Results for California Drought Mitigation Series, Fall 2015
HMI successfully completed the Whole Farm/Ranch Land Management Series focused on Mitigating Drought in California at the TomKat Ranch in Pescadero, California during September and October 2015. These workshops focused on the land management aspects of Holistic Management, including holistic decision-making, biological monitoring, grazing planning and land planning with special emphasis on how to prepare for and manage resources through drought. Richard King, a Holistic Management Certified Educator in Petaluma, California was the primary instructor and has raised beef cattle since 1991 using the Holistic Decision-Making and Planning Framework.
The class included a total of 30 people that manage land from the smallest operation to over 30,000 acres. Everyone learned a great deal from each other's questions and experiences. Several of the TomKat Ranch employees also learned more about managing holistically at the workshops and shared how Holistic Management was being learned and practiced at the host TomKat Ranch.
Several guest speakers were also utilized. Christine Su introduced her PastureMap web-based application designed to help land managers more easily use a GPS referenced maps, monitoring information, and notes. Another guest and sponsor of this series, Noah Small of Pacific Organics, assists people with learning how to correctly use the Yeoman's Plow and various mechanical parts that can be adjusted to meet the land managers needs. Finally, Doniga Markegard kindly allowed the entire class visit one of her nearby ranches and learn how Markegard Family Ranch is learning and practicing Holistic Management.
Although aspects of financial and business planning were addressed, participants quickly saw the benefits of next learning how to do holistic financial and business planning. Providing a series of workshops to learn many aspects of the Holistic Management framework was especially helpful to the participants. Unlike attending an occasional workshop focused on a particular topic or attending one very long workshop that included all aspects of the framework, having this 6-day series of land management workshops allowed participants to:
experience the important connections between all the land management topics involved in effectively managing a whole
immediately begin practicing planning and decision-making between workshops one step at a time
build and reinforce their learning by focusing on specific topics without losing sight of the whole they manage and how they want their lives in that whole to be
review key ideas and processes session after session so that participants understood, integrated, and began comfortably applying what they were learning on their own land
not be overwhelmed by 'too much to learn' all at once
provide time between workshops to strengthen what they had just learned and also prepare for the upcoming workshop.
HMI also provides binders, handouts, and materials in online which provided very good introductions and references to the decision-making and land management topics. Participants seemed very pleased with the flow of the workshop series and had opportunity to ask many questions. Evaluations from participants after each workshop clearly reflected their high satisfaction with the course. One participant has established a Facebook connection restricted to all the class participants, so that everyone in the class is comfortable sharing and learning and will have the opportunity to plan future gatherings.
To learn more about more HMI programming, visit our Training Programs page.
