Burroughs Family Orchards (BFO) is a fifth-generation small family farm in Denair, CA. BFO is a partnership between Ward and Rose Marie Burroughs and their daughter, Benina, who started farming almonds with her father in 2002. Four years later, Benina started the transition to organic production, and by 2015, the entire farm was certified Organic. BFO has also diversified into organic olive production over the last decade-plus. And in June 2022, the farm went a step beyond Organic, becoming certified by the Regenerative Organic Alliance – the gold standard for best practices around soil health, animal welfare, and social fairness.
BFO products are available through their website, and you can follow them on Instagram @ burroughs.family.farms for updates.
Vivian Kanchian: Through my connection with Kiss the Ground, I heard a million wonderful things said about BFO. In my own research, I learned that you guys have been farmers for 5 generations, starting way back with your great-grandfather, who moved from Illinois to California to start farming. And now you are growing almonds, making olive oil, cheese, milk, grass-based meats…
Benina Montes: Yes, but we’re no longer in the dairy business. This was our last year of producing milk.
VK: Is that California related, why that happened?
BM: I would say, yes. It’s that all of the costs keep going up. Farmers are the only people that sell wholesale and pay retail for all their inputs. Most other businesses are buying wholesale, and then selling either wholesale or retail. Farmers don’t do that.
And in terms of what’s actually going on in the marketplace, you know, we still have one of the very cheapest food supplies in the world. [In the US], we don’t spend that much of our money actually on food.
Here in California, it’s hard. But in talking to other farmers, it’s happening across the country. That’s why I’m so excited about regenerative farming because it can help us weather these times that are very tough.
Lessons learned from farming
VK: So, just to kick things off. One of the things that I’ve noticed in my conversations with farmers is that they waste nothing. You all really know the true cost of things… and it reminds me of how nature works. And especially how mushrooms work. They are the ultimate decomposers, breaking down the old to make it into something new.
Can you tell me a little bit about some of the valuable life lessons that you’ve learned coming from a family of farmers that maybe is lost on those of us who may connect with our food at the supermarket.
BM: I think farmers are very, very creative, and very resilient. When you think about it, farmers have to be carpenters, they have to be welders. They’re also plumbers. On top of that, they’re running excel spreadsheets. They’re looking at Quickbooks, and doing their own accounting and marketing. Farmers are very well-rounded people, because they have to be able to do some of everything.
We just have to be resourceful, and we have to be able to pivot and do whatever needs to be done when it needs to be done. We can’t always wait for the perfect moment. Right? If weather’s coming, or if you’ve gotta harvest, you gotta harvest. You don’t necessarily get a weekend off. We don’t work 8 to 5 – we can’t.
I think it actually is good for some people to live in town because they’re able to shut off when they leave the ranch. When you’re living on the ranch, you’re there day in, day out, and that turn-off doesn’t necessarily happen. When you can hear the cows mooing or the rooster crowing, it’s right there in your brain.
When you mentioned how mushrooms repurpose waste, I immediately thought of our organic pastured chickens. So, we took [old] cotton trailers that the industry used to harvest into because they’re on wheels… they’re mobile. They already have a hitch to move them, and we converted those into our egg mobiles, which have roofs inside and double-layered nest boxes. And we turned those into something that worked for us, to be able to move our chickens through the pasture. That’s just one example.
VK: I love that. So, why chickens?
BM: Well, my sister had read Joel Salatin’s book, Pastured Poultry Profits, and began to think about stacked enterprises. So, she thought, well, let’s run the chickens behind the dairy cows.
She started in 2007. In 2010, she had just her fourth kid and began to think, “These are so seasonal. The stores are either mad at us because we don’t have enough [chicken], or I’m giving them to the food bank because we have too many. I don’t wanna deal with this anymore.” And so that’s when my husband and I took over and started the Burroughs Family Farms brand with the eggs (a really effective protein source).
We’re not perfect. But you know, we can fertilize the soil, and at the same time, produce this really good product.
And I think, going forward, [stacked enterprises] are something that we should be looking at in young orchards that are not in production yet. Because then you have an extra revenue stream, and you’re still feeding the soil. And those 2 things are gonna be a big deal, with almond prices not being good right now and the costs continuing to go up every year. So, if you can find another stream of revenue on the same acreage, it’s kind of a no-brainer.
VK: Another great example of how farmers are always staying on their toes and adapting with diversification! Biodiversity isn’t always just about microbes, but having a diversity of crops is a great way for farmers to reduce the risk of “having all their eggs in one basket”, so to speak. If one crop fails, they can sell the one that didn’t.
The role of livestock in sustainable farming
VK: Speaking of Joel Salatin, he was talking about chickens and how popular they were at a certain point in American history because of their smaller size (compared to cows).
Do you think maybe chickens and other smaller animals are the future of farming with what appears to be this attack on the dairy industry and cattle?
BM: I think that all animals play a role in the future. Cows have gotten a bad rap, but if we look back…hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of buffalo roamed around the world, you know. I’m sure you’ve heard this, but it’s true. It’s not the cow, it’s the how. Right?
I also think that there is a lot of potential with smaller animals. Rabbits are wonderful grazers, but most people think of them as a pet. But they’re pretty awesome, and the nice thing about chickens and rabbits in terms of cash flow is that it doesn’t take very long to get a finished product. Same for the sheep. Within 5 or 6 months you have grass fed lamb that’s ready to go. Whereas, if you want a grass fed beef animal, that takes 18 months, 24 months.
Also, I think in the US, we have to reconnect to the consumers. The consumers need to figure out that it’s not just about chicken breast. It’s about the whole chicken, using the feet and the heads to make nutrient dense broth. From a chicken you only get 2 chicken breasts. You gotta be able to use the whole animal. There’s a reason why it has different parts, and you can’t just only eat chicken breast.
VK: Yes, this actually reminds me of a personal story related to food as medicine – and chicken!
My dad developed a very painful inflammatory joint condition in his fifties. Instead of going the conventional route with medication or surgery… he read somewhere that chicken feet might help. And sure enough it was the chicken feet that saved him.
So yes, animals do have different parts for a reason.
And it’s amazing to me how often farming and harvesting, and the rules around farming are mentioned in the Bible… like harvesting for 6 years, and giving it a rest on the seventh year. There’s a lot of wisdom in that.
BM: Yeah. My daughter was asking me about that, and she’s like, “do you take off the seventh year”? We don’t. But at times, we have had really low production. I guess that was the off year.
VK: Interesting.
So, this idea of letting the land rest and regenerate is an ancient concept.
Becoming a fully organic, regenerative farm
VK: Can you share what sparked your family’s journey towards becoming a fully regenerative organic farm?
BM: My great grandfather that started it all had a pasture-based system. You know, they moved the cows, and brought them in. But as soon as grain and new technology was introduced, our family just followed the trend.
When my dad’s generation came back to the farm, we had the conventional dairy, but we also had beef cattle, and crops. My dad started going to classes, and sometime in the eighties, maybe early nineties, he started doing management intensive grazing with the beef cattle and saw that it’s a lot more hands off. You’re not trying to get more milk production by feeding them grain like the conventional dairies were.
So he saw that, but he was not ready. Mentally he was not sold on… “Hey! Let’s jump in and do organic almonds”, by any means.
When I came in, we only had conventional almonds. My dad and my uncle split a couple of years after I came back from school. That was nerve wracking for me because we used to have dairy cows, we had beef cattle, and then we had all the crops to support (feed) the dairy. So if dairy was bad. Hopefully, the almonds were good or vice versa. So, I’m sitting here going: “we have all our eggs in one basket. We just have almonds – like, wow”. And so I thought about organic almonds as the first diversification. But he was not ready for that.
And then my sister had started rotational pasture-based dairy, but it was still conventional. We were harvesting the grass for the cows, but it was seasonal. So they shut off in November and then didn’t start calving again until January.
My brother was gonna start the same type of dairy, but it was on ground that had never been sprayed, and never had anything done with it. And so, right off the bat, you can go organic. You don’t have to wait 3 years to transition. And so that’s what they did. They had a very steep learning curve. Their whole toolbox had to change. You’re not gonna be reactive and be giving [the animals] a shot. You’re gonna be providing good nutrition to make sure that they stay healthy. You’re gonna keep them low-stress, so you don’t have to use these other things, right? So, they started down the path, they liked it, and there was also a market for organic milk. I think that same year my sister transitioned to organic as well.
Meanwhile, we’re just kind of watching and seeing stuff start to align. We were able to find somebody that could consult with us for our organic transition. And so in 2006, we started that transition with the almonds.
And then, we just kept going down the path, and this year we got fully certified as regenerative organic.
VK: And ROA certification, for those who may not know is one of the toughest, if not THE toughest certification to get. They take you through layers and layers of steps before certification.
Challenges with regenerative farming
VK: You said there was a steep learning curve with your transition. Have things eased up as a result of your regenerative practices – as the land begins to return to a more balanced state?
And, aside from the fact that there’s absolutely no technical or financial support for farmers, why do you think many farmers don’t go this route?
BM: You asked about the challenges first, so I’ll answer that first.
One of the main things was that we did not want to have chemicals on the ranch. Part of the push to go completely organic was because I got pregnant, and I didn’t wanna have to be the one that had to be suiting up and mixing these chemicals. We all talked about it, and agreed that we don’t want anybody on our team to have to be part of that. It’s a carcinogen, it’s killing things.
And then, when we financially looked at what the models would look like, we could stay alive. We weren’t gonna make as much money, but we could still pay our bills, make money and produce this good product. So, that’s how we decided to go that route.
We were pretty committed. My dad has a very strong-willed wife, and he has a very strong-willed daughter, and it works that we’re all wanting to go in the same direction. And he’s fairly open minded. I don’t know that many farmers in their forties and fifties and even older, that would say to their twenty something year old daughter, “here’s 650 acres that you’re gonna manage now”. And when I would ask him a question he’d say, “I’m not gonna answer that. Why don’t you call these 3 other farmers and see what they think”? He really let me take the reins, and make mistakes and learn from them. There are people that I know that are IN their fifties whose dad will still not let them make their own decisions. And that’s not the way we do it. And so I think that is why we’re not having more people change. I think that there is interest out there. But when somebody’s saying “No, you can’t do that,” or “That’s not the way we do it,” you just have that friction unless you [give into that mainstream] mindset.
And who controls all the information? Who’s at the universities? Who’s funding all the research? It’s big Ag, it’s chemical companies, you know. They’re giving the scholarships. They’re paying for the wine-and-dine trips. They’re buying the new buildings at the Universities. And so that’s the information that gets funneled down, that says “This is going to save you. This is why you need to use these different products”.
VK: Yes, and somehow it never does.
Right around World War I, Rockefeller, Carnegie and JP Morgan got together with a plan to modernize and monetize medicine. And so basically, they shut down a lot of the medical schools that were interested in keeping people healthy and in preventing disease and created a new solutions-based model focused on treating disease – after the fact.
And I see what’s happening right now with Bill Gates buying up farmland and becoming the second biggest funder of the WHO while he’s also heavily invested in pesticide companies and pharmaceuticals – as version 2.0 of this.
For a brief history of these events, click here.
BM: Yeah, 100%.
And I can’t believe people don’t see what is happening. They think that if the government says they should eat, you know, 12 servings of carbohydrates, that that must be what they should be doing.
VK: Right. Or the latest research that says red meat causes diabetes – which is ludicrous.
So, let’s talk a little bit about soil biology, and how that kind of factors into the regenerative practices you apply at BFO. You were using chemicals before, and now you integrate chickens and other animals to fertilize the soil.
What does chicken poop do for the soil, and for the food that comes out of it?
BM: Well, let me just go back a little bit to what we first were seeing. We were using [chemical] sprays for the ground to keep the strips under the tree clean where the irrigation is. And every year, it was just getting kinda harder to maintain all of that. The chemical companies wanted you to use more and more products [like pre-emergent herbicides). But there would still be weeds left. And the more chemicals we used, the more resistant to those chemicals the plants became – because they adapt. I think it’s amazing what our world can do. So then, you gotta spray a different kind of spray, or a harsher one.
So, as we started transitioning out of that… those weeds started going away. I’m not gonna say we don’t have any weeds out there at all, but it has been pretty amazing. I don’t even like to necessarily call them weeds – I call it volunteer vegetation. Because now, we can utilize that for the sheep to graze on.
And in fact, this year we actually had a capturing system. So we didn’t have the traditional clean bare dirt orchard floor for harvest – we had cover crops. We knew it was the right thing to do. By keeping the land covered, we’re gonna have better water penetration. This year, we had more insect activity going on because we left habitat for them. So they were able to eat, which took care of a lot of our insect issues. We also started taking worm counts, and there were 3 times more worms in the regenerative fields compared to the conventional ones. That’s a good indication.
As we kept going, the Ecdysis Foundation with Dr. Lundgren came out and did the first research study that shows we were getting 2-3 times more birds because they actually have something to eat. More vertebrate activity, six times more water holding capacity. That’s a pretty big deal. especially here in the central valley of California. Those are the kinds of things that we’re seeing, and I’m excited to see what happens.
We normally just planted a cover crop for the first 2 to 3 years of a young orchard, and it’s gorgeous and beautiful and big, and has bloom, and there’s variety in there. But we would always just let whatever was gonna come after that come. We never did intentional cover crops in the conventional fields. And so this year we’re planting everything to cover crops. And you know what’s gonna happen? We’re feeding the soil, which is then gonna feed the tree.
I am not a scientist, by any means. But everything that I see proves that these plants can do amazing things. The communication between all of the life underground is amazing. People wanna go to outer space, or they wanna figure out how to find life somewhere else. We need to just look down. There is so much more life in a tiny little area of healthy soil than there is even above ground. There’s just so much going on down there.
So, I’m excited to see what planting cover crops throughout the farm is going to do. We already know there’s a lot more life here, because we’re providing habitat. We have things in bloom. We’re planting hedgerows. I’m just very excited to see, with the different root links and the different plants, what’s going to happen with mycorrhizal fungi and more bacteria. And hopefully, our compost tea will just add to all the improvements.
I also just know that following the 5 principles of regenerative agriculture will get us there eventually. So, I’m just here for the ride to see the changes.
To learn more about a recent Swiss study showing mycorrhizal fungi increased crop yields by 40%, eliminating the need for pesticides and fertilizer, click here.
A need for actually nutritious food
VK: So, back to fungi’s ability to repurpose things for a minute.
For those who may not know, mycorrhizal fungi is an underground fungal network with thin rootlike structures. These structures break down nutrients otherwise unavailable to plants, helping them soak up water and nutrients. When soil is alive with microbial diversity… the food that grows out of it is more delicious and nutrient dense. And regenerative agriculture practices help support a variety of soil life.
Organizations like the Bionutrient Food Association are working on putting a value on nutrient density. Because now, a tomato isn’t sold based on how much nutrition it holds. The tomato that you get at your local supermarket that costs maybe $2.99 a pack… if you actually could see inside of it, probably holds ⅓ of the nutrition compared to a tomato that comes from healthy soil. So, really, you would have to pay $9 and eat three times the amount to get the same nutrition you would if you spent a little more per pound on a regenerative product in the first place.
Which (finally!) leads me to this next question… are you looking into charging for the food that you grow based on its nutrient profile?
BM: We have not done that at all. We know people that in certain industries have tested and shown that foods like grass fed beef and organic pastured eggs are more nutritious than grain fed because they have more CLAs and better omega-3 to 6 ratios.
Our almonds were supposed to be part of an upcoming study… so we’re definitely interested in that. We have a lot of almonds that we have to move right now. So, I don’t think we have enough customers to go down that route yet. But we definitely want to just keep producing a variety of good products that we can make here and do more direct-to-consumer sales.
As a nation, we’re limited on how many beef suppliers there are, and how many chicken suppliers there are. There’s just a few companies that own all of the food companies underneath it, and that is so scary to me. I’m shocked that people are not more upset about that. I mean, it happened during Covid, right? People could see that if there was a break in the supply chain, that it affected so much. And some people did try and find more local food. But in general, everybody went right back to [the status quo].
To learn more about the variations of nutrient density in grass-finished beef compared to grain-finished, check out this study by Dr. Stephan Van Vliet and the Bionutrient Food Association.
Redefining agriculture
VK: How quickly we forget.
So, as humans, we have evolved to recognize foods that are good for our survival – and some of the things that might indicate nutrient density are a vibrant color, an appealing aroma and texture.
Now that you’ve been growing regenerative almonds… when you look at them, do you think they look different? Do they look/smell/taste more appealing than conventional almonds?
BM: The typical almond tree here in the Central Valley is very drugged up… very reliant on being fed new nitrogen, and it grows in a very sterile environment. Our trees do not look like that, and I think that’s a good thing, but it’s not what you would normally see. They’re definitely more rugged, and I think they’re going to be more resilient as we go through [times when there’s] less water.
And since we’re not chasing huge numbers, I really just wanna have a good return per acre, regardless of what’s on that acre. So, I’m just looking at it a little bit differently. Not all farmers are gonna look at it the way we have. You know, how many more pounds of lamb are we getting off of the acreage because we’re feeding lambs out there, too, at times during the year?
It’s not like peaches where you have this ripe juicy peach, right? The almond has a hull, and it can be nice and green. But then it starts drying out and turning brown. Then it opens up, and you have the shell inside of that, and then you have the meat inside of that. So, in that sense, it’s just a little bit different.
But you can definitely taste it in our almond butter, you know, they’re really good. And there’s only one ingredient in there – just roasted almonds. That’s it.
When you get off of the processed stuff, you will find there is so much flavor just in regular food.
VK:
So, you don’t produce dairy anymore?
BM:
We do have some dairy cows here, but they have calves on them. I don’t know what we’re gonna end up doing. I still love the idea of doing raw milk, but I don’t know if we’ll get back to it or not. I mean, it’s nice having weekends off. We’ll see what my sister and brother-in-law want to do.
VK: Are farmers pretty supportive of each other, would you say? Especially the ones that are smaller operators that are organic or regenerative?
BM: Oh, yeah. There’s a group of us that have gotten together to bounce ideas off of each other, or to check out each other’s farms and see what works and what doesn’t.
I would say in general, farmers are very independent. And so sometimes, it’s like “hey, if you wanna do it that way, go ahead, best of luck.” [bows with hands in prayer position]. But “this is how I want to do it.” So, let’s figure out how to coexist, even if we’re not doing it the same way.
VK: Seems like you all need each other.
BM: And agriculture is so tiny. We make up less than 1.5% of the population. I don’t even know what the current percentage is, but it’s very small. So, people that don’t want ag to succeed, it’s very easy to create infighting between different industries within ag – dairy versus almonds, or whatever. We definitely need to stick together to stay in it for the long haul.
Certification and organic integrity
VK: So, a question about certification standards. The word ‘organic’ literally means grown from living matter – which means grown in soil. But, now we have the USDA approving hydroponically grown blueberries as organic. And most people don’t know the difference.
What do you think about that? Where does the blueberry get its nutrition from? And then how about the person who eats that blueberry?
BM: That’s a good point.
That’s kind of why the Real Organic Project got started. Over a concern that the integrity of organic was being eroded when the USDA approved hydroponic tomatoes as organic.
I think that there are people that really believe that that way of farming is the way to go, and that’s fine. They can go that way. I personally think that we need to have plants in the ground.
The other thing is that everybody wants convenience, and they want it year-round. And so eating seasonally and locally is just not on people’s minds. They go to Costco, and they get blueberries every day of the year there. And the real cost of that isn’t taken into account. They are flying these from South America all the way up here, right? Like, that’s incredible that we’re doing that. Coffee is a fairly shelf stable product. And we can’t grow coffee here, so, sure, bring some up, you know.
Anyway, [back to your original question] I think that we need to be utilizing the soil and figuring out ways to just do that more efficiently to keep the nutrition there. That means that we have to feed the soil, not just plant. To make it grow right, we gotta take care of what’s underneath.
Future plans and community engagement
VK: So, besides almonds and olive oil products, you also sell pasture-raised meats and eggs. Please tell us where people can find your products.
BM: Yeah. You can find many of our products on our website. We don’t have everything listed on there, but we do have a farm store that has beef, lamb, pork, and chicken. So, people are welcome to come anytime to actually pick up some locally raised meats and to look at the farm.
We also have farm tours available now. I think connecting people to their food is really important. And so we gotta make ourselves available to educate and share the story.
We just started the tours pretty recently. There are some local schools and universities that want to come [see what we’re doing]. We wanna develop an internship program as well, for people who want to learn hands on. And we’re thinking about offering farm stays down the line, too.
