Soil is a structure, not a surface
We stopped turning the topsoil over a decade ago. What's underneath is a slow architecture of roots, fungi, and worked-over minerals — disturb it less and it holds water, carbon, and nitrogen on its own terms.
Established 2024 · Cheyenne, Wyoming
Tabula Rasa Farms works a stretch of Wyoming high plain the old way: rest the soil, read the season, plant only what the land actually asks for.
Tabula rasa — Latin for a slate wiped clean. It's the name of this place because every March the ground here forgets last year and waits to be told what comes next. Forty-one years of family farming taught us that's not a metaphor. It's a method.
The ground
We stopped turning the topsoil over a decade ago. What's underneath is a slow architecture of roots, fungi, and worked-over minerals — disturb it less and it holds water, carbon, and nitrogen on its own terms.
Wheat, then legumes, then a cover crop, then nothing at all for a season. Every plot earns a rest on a fixed rotation, not a guess — the land tells us when it's tired before the yield does.
High-plain Wyoming swings forty degrees in a day. We plant varieties bred for that swing instead of fighting it with more water and more chemical — the input we save is usually the one we didn't need.
Practices
Scroll, and watch this season's plot map get chalked in field by field — exactly how it gets planned on the wall of the equipment shed every February.
The seasons
The first green comes up through last year's stubble on Plot A.
Lentils and field peas hold nitrogen in the ground on Plot B.
Wheat comes off Plot A and goes to the co-op elevator within days.
Stubble gets mapped and Plot C is logged back into next year's plan.
The land
The farm sits on open ground outside Cheyenne, at elevation, where the wind does half the drying and the winters do most of the pest control. We didn't choose this land for its ease. We chose it because it still behaves like land — not like infrastructure.
This season
Soil tests come back. Cover crop on Plot C gets terminated and left to break down in place.
Winter wheat on Plot A breaks dormancy. Lentils go into Plot B as soon as the frost risk clears.
First sunflower trial on Plot D — eleven acres, three varieties, watching for what handles the wind.
Wheat harvest. Grain goes to the co-op elevator in Cheyenne within the week.
Plot C re-enters rotation planning. Plot A's stubble gets mapped for next year's legume rest.
Visit
We take visitors by appointment, mostly during planting and harvest when there's actually something to look at. Reach out and we'll find a day that works.