Our Practices
Better for You
Compared with the corn-fed or grain-fed meat you find in the supermarket, our grass-fed beef has less total fat, saturated fat, cholesterol, and calories. It also has more vitamin E, beta-carotene, vitamin C, and a number of health-promoting fats, including omega-3 fatty acids and “conjugated linoleic acid,” or CLA. Our beef contains no added hormones or antibiotics.
Better for the Cattle
Free from the unhealthy confinement and the unnatural diet of the industrial feedlot system, our grass-fed animals live low-stress lives. They are so healthy that there is no reason to treat them with antibiotics or other drugs.
Better for the Planet
Instead of a farmer tilling the soil, planting corn, harvesting it, and feeding it to the cattle, our cattle harvest their own food: pasture. This minimizes the use of non-renewable energy, minimizes erosion, and builds rather than depletes soil fertility. We use no synthetic chemical fertilizers, pesticides, or soil amendments.
Cattle
Our cattle are the foundation of our holistic farming system that mimics nature in a way that builds fertility in the soil, treats the animals humanely, and produces healthy food. In the spring, summer, and fall, we move our cattle every day to graze in a fresh paddock of pasture. The cattle trample what they don’t eat, leaving behind plenty of organic material to feed earthworms and other organisms and return nutrients to the soil. We provide free-choice minerals in the form of Redmond rock salt. During the winter, we feed them hay and bales of wrapped high-moisture hay.
Chickens
Our chickens live out on the same pasture as the cattle. We buy them as day-old chicks and care for them in a brooding house for the first four weeks. In the brooding house, they are sheltered from the weather and predators. We feed them only certified organic feed with no antibiotics and no hormones. At 28 days of age, we put them out onto our pasture, where their houses get moved daily onto fresh grass, and they spend their days chasing after bugs and eating green plants as well as the feed we give them. The resulting meat chicken is incredibly delicious and good for you, and their days out on the pasture give back a bounty of fertilizer for our soil.
Pigs
Our Pigs live completely different lives from the nightmarish conditions of the modern industrial pig farm. Our pigs live, eat and play outdoors (with shelter from the sun and weather). We keep them close by the perimeter fence, where they munch on roots, acorns, and the certified organic pig feed we give them. We move them along the fence line, and they keep it clear of weeds and brush, eliminating the need for a weed-whacker. As with all our livestock, we never feed them added hormones or antibiotics.
