018, Vail Dixon: The Soil Healer, Part 1

Soul Soil: Where Agriculture and Spirit Intersect with Brooke Kornegay

Vail Dixon is a regenerative farmer and holistic grazing mentor. Founder of Simple Soil Solutions, Grazing Power and ABC Beef, Vail grew up working on farms, climbing mountains and enjoying nature. While training to represent her country in the Olympics, a life threatening accident gave Vail an opportunity to experience healing through healthy food and natural methods – even when doctors told her it was impossible. This deeper understanding of our food and farming systems instilled in Vail a passion for healing our soils as a way to rejuvenate our ecology, economy and health.

Vail conducts research on how humans affect the soil biology and how that impacts productivity. Learning about ways to repair damaged soil biologically led Vail to understand how animals and humans play a vital role in soil regeneration.

Vail is passionate about joining with Nature to heal the land, our economy and ourselves. Besides farming full time, she connects with open-minded farmers who want to become successful adaptive managers and create abundance on their land. To this end she is building a Holistic grazing mentorship program called Grazing Power, on-farm Grow Your Soil workshops, and Living Soils biological soil-building mentorship program.

In this episode... Vail's journey to the work of soil regeneration How the soil is the key to so many of the cultural and environmental problems we face The power of high quality food to heal the body and mind Learning how to heal the soil Facing the health and economic challenges of a conventional agriculture-based county Real-life experimentation with rehabilitating soils and changing an extractive enterprise into a regenerative one The realization that a well managed livestock system can improve the soil as well as manual application of biological compost teas Harvesting plants and animals consciously Most of the water that cows use is getting served back to the soil with a side of beneficial microbes Well-managed regenerative agriculture systems that incorporate animals can sequester a significant amount of carbon

Resources

• http://simplesoilsolutions.com/

• Contact Reflex Analysis (CRA)

• Vail Dixon MP3: Is Your Soil Really Covered? Unearth Your Own Blind Spots to Radically Improve Your Soil