Over 600,000 lbs. of Atmospheric Carbon Sequestered! Thank You for Helping Us!
January 2026
Our 35-acre organic pasture-based farm is located in the 1800-acre Maryland State Park System’s Monocacy Natural Resources Management Area, located along the Monocacy River. The purpose of the Natural Resource Management Area is to protect the natural resources on the property and to protect the Monocacy River and ultimately the Chesapeake Bay.
My wife and I are Curators for Maryland Department of Natural Resources (DNR). We have restored and are maintaining a house for DNR. Part of the house is a beautiful two-story log cabin dating to the late 1700’s or early 1800’s. Our job as Curators is also to care for the land and practice regenerative, restorative farming methods.
Over the past 19 years we have been building topsoil and have increased the soil organic matter of the 35-acre farm from 3.5% organic matter to 5% organic matter.
- Each 1% increase of soil organic matter is an increase 11,600 lbs. of carbon per acre in the top 6 inches of soil.
- Our increase of 1.5% organic matter is the sequestering of 17,400 lbs. of atmospheric carbon per acre. On 35 acres, that is an incredible 609,000 lbs. of carbon sequestered!
- Increasing the carbon and soil organic matter of the soil is very important for a number of reasons in addition to removing CO2 from the atmosphere.
- The increase from 3.5% to 5% soil organic matter is a significant rebuilding of the topsoil. This is true regenerative agriculture.
- Increased carbon in the soil enables water to penetrate the soil more easily reducing runoff and erosion during heavy rains. This is very important in protecting the Bay.
- Carbon in the soil is like a big sponge that holds water. It increases the water holding ability of the soil making more water available to plants during times of reduced rain.
Our farm with 5% organic matter has the capacity to hold 125,000 gallons of water per acre or a total of 4.4 million gallons of water on 35 acres! And that is just in the top 6 inches of soil. The method of sequestering carbon that we used, sequesters carbon at least 2 feet deep in the soil.
What we see in the Fossil Fuel/Climate Change situation that exists in the world today is that instead of doom and gloom, we have a great opportunity ahead for us. We have the opportunity and the responsibility to recycle the fossil fuel energy and complete the carbon cycle by putting it back into the topsoil where it originally began and build deep, rich, highly productive, rain absorbing topsoil. We need to “Put the sky in the ground”! In doing so we can solve a lot of the environmental problems that exist today – erosion of topsoil, pollution of our rivers and the Bay, and air pollution. There is hope!
Thank you for supporting our farm. Buying our eggs enables us to continue farming. If we can continue farming, we can continue to build topsoil, reduce rain runoff, protect the Bay, and sequester atmospheric carbon!