadow of the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. Over many years, on public and private lands, the management of the land in some areas was not aligned with the natural systems.

McCauley said, "Now it's basically a moonscape, highly degraded and unleasable land," referring specifically to a small piece of public land abutting his farm that he has taken on in order to regenerate.

Boulder County and the City of Boulder have been trying to support change with measures like the Sustainable Food and Agriculture Funds, and McCauley is passionate about functioning ecosystems. He has been focusing his resources on rebuilding the local natural systems in ways that can regenerate the land while also building up capacity for growing food crops for local consumption in a sustainable manner.

The equipment that McCauley has begun purchasing with grant funds helps efficiently rotate grazing herds on pasture land, providing shade, water, and electricity to bunch animals in ways that mimic the natural movement of ruminant herds.

"We're trying to rebuild a resilient polycultural grass ecosystem," he explained, on an additional 120 acres leased from the City of Boulder Open Space.

The coronavirus pandemic has caused some speed bumps in the process, with McCauley still waiting on covid-related delays at the county for the funds to be dispersed. However, the first components of the first grazing system are already up and running. One of the shade structures and a solar trailer are already in the field at Black Willow Farm down the road from McCauley's farm.

If anything, said McCauley, the local response to the pandemic has given more urgency to the need to develop local, resilient systems.

"Our farms have been planning around an ethos of sustainability and resilience and short supply chains, and have risen up at this time to feed our neighbors, "McCauley said. "And I think it's an important signal when you see your system breaking down and your grocery stores not able to supply what your community needs."

Regarding the formerly degraded land, he said, "We've got things growing."

He added, "I feel so blessed and honored to be in a community like Boulder County where folks will choose to be taxed to support the things they believe in like this. And then to be the first recipient, it's a deep honor, and I feel the duty to do a good job receiving these funds and making sure that they do contribute not just to sustainability but to regeneration."