Hey! Nice to meet you.
I didn’t grow up farming, but I did grow up surrounded by wide skies, fresh air, and horseback rides through the forests of northern Saskatchewan. My childhood was spent riding and showing our horses, caring for them in the small barn and outdoor arena my family built with our own hands. It wasn’t fancy, but it was rich in memories and freedom, and I often say I was a lucky girl to grow up with a life many others only dream of.
After high school, I pursued a career in print journalism and worked as a news reporter for five years before I married a farmer and stepped into a world I never imagined would shape my life so deeply.
For 15 years, I learned how hard and rewarding farming can be. I baled thousands of hay and straw bales, harvested crops, and worked with the cattle. I milked my own Jerseys and a Fleckvieh cow simply because I loved raw milk and the health benefits it provided. That's a photo up there of me and my cow Buttercup.
I loved the challenge, but I also lived the heartbreak and pressure that comes with modern farming.
We farmed in the Palliser Triangle, a semi-arid region where the average rainfall barely reaches three inches a year. Some years we grew beautiful crops, but more often we relied on crop insurance and cattle prices just to survive. The constant stress of unpredictable weather, rising input costs, and endless machinery repairs slowly began to sap the joy from something that was supposed to feel like a calling. For too many farmers, the dream of farming becomes a cycle of debt, exhaustion, and quiet despair.
Eventually, I started asking hard questions. Does farming really have to feel like this? Does it have to be this difficult, this financially stressful? Could it be more profitable, more resilient, and even more enjoyable?
That curiosity led me to watch the documentary, The Biggest Little Farm. I watched them starting out with soil so compacted they couldn’t even put a shovel into it. It was like concrete. Many years of chemicals and monocropping had stripped it of life. Yet through regenerative practices, patience, and persistence, they transformed that dead ground into a vibrant ecosystem overflowing with life. They took an old, run down orchard and transformed it into a magnificent little farm. In their case, investors helped fund specialized equipment, but the transformation of rebuilding the soil was astonishing none-the-less.
Then I discovered more farmers, like Gabe Brown. No big investors. No fancy equipment. Just one devastating hailstorm after another, four years in a row, nearly breaking him financially. On the fifth year, with no money left for fertilizer, he grew the biggest corn crop he’d ever seen. The soil had come alive. He didn’t set out to become a regenerative farmer. He was forced into it by circumstances and discovered it by accident.
At the same time, I began noticing something on our own farm. An old manure pile, left untouched for two decades, had quietly transformed into rich, living soil: black, soft, and teeming with life. Kochia grew there year after year, but instead of harming the soil, it protected it, fed it, and held moisture in place. We never sprayed it. We simply let nature work. That soil used the kochia to capture sunlight for as many days of the year as possible, building life beneath the surface.
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One year, I gently knocked down the kochia and planted vegetables and sunflower seeds. I watered them twice to help them establish, then I got busy with seeding, meals, our children and my milk cows. I almost forgot about it. That summer turned into one of the harshest droughts I’d experienced. Crops failed, fields were salvaged for feed, and the land baked under relentless heat and no rain. And yet, that little patch of soil flourished. The vegetables produced despite their neglect, and the sunflowers grew taller and stronger than anything I had ever grown before. In the middle of a drought, they stood as living proof of what healthy soil can do. The photo to the right is those sunflowers in my manure pile garden. The one plant grew as tall as the auger behind it and their heads were the biggest I've ever grown. And no fertilizer!!!
That’s when I knew regenerative farming wasn’t a trend, a theory, or wishful thinking. It was real. I saw it with my own eyes and I've been a believer ever since. It just makes sense.
When my time in farming came to an end, the land stayed in my heart. So did the lessons. And with my background in journalism, I chose to give voice to the farmers who are doing things differently. Those who are restoring their land instead of depleting it. Those who are proving that regenerative principles work not just in ideal conditions, but right here in Canada under real-world challenges.
Regenerative Farming News was born from that conviction. The farmers I interview speak of paying down debt instead of drowning in it. Of reducing inputs instead of relying on them. Of healthier soils, stronger herds, and renewed hope. Most importantly, they speak with genuine joy. The kind you hear when someone finally feels aligned with the land they steward. Working with natures power instead of against it.
Farming will always involve hard work, but it doesn’t have to be such a struggle. It doesn’t have to be so hard. Understanding regenerative farming can feel like having a "light bulb" moment where things finally make sense but the practice takes time to learn and see the results from. As farmers begin shifting their practices, they are seeing some immediate improvements and over time there is long-term transformation in their soil, their finances, and their quality of life.
These stories fuel me every day. They remind me that agriculture doesn’t have to be a system that burns people out and strips the land bare. It can be a system that restores, heals, and sustains both the earth and the farmer.
Farmers deserve better. And I’m here to tell them they can have better. It begins with changing how we view the soil and recognizing the incredible life force working beneath our boots, waiting to thrive.