Every creature that has lived on earth has affected air, soil and water from the beginning of time.
We sometimes have an incorrect notion of letting nature be to repair itself, forgetting that humans have been tending this land for millennia. As we become rooted in place it’s important to to remember how to care and innovate systems thinking that applies to today and our long now.
Red Dot Ranch is an entrepreneurial NGO moving regenerative innovations for food and shelter from the lab to the land with a strategic focus on water and fire. We are field station and pilot site.
WATER
All the water that exists on earth is all the water that has ever existed on earth. We have a design problem, not a supply problem.
The entire world is the built environment now and no where is this more obvious than our water system. We take water from one bioregion and use it in another—drinking it in plastic, flushing it down toilets, letting it run off degraded agricultural soil, or channeling it through complex stormwater systems. Our built systems move fresh water to the sea at alarming rates, altering the natural balance of the planet — even affecting the Earth’s polarity. To help sea level rise, flooding, drought, fire and famine we need to help water find its way home.
Red Dot Ranch is located in Pescadero California. Pescadero has it’s own watershed the Pescadero - Butano Creek watershed, yet many residents live without access to clean water and sanitation. This fact became the impetus to research aquifer recharge through biochar and soil water holding capacity as well as decentralized water systems for homes.
FIRE
Petroleum based products like plastic contribute to climate change and are present in our water systems and biology. Yet we have ample woody biomass that could be utilized in healthy climate smart solutions.
40% of California forest land is privately held with 90% of those parcels 50 acres or less. That represents 11.88 million acres in small holdings like ours. We need small to mid scale solutions for land stewardship.
Woody biomass is a resource. Thinning the forest will reduce fire risk while creating value-added products such as biochar and small-dimensional lumber for nail-laminated timber. These practices simultaneously sequester carbon, improve soil fertility, and open new landscapes for native food production. Regenerative thinking compounds positive relationships.
By farming the forest we can create pathways for small to mid sized farms to pay for land stewardship turning fire risk into a regenerative resource.
Red Dot Ranch has an overgrown stand of trees. This land needs our care. On our particular hill reducing fire risk protects the town of Pescadero below and decreasing overgrowth and plant pressure will encourage a seep that feeds Butano Creek.