Anwyn Hurxthal ’92: Carbon Farming in California

August 10, 2020

For years, Anwyn Hurxthal applied the curiosity and photography skills she fostered in Marlboro’s World Studies Program to her work with Oxfam, documenting social justice, disasters, and community development around the world. Now she is using the same skills to master regenerative ranching and farming in the San Francisco Bay Area.

“Farming was never part of the plan,” says Anwyn, co-owner of Tule Ranch outside of Morgan Hill, California. “It was an American quarter horse and a Catahoula leopard dog that made us brave enough to dream of owning land.”

After living and working in Palo Alto for seven years, she and her husband, Dan, and their two children, began making weekend trips to the surrounding country in search of wider horizons.

“During this time we fell in love with, and bought, an old-soul American quarter horse, CC Jack, and a Catahoula puppy, Kai. Both of these souls are pure reflections of our own — big-land creatures that need to see the horizon and roam freely.”

After two years of looking, they found Tule Ranch, 48 acres of rangeland, straddling hills and a stream, adjoining 1,000 acres of untouched ‘open space’ wild land. Neither of them had any farming or rangeland experience, but their combined skills made them a great fit: Anwyn brought her ardor for animals, plants, land, and science, and Dan applied his ability to fix and build anything — fence lines, water pipeline leaks, bridge repairs, well monitoring, flood control, and more.

“After five years of observation, research and reflection, we see our roles here as being ‘carbon farmers,'” Anwyn says. “Within our lifetime, our goal is to build diverse forms of carbon—plants, soil microorganisms, fungi, insects, birds, trees, animals, throughout every micro-environment around us. Although 48 acres isn’t a huge amount of space, we intend to make every inch of it into thriving, enriched environments for wild and domesticated life.”

By turning the clock back on decades of overgrazing, synthetics use, and practices that turn a blind eye to everything but humans and cattle, Anwyn and Dan aim to restore the land to its most healthy state and to grow only what serves the land and its inhabitants sustainably. Carbon and healthy soil lie at the heart of every ranch decision.

“Over time, we’ve woven together a fabric of diverse creatures and systems that serve each other well,” says Anwyn.

A herd of Highland cattle act as “fire grazers” in a region known for devastating wildfires, and enrich the land with generous manure. Baby doll sheep graze and fertilize the olive grove without harming the trees. A flock of 70 diverse chickens control pesky insects that follow the grazers, and their beloved dogs protect the livestock from wild predators while allowing the coyotes and mountain lions to coexist nearby.

“Last but not least, for purely selfish purposes, our horses serve as a human religion of sorts,” she said.

“The irony is that we’re trying to work with the land in simple ways that all our ancestors mastered thousands of years ago — using old land-management techniques that prioritized stewardship and balance. The most valuable tools we’ve come to use are our powers of observation and our curiosity, traits that were nurtured at Marlboro. Beloved professors like Birje Patel were masters at their craft, but above all else asked fantastic questions and taught that skill to their students.”

Profile originally published in Potash Hill.