As interest in living a self-sufficient, organic lifestyle grows among many, Lori Evesque and her partner Pete Robertson made that dream real. They purchased farmland in Allegan County with the goal of farming in a way that works with, rather than against, Nature. Natural Cycles Farm is a small family farm where they raise produce and animals using holistic, organic, and regenerative principles.
Evesque explains the concepts of holistic, sustainable, and regenerative. “All of those words are pretty loaded in our culture,” she says. “In my mind, they are often misused. I will tackle sustainable first, as that is most often misused. Sustainable to me, to us, on our farm is that we are trying to operate our farm in a way that not only benefits us as the human caretakers, but also all of the animals, domestic and wild, that live on it, under it, and above it.”
Evesque and Robertson state as part of their mission: “We feel strongly that food and fiber should be local, people should know their farmers, and that how we farm is of the utmost importance to our health and the health of our planet.”
The two grow their own produce on Natural Cycles Farm but also raise livestock, including sheep, chickens, and geese—an important factor, Evesque notes, in a regenerative farm.
As part of their income, Evesque processes wool from their sheep, spinning it into yarn, dyeing it with natural colors, and selling it at farmers markets and fiber festivals and offering workshops. She also offers advice on the best way to garden—without tilling or disrupting the soil in any way.
“You basically build layers,” she says. “Let’s say you’re just starting a garden, and you have grass. You put down a layer of cardboard and then a layer of compost and then a layer of leaves, and then maybe you would do another layer of compost and another layer of leaves. Over time, those layers above the sod are going to kill the sod in a way that adds all those nutrients back to the soil.”
Natural Cycles Farm is located at 3031 102nd Avenue, Allegan, Michigan. Evesque can be contacted at naturalcyclesfarm@gmail.com .
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