Regenerative Family Farm Adds Landscaping Business

A local family farm is adding a new arrow to its business quiver. Sacred Song Farm has spent its first six years dedicated to regenerative ranching. Now it believes it can offer its design, landscaping, and construction skills to anyone ready to transform their land. Thanks for watching this edition of the "Local News Network" brought to you by Big O Tires and FASTSIGNS. I'm Connor Shreve. Sacred Song Farm is an outlier in Mancos. It's first generation, it's built on a progressive ideology of land first, and it's rooted in permaculture, an old-world philosophy that irrigation and landscaping can benefit the land. However unique those philosophies may be, the company believes it has the expertise to help others transform their land too.

But when we're looking to building any sort of built infrastructure interacting with the land, and we're going to use heavy equipment, how can we do that in a way that is lasting, that will be around for generations? Let's build water systems that are going to be 500 years old as opposed to 50 years old.

Those philosophies have guided Sacred Song Farm through its history. And it's why Hauck says he now has the equipment and skills to open Sacred Song Design, an outdoor construction company that uses keyline design techniques focused on water management to bring land in harmony with nature.

It's looking to the soil and soil health. Are we building soil? Are we able to retain more water in our soils? Are our soils more nutrient dense, and therefore, they're growing more nutrient-dense plants, which then makes more nutrient-dense food in the form of beef?

Hauck believes the new company fills an unserved construction niche in the Four Corners. And so far, the response has borne that out. He says the company is already looking at a full spring schedule of things like repairing irrigation systems to building gardens. And while that may seem ambitious for a family raising about 100 head of cattle, Hauck credits his team for making that possible.

One thing that we've learned is to do what we are good at and to work with people that are really good at the things that we're not good at. And so I may wear a cowboy hat, and I may be really passionate about cattle, but I'm not that great up on a horse. And there's guys who are much better than me and who can work cattle much more efficiently. And they're looking for good, consistent work that pays well so they can make a fair living for themselves. And so we have a couple cowboys that work with us almost full-time now.

While the philosophies of Sacred Song may be described as innovative, Hauck sees them as the opposite.

When we look back at the history of American agriculture, the most successful and the most long-lasting forever has been that of the cowboy, has been that of moving cattle across landscapes, letting the grass rest, not returning to to that land until it has rested, keeping rivers from getting too damaged. And so these are the types of things that we need to look forward if we're moving towards the future, you know? If we're going to move towards the future, to have a better agriculture in the future, sometimes it's not more technology; it's less

That ideology may sound romantic for the sake of nostalgia. But in fact, it informs designs that make for more self-sustaining irrigation systems. And Hauck hopes less continues to be more as Sacred Song Farms and Design continues to grow. For more information about this story and others, visit montezumalocal.news. Thanks for watching this edition of the "Local News Network." I'm Connor Shreve.

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