Farmer writes book about regenerative practices

CLARE, Ill. — Working with consumers who want to learn more about how their food is produced sparked Dan Sanderson to write a book about his regenerative farming practices.

“I would not have ever dreamed I would write a book,” said Sanderson, who is a lifelong farmer in DeKalb County in northern Illinois and owner of Pasture Grazed Regenerative Farm together with his wife, Hattie, and their children, Trent Sanderson and Rosie Trump.

The idea for his book, “Grounded: One Farmer’s Journey to Regenerative Agriculture,” came from the people who have attended the family’s Farm-to-Table event on the farm in September, Sanderson said.

“We hand out a questionnaire at the event and there were a lot of comments from people who wished they had something to read ahead of the event about regenerative agriculture,” he explained. “So, I’m speaking to the people we’re selling our products to, to explain a little bit about what we’re doing.”

For years, it has been a family tradition for Sanderson to prepare homemade pizzas from scratch on Sunday nights for his family.

“I go to a dairy in Wisconsin and get specialty cheese and somewhere along the way I thought it would be fun to make my own pizza crust,” he recalled.

“So, I bought a little mill and started milling wheat, rye and even some cornmeal and I started making my own pizza crusts,” he said. “Rosie makes the pizza sauce from tomatoes in our garden, and whether anybody is coming or not, Hattie and I are having pizza on Sunday nights and it is open to our kids and grandkids.”

Sanderson partnered with a baker in Mt. Morris to make frozen pizza crusts from his ground rye, corn meal and wheat.

“When I want to make a pizza, I pull out a frozen crust, throw my ingredients on, put it in a 500-degree oven and we have pizza in five minutes,” the farmer said.

“Rosie markets that idea — come to our family table and we’ll show you how we do Sunday night pizza,” he said about the Farm-to-Table events. “We try to incorporate all local ingredients from farmers in the area because we want to promote everyone.”

The event includes a tour of the 160-acre Pasture Grazed farm, that includes about 30 cow-calf pairs, a 60-ewe flock and a few pigs.

“All the meat we sell from Pasture Grazed is value-added and consumer direct,” Sanderson said. “Our focus is selling halves and quarters of beef and we have a small farm store to sell individual cuts, but the store is open by appointment only.”

At The Core

The recipient of the 2025 Illinois Leopold Conservation Award, Sanderson has planted cover crops, which is one aspect of regenerative farming, on his farm since the beginning of his farming career.

“Set-aside acres were the normal because we were in a time when there was an overabundance of production,” he recalled.

“You had to plant a cover crop on the set-aside acres and we saw the results of resting the ground for a year,” he said. “The Soil and Water Conservation Districts would have programs to promote cover crops so my family was always trying something.”

Through these programs, the farmers learned what worked and what did not work.

“Because they were cost-share programs, I wasn’t financially at risk so I was willing to do them,” Sanderson said.

“Then the internet and YouTube came along and somewhere, somehow, some way, I came across the Soil Health Academy classes,” he said. “In September 2017, Trent and I were part of the first class and it was a three-day school at Gabe Brown’s ranch in North Dakota.”

Sanderson went to the school thinking he was a forward-thinker since he had tried a lot of things and he understood soil health.

“I came away from there realizing that I had so much to learn,” he admitted.

“I had undervalued the life in the soil and it is hard to see biology in the soil,” he said. “Mother Nature hates monocultures — she wants diversity, but with commodity agriculture we’re trying to grow a single crop.”

Body And Soil

On the Pasture Grazed farm, about 25 acres are permanent pasture.

“We graze animals there during the summer while we’re growing small grains on the other acres,” Sanderson said. “They get harvested in July and then we plant cover crops.”

“There will be animal impact on every acre because by Aug. 1 the animals are coming off our permanent pasture and going on the cover crops,” he said.

In addition, Sanderson will farm about 2,600 acres of certified organic in 2026.

“On my organic acres, when I do fall tillage, I plant cover crops,” he noted.

“We flew on spring barley and cereal rye yesterday and we’re working those in on our soybean acres today,” he said. “The spring barley will jump up quickly this fall and the frost will kill it, but the cereal rye will green up in the spring so I will have something green there until I plant my next organic crop.”

Transitioning fields to organic production is a process.

“I don’t see it as a corn crop or a bean crop,” Sanderson said. “I need to do each field a little different, because the context is different in each field.”

“Transitioning to organic is expensive,” he said. “My soil is different and I would never have seen it if I had not made the transition, but it is not an easy transition.”

For more information about the farm, go to www.pasture-grazed.com.