Take a look at this map. Go to the second letter N in the state of TN and look at the bright red coloration a bit to the left. That is the location of Coal Creek. I am thrilled the New York Times has run this story on the front page, highlighting the critically imperiled…
Coal Creek Farm is special. Over the years we’ve learned a lot about the tension between economic viability and environmental enhancement. We’ve learned that while you sometimes have to choose, more often they are complementary. In the last few weeks a group of people, environmentalists, landowners, government, non-profit and education have successfully closed an effort…
We love our farm and work hard to find ways to steward the natural resources there while ensuring we’re a profitable operation. Working with environmentalists, we’ve developed a process to burn fields then graze our cattle there. We’re finding native grasses returning. From there, habitat and food for native wildlife will return, especially the birds….
We love our working farm, from the cattle to the trees, from the mushrooms to the bees. But the farm doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It exists in a beautiful biologically diverse system. So we work to improve farm productivity and environment, and support land restoration efforts, while we support the work to do the…
You know how I love paddling with my family, but in the last few years I’ve come to appreciate just how hard it is to protect these precious places. At the end of the Ken Burns series on the national parks, the point was made that every generation will have to choose to protect the…
Cut Pile (download) Cut Pile 2 (download) Stump Video (download) This farm is some place special and I intend to manage it so that it maintains what’s breathtakingly beautiful and productive and enhances what needs to be enhanced. The maintenance of it includes management of invasive species. Invasives come as insects and trees. They come…
At Coal Creek Farm we are committed to generating profits while protecting and restoring environmental resources. We’ve had to make hard choices when invasive insects attack our native trees. We’ve been working with the Southeastern Grasslands Initiative to inventory the natural resources and restore lands that had been clear cut for years. We’ve deployed a…
We can all help document biodiversity and we need to. The climate is changing. That’s a fact. Things are warmer than they were, some are wetter than before or drier. That means habitat changes, too. Some species are migrating, some are dying and others are “new” or new to us, anyway. Scientists have always collected…
While it’s challenging to be “trapped” quarantining, it’s also a blessing. We’ve been able to spend time hiking and bird watching on the Cumberland Plateau. As Cumberland bird observers, we have noticed that there are so many birds on the farm. With that knowledge, we have been diligently working to create habitat for native and…
While we can’t literally look out our backdoors to see vast swaths of nature….still, living on the Cumberland Plateau, there is so much to appreciate. We’re a biological hotspot of diversity and there’s the water. Paddling… we love it. Here’s an example of one day on the creek. Here’s a story I wrote about the…