Celebrate May Beef Month with Rachel Harmann, a beef farmer from Algoma, Wisconsin. Rachel and her family farm on the shores of Lake Michigan at Land by the lake and farm animals. She talked about what sustainability means to her family and how they protect their most valuable resources.
Introduce yourself and tell us about your farm:
My name is Rachel Harmann. My family and I raise beef cattle on the attractive shores of Lake Michigan in Algoma, Wisconsin. The tree line separates our pastures from the lake, so we must be sustainable in everything we do.
What is farming like so close to the lake?
Lake farming has its challenges and advantages. It’s attractive, but it brings many challenges for us as farmers because our top priority is providing neat water for our children, our cows and our community.
What does sustainability mean to you?
Sustainability at Lakeshore Land & Livestock means we are intentional about our practices to ensure we leave things better than what we found, working with past generations to learn how the land functions and what is best for crops and cattle. We are also using up-to-date technologies and practices to ensure that future generations can continue farming here in our local community.
We are incredibly fortunate to have been farming this land for six generations and have implemented practices that allow us to leave the land and environment in better condition than we found it for many generations to come.
What are you doing to protect water?
We joke that children and cows drink the same water here, and while it may not come from the same reservoir, the fact that it is so close to the lake means that the cows and children in our communities do indeed drink the same water. It is our most valuable resource. We implement practices like buffer zones and runoff areas so we can ensure we keep soil where it belongs and nutrients where they are to keep our most valuable resources neat and safe and sound for everyone in our community.
How does technology aid you be sustainable?
Technology varies from farm to farm. One of the things we do is test our soil. We take a petite soil sample and send it to a lab where it can tell us what nutrients our soil contains and what we need to add to it. This is a huge advantage for us because we do not employ nutrients that the soil does not need. It also saves us financial resources. We also employ nutrient management planning, which is like a recipe for our soil so that we can apply the exact nutrients that the soil needs. We work with other farmers in the area to learn best practices for implementing no-till.
Why is sustainability essential at Lakeshore Land & Livestock?
For us at Lakeshore Land & Livestock, sustainability is truly at the core of everything we do here. This is essential because we need to make sure that we can do what we need to do in this generation to make our farm sustainable and profitable, but also make sure that we leave everything in a position where the next generation and the generations to come, they are still able to feed and clothe the world around them.
