#13 Dawn Breitkreutz (USAF) – Stoney Creek Farms

We don’t need to learn new things, we need to learn old things.

This from our guest for this episode – Dawn Breitkreutz with Stoney Creek Farms – as she describes how we should approach the adoption of regenerative practices. These are essential old practices, she describes, that were used by our parents and grandparents to farm. We don’t need to necessarily learn new methodologies or technologies, but rather we need to become familiar again with the practices of our past.

Dawn is a US Air Force Veteran and Co-Founder of Stoney Creek Farms along with her husband Grant. Along Minnesota River near Redwood Falls, Minnesota, Dawn and Grant have converted a conventional crop and cow/calf operation into a multi-enterprise regenerative family business over the last 20 years.
As an analytical person by nature, Dawn began questioning modern-day practices on their own row crops acres – why are we doing things this how, why do we have to add this chemical product, etc. It was this inquiring nature and a degradation in their farm and livestock operations that caused both her and Grant to stop and think about how they were farming.

Dawn’s gradual and self-motivated approach to change sets a path, I think, that can be followed in a very practical way. It doesn’t have to happen over night nor does it need to be a full reversal right away – change begets change and in this case, small victories gave them the confidence to continue and even start to being veterans into their operation.

I’ll bring you into the conversation as Dawn and I discuss a documentary titled Farmer’s Footprint which centered around Dawn and Grant’s farm as an example of how regenerative practices highlight farming as a complete system and how the student, Dawn, eventually became the teacher.