Welcome to The Pastoralist, a blog written by me (Travis Krause) about soil health, water, livestock, food, ranch business, community and more with the intention of creating conscious discussion centered around regenerative agriculture.

I will be blunt with you; our farm is going through some hard times right now. We are working hard for very little money and we are emotionally drained. When Mandy and I first started this adventure in 2010 it was like a dream come true. I was leaving the corporate world behind with an idealist mindset that farming would simplify my life. Our first years were easy. We lived frugally in the old red ranch house built 1891. The first three years we toughed it through the summers of South Texas with no A/C, a house full of kissing bugs, scorpions falling on the bed at night, WWOOFers sleeping in the bedroom next door and we loved every minute of it. We had no debt, one of the most beautiful gardens you have ever seen, livestock dotted the landscape, we produced almost all of our own food, health insurance for the two of us was $157 per month and life was good. Our farm naturally grew with the demand for our products ever increasing. We produced pork, beef, chicken, eggs, turkey and culinary herbs in those early years. From then until now has been sort of a fog in my mind. We transitioned from being a homestead to a farm business. We grew big producing almost ten thousand broilers a year, one thousand turkeys, three thousand hens and over a hundred head of cattle. For a direct-market farm we are not small. We have marketed our products through farmer’s markets, buying clubs, restaurants, grocery stores and more recently a home delivery service. The costs associated with providing our customers this kind of convenience has risen along with normal farm expenses and the margins are tighter than ever. It’s a seven day per week job that never stops. We haven’t had a real vacation in over three years and before that it was almost four years. My wife and I also have two young boys that are growing up fast and we dearly want to spend time with them. With that growth we thought the money would be better and that just hasn’t been the case. This is the reality of farming.

Our regenerative practices have proven that agriculture can be ecologically sound and profitable. We have taken a worn out farm from 1% organic matter to over 5% in most of our pastures. We have selected cattle that are genetically suitable to our harsh environment and finishing on native pasture. We built a profitable farm business for the past ten years and now it’s time to take a step back. The successes are not mine alone, they are the teams; my wife Mandy and the countless volunteers and employees we have had throughout the years. The best decision we ever made was Mandy’s idea to take the Holistic Management International Financial Planning Course. It impacted our farm more than any other management tool throughout the past eight years. It has allowed us to make sound financial decisions without questions. Lesson learned: keep good financial records and learn how to manage those finances. It is arguably the most important aspect of running a farm business.

The reality is that you will work long hours, you will not have time for yourself, family or friends, there will be disasters natural and man-made, you will not make much money in comparison to other professions and it will be hard. The good is that I can look back on what we have accomplished and be proud to know that we have designed a management system that is ecologically and financially sound. We provided countless customers and their families with clean, nutritious products. Over the coming months and years I am going to write about how we started the farm, the lessons learned, our successes and failures and what the future holds. I am going to invest my time and energy into transferring all of that knowledge and experience to anyone who wants to listen. I hope that if you’re a farmer you take the time to read it because surely some of the information will be invaluable. It will be the knowledge I wish someone had shared with me in those early years. If you’re a consumer of farm products, which we all are, I hope your read it so that you understand farming and the lifestyle that surrounds it.