First Camano Island Sound Horsekeeper
/Congratulations to Liz Abelsen, the first person on Camano Island, for receiving our Sound Horsekeeping sign. This well-deserved honor demonstrates all of the amazing Best Management Practices that Liz has in place on her property to protect water quality, build healthy soils, and create a healthy and happy environment for her mini-horses, chickens, gardens, and abundant wildlife that call this Camano oasis home. Utilizing heavy use areas, pasture management techniques, and an amazing manure management system that she has developed, Liz has created an ecosystem-based farm full of creativity and life.
One of the amazing aspects of Liz’s farm is her use of manure. Liz has created amazing soil tilth on her property that is demonstrated by the health of her pastures, her trees, and her garden beds. Liz uses an abundant community of worms to help her compost the manure that her animals provide her. This compost is used to nourish Liz’s land, creating soils that filter and hold water, nourish plants, and produce food for her and her animals in return. She has become an expert at recycling nutrients letting nothing go to waste.
Her land management is born out of a philosophy best stated in her own words…
“Building beautiful land cannot be done overnight. You need to watch and be in tune with your land. Adjust to what the land needs.”
Her words demonstrate the patience, commitment and work that Liz has put into her beautiful property. She is a reminder of what can be achieved by being in tune with the ecosystem that you inhabit and working “in tune” with that ecosystem instead of against it. And her horses are some of the happiest I have seen.
