If you don’t have good soil, you won’t have good food!
Soil is all about complexity and stability. Grasses, roots, bugs, microbes, beneficial bacteria, mycorrhizae – food crops need them all. And it’s taken chemical farming about 70 years to wreck it.
Whilden Hughes is a 6th generation farmer and he’s building a resource that will last another 6 generations: better soil.
How does he do this you ask? By growing a deep-rooted perennial grain (Kernza) and by using low-Impact, no-chemical weeding techniques.
When Treffler-Man@Machine first met Randy and Whilden Hughes, Randy wasn’t sure about the Treffler Organic Machinery but was willing to try it and if he didn’t like it, we would take it back.
A few years later and the Treffler TS1840 that went to the Hughes farm has never left!
It was absolutely great to see them most recently launch their pancake mix onto the market. It’s so wild to be part of this family’s progression. They are seriously concerned about making good dirt, fostering biodiversity, caring for their soil, and, in their words, to go all-in on chemical replacements.
Low-Impact, No-Chemicial Weeding
If you don’t get rid of weeds, you’re a weed farmer. (And not the fun kind!) They gotta go.
Conventional farming iust sprays them with toxic sludge. Like keeping mosquitos off your porch by lighting it on fire, it’s very effective in the short run, but unwise over time.
Whilden’s grandfather loved chemical herbicides because they solved problems. He watched yields go up, prices go up, pests go down…. He just didn’t live into the decades where the costs became clear.
Today, Whilden’s farm has a gentler touch. They use advanced weeding machinery that gives him fine-grain control over how he is removing things from his fields. It’s a system he and only about a half dozen other farmers use. It looks like a giant and terrifying musical instrument.
Whilden (& the Perennial Promise Growers Coop he started) can only afford to grow what there is demand for. This pancake mix is the first time his Kernza has made it into a product that a consumer can buy. So help him make great soil and Eat More Pancakes!