Remineralize Soil to Grow Nutrient Dense Crops

By Ben Hewitt
Published on February 1, 2015
article image
by Adobestock/Julija Sapic

We came to our land in the northern Vermont dairy-farming community of Cabot in 1997. At the time, the cleared portions of our 40-acre piece of property were being grazed by a neighboring dairy farmer, in the let-the-cows-grub-it-down-till-there-ain’t-nothing-left manner common to the industry. In other words, the pasture was receiving a severe beating on an annual basis.

That said, it could have been a lot worse. For starters, it was immediately apparent that we had a healthy layer of topsoil. And the land had not been plowed or tilled, or if it had, it had been so long ago that no visible evidence of these practices remained. Likewise, there was no indication that pesticides or herbicides had ever been sprayed. Finally, the soil drained extremely well.

All of this led us to believe that we didn’t need to do a whole lot to grow vigorous crops. Like many home gardeners, we assumed that simply because we grew our own food, it would be as nutritious as food could possibly be. So we didn’t do much. We hired a neighbor to till up a couple of garden plots, trucked in a few yards of compost, and started planting. We did get some basic soil tests analyzed by our local university ag extension service, and were quite pleased with ourselves when the results came back with everything in the “optimum” range. It was like being told our children were doing extremely well on their standardized tests.

How biological activity changed everything

Over the years, we began to observe that despite our so-called optimum soil test results, our crops sometimes lacked vigor and results were inconsistent. Sure, we were still producing lots of food, and we continued adding the amendments necessary to replace what our harvests took from the soil. But in truth, it felt as if we could be doing better. We were starting to get wise to the fact that growing our own did not necessarily mean optimal nutrition.

Now, just as this was beginning to occupy more of our mental energy (or in truth, more of Penny’s mental energy; she’s always been the green thumb around here), Penny happened upon a poster advertising a workshop with Dan Kittredge, founder of the Bionutrient Food Association in North Brookfield, Massachusetts. The BFA is a non-profit focused on teaching the importance of soil revitalization and the improved food quality that results, via the application of trace minerals and elements, seed inoculation, interplanting, and other techniques that foster biologically active soil and nutrient-dense crops. I should note that the BFA has begun using the term bionutrient food (hence the organization’s name), rather than nutrient-dense food, since nutrient density is based on a different metric. But for the sake of clarity, and because nutrient dense is the term that brought us to this methodology, I’m sticking with it in this book.

Online Store Logo
Need Help? Call 1-866-803-7096