5 Steps to Start Regenerating Your Farm

By Heather Heinrichs

Feb. 18/2026

If you have been thinking about using regenerative principles on your farm but you aren’t sure where to start, this article is for you. This is a simple, step-by-step guide that will help you get started. 

One: Identify your worst problem areas

A common piece of advice often heard at seminars and from cover crop consultants is to get out with a shovel and go look at your soil. Do you have land erosion? Where is the biggest impact? Do you have exposed soil? What is your worst field or areas in your fields that have the poorest yield every year? 

Identify where your land is showing the biggest problems and focus there first. Maybe draw a simple map of your farm and highlight the areas that struggle most. Hilltops are a common problem area. Salty sloughs or alkaline patches are another. Do you have a pasture that struggles with weeds? All of these can be improved. Find your worst areas on your farm and map them out. Keep that map somewhere that you can see it or go back to it often, and remind yourself of what your focus is on this crop year.

It can be easy to get overwhelmed if you think you have to regenerate your entire farm all at once. The easiest way to start is to pick one problem area and start there. Your worst acres are probably your lowest-yielding acres, and this also reduces the risk of losing income. If you make changes to your best-producing land and make a mistake, you could suffer financially. Focusing on your poorest land is less financial risk and more opportunity for financial gain as well. Many regenerative farmers have found themselves paying off their debt by focusing on improving their low-yielding acres.

Two: Soil tests and photos

How often do you test your soil? Get a shovel, get some samples, and find out what you’re working with. You need to know what your starting point is so that you can make a good plan. If you don’t know what you’ve got, you could miss out on a prime solution for that soil.

Put a marker down somewhere and take a photo. This is your starting point. There’s nothing more satisfying than seeing proof of change, and without a before photo, it’ll be harder to see the difference you’ve made or show it to anyone else.

Three: Ask for help or find the information you need

Take your test results and show them to someone who can help. Depending on the problems you're trying to fix, you may need to reach out to a consultant, or you could look for a farmer with regenerative experience. One thing you’ll find in the regenerative community is that they are eager to help each other. If you connect with people from Holistic Management Canada or Regeneration Canada, they can help you find people in your area. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of regenerative farmers in Western Canada. If you want to find someone who can help you get started, there are many people to connect with, and most of them will do it for free.

If you’re fixing an alkaline slough, maybe you get a cover crop consultant or someone with a drone seeder to come drop a mix of new seeds around the edge of the slough. If you’ve got a pasture that always struggles with weeds, maybe you could try something different with it this year and rent it out to a goat or sheep grazier.

There is never just one recipe to follow. Regenerating soil is like having a tool belt with many options, and you have the freedom to find which tools work best for you. Go get some advice on which tools are best for your problems.

Four: More testing

When you’ve taken some action and are starting to see results, do more testing. Find out what is going on under the surface. How are you impacting the microbiology with the new approach you’re taking? Don’t just sit back and wait. Watch and see what is happening while your new crop is growing or how the animals are impacting the land.

Cover crop consultant Kevin Elmy says, “The best thing you can put on your fields is your shadow. Get out there and look at your soil as often as you can.”

Five: Track your results

Results. You’ve found your problem areas, decided to do something about them, and you tried. Now the proof is in the soil. What did your second or third soil tests show? Keep these records.

Every year that you continue working on your problem areas, you’ll be encouraged to see improvements. You’ll be able to show your family or your neighbours and say, “Look at this. See what I did with that slough,” or “Look how much better this pasture looks.”

Go take your progress photos. Every year you see improvement, take another picture. In five years, you’ll have a powerful example of something you changed on your farm.

Bonus tip - don’t give up if it didn’t work

Mistakes happen. Farming is not a science or a recipe where you can control the variables. All farmers have stories to tell of fields that flopped or where they made mistakes. Don’t give up if you don’t get the expected results. Make adjustments and try again. Conditions are different every year, and maybe the seed you planted didn’t get the rain or temperatures it needed. Maybe you needed more animals per acre than you had for improving that pasture, or to move them faster or slower.

Go back to your consultant or regenerative farming friends and ask for their input. They can help you find out where it went wrong.

There are things you can control and things you can’t. Do your best and keep trying. You might find the magic solution in year two, and suddenly, you see what your land really needed all along. Whatever happens, don’t give up if it doesn’t go according to plan.