There is more life in a teaspoon of living soil than there are people alive. No habitat science has found is richer, and almost all of that life is invisible. On this hillside most of that life had been lost.

We turn the earth as rarely as possible. Seed goes into undisturbed ground wherever it can. When a crop demands cultivation, the work is done by horse: a shallower cut, a slower pace, and a weight the ground beneath can carry.

The grazing follows a rotation. Animals take a single bite from a paddock and move on, and the field is left for weeks before they return. A winter cover crop feeds the soil and keeps it clothed, so no ground here is left exposed.

Each season the ground is tested. Microbial life and mineral density are recorded, so what has recovered is on the record. The commitment is simple: more life in the soil each year than the last, published in the dry years as well as the good ones.

What arrives in the kitchens carries that reading. You will taste the soil recovering.