What’s “regenerative agriculture”?
Most corporate agribusiness enterprises, including those that are “organic*”, fertilize the soil to add the minimum nutrients required to grow a crop, and then harvest that crop leaving very little residual fertility. Regenerative agriculture is about farming in a way that naturally adds more nutrients to the soil than we extract. This requires following, as best we can, the formula already expressed in naturally fertile environments. Foraging animals — and their manure — create soil fertility naturally, if the soil and foliage are given time to rest, recover, and regrow. By intensively managing our animals and moving them around the farm, we ensure that areas that need attention get it, and areas that need a rest, get that as well. We try to mimic the natural cycle that has produced naturally fertile soils all over the world.
Don’t we need conventional farming to feed everyone?
No, yields per input are higher from land that is farmed regeneratively. What we need are not more chemicals and capital-intensive machinery but instead more farmers. Young men and women today are told that only foolish losers grow food or build things with their hands, and that smart people spend their time IPOing special purpose acquisition companies to purchase online brands with negative EBITDA. Building and maintaining good soil is perhaps one of the most important things anyone can do for the world, next to raising children responsibly, or creating good art. The industrial revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race: instead of using technology responsibly in order to preserve and improve the bounty of nature for everyone, we’ve leveraged the scarce resources of future generations to enrich a small number of billionaires who thrive on financial legerdemain and have never produced anything of real value. The truth is opposite to the conventional line that the way to feed people is to wantonly use non-renewable resources; in fact, for those who don’t contribute more than we extract, the future is likely to look very bleak. It just so happens that natural processes produce better, more fertile soil in the long term than any artificial methods can achieve. And, contra Keynes, in the long run we owe future generations a liveable future. The role of a farmer is to facilitate these processes through proper resource management. Farmers make food: transnational chemical corporations simply steal food from your grandchildren and sell it to you at a premium. All that said, in the present-day system of farming, anyone helping to grow real food, even an agrochemist, is providing a valuable service, and we should appreciate their work while facilitating a change to more regenerative practices. Perhaps the real answer is, Yes, given the horribly unnatural present system of agriculture, we do need conventional farmers and they do very necessary work; however, we do not need to keep making the same mistakes. We can choose a more natural path.
What are you doing that is regenerative agriculture?
By doing what they do naturally, our livestock help us improve the farm. Our meat chickens are a natural source of nitrogen to help fertilize pasture grass. Our sheep are wonderful at mowing the grass and they eat some tansy, some thistle, and blackberry leaves but not the canes. Managed grazing improves the pasture while also naturally spreading the sheep manure over the whole field. When we have areas we need to clear of particularly invasive vegetation, or to manage brush fire risk in the woods, the pigs do an excellent job and prepare the soil for us to seed cover crops after they are finished.
If we were to add cows to the farm at some point, cows and sheep eat differently, so we could move cows through an area to eat tall clumps of grass (thus opening up more sunlight for the shorter grasses), then sheep to eat the clovers and shorter grasses and the brambles that cows don’t eat. In a similar way, in a natural environment you might have bison move through, and then deer or antelope. While all of this is going on, flocks of birds surround and follow the herds, eating the insects that grow in and on their manure and providing some natural pest control. For us, chickens and other poultry help with that job.
We also sometimes overseed additional species that we think might help improve our pastures. For example, a friend grows Big Trefoil, a legume which grows in poor, acidic, wet soils. We’ve seeded it in some areas which meet those criteria, and if the seed does well, perhaps we’ll add more. When our pigs clear an area, for example a blackberry thicket, we sometimes wait to see what grows there (if we don’t like it we’ll just bring the pigs back) but we also seed cover crops or add larger plantings like tree guilds to provide forage for animals in the coming years.
A key practice is to rotate the animals. We don’t just let sheep out into a field, where they will go to what they like the best and eat it until it is gone. We rotate our animals around the farm, leaving plenty of time (months and sometimes years) for the soil and flora to recover from grazing. The cycle of grazing/forage plus manure deposit plus plenty of rest and recovery is what improves soil fertility and plant growth.
In the long term, water management is a key focus of our practices. We have standing water in the rainy season and dry soils in the summer. This is because there isn’t enough organic matter in the soil to retain and make use of the extra water. We’re engaging in management practices and plantings designed to increase water retention in plants, so that winter rains move naturally through healthy organic soil instead of washing away the topsoil. Since we’re on the edge of Thomas Creek, we’re very focused on preserving the riparian ecology. We get a lot of runoff from neighboring fields, so filtering that runoff through healthy soil and plant roots before it goes into the creek is something we’re very focused on.
Are you certified “organic*” (or some other official designation)?
No. “Organic” is just a trade designation meaning a farm meets with certain arbitrary criteria*. “Organic” farms can still use toxic chemicals that may be bad for you or the environment, and “organic” farms can still use methods which are extremely wasteful and destructive. For example, if an “organic” farm does 5 crops a year and tills the soil in between each crop, each pass of the tiller is destroying root structures in the soil, which may result in less organic matter (and soil fertility). Then again, “no till” farming requires using extra herbicides which, “organic” or not, are still poisonous. Of course there are natural farming methods, such as companion-planting and succession-planting, which don’t require such frequent tillage. The point is that the label “organic” doesn’t tell you which, if any, of these techniques was used. It’s foolish to just arbitrarily say that any “organic” method is better, without talking about the details. There are plenty of “organic” chemicals that can still make you very sick. We farm in the way that we believe is best for building soil fertility on our farm and to provide a healthy and good product for our customers. Instead of buying based on a label, you should buy food from farmers you know and trust to do what is best for the soil and ecology on their farm and for your health and well-being. The only reason to buy a food product because of its label is if you need to check that it meets your dietary restrictions.
There are some classifications we might pursue, because doing so would help us be better regenerative farmers. If we were to do so it would only be to improve our own management practices, and we wouldn’t share those classifications with you nor would we base our marketing on them.
* Organic labeling is mostly about paperwork. There is notoriously insufficient field testing of “organic” food. That is not to say that most organic food sold in stores probably isn’t, just that it’s likely impossible to be sure either way. Perhaps the multinational agribusinesses which pay their legal teams to write the industry standards in order to qualify as “organic” and sell food at twice the price are always extremely careful to maintain “organic” practices even when no one is looking and it could double their profits to cut corners. Perhaps not. Your local farmer is likely a lot more “organic” than anything sold in a supermarket, even if they don’t have a fancy (and expensive) certification.
What do you do in winter? Do your animals stay in a barn?
We don’t use a barn for the animals. All of our animals are outdoors all day, every day of the year, except meat chicks which stay in a brooder for 2 or 3 weeks until they have enough feathers to keep warm outdoors. We make sure all our animals have plenty of water, and shade when they need it. Other than that, we manage our animals using natural cycles rather than artificial means. Sheep are perfectly fine on a cold rainy night; that’s what sheep wool is for. If we have lambs born out of season we might provide them with a temporary field shelter for the first 24 hours or so, but we try to time lambing for spring when most lambs do just fine. Pigs do just fine in the winter, when the walnuts and acorns have fallen from the trees to supplement their pig feed. In the summer we make sure the pigs have mud wallows and shade to stay cool. We only raise meat chickens in the summer, and we time chicken processing so that we don’t have full-grown, large chickens in the field during the hottest period of the summer. In general, we just let the animals be themselves. They can usually take care of themselves just fine if people don’t try to make them be something they’re not. We do lock up our chickens at night to protect them from predators, since they’re extremely diurnal.
How can I buy your stuff?
We mostly produce to order, so tell us of your interest and we’ll let you know when we can fill your order. Make sure to sign up for our email newsletter, as that’s how we communicate when orders are open and what we have available. We do bulk sales for pork or chicken or lamb), we have a monthly meat subscription CSA, and you can find us at the occasional farmers market.
What is a “CSA”?
“CSA” stands for “Community-Supported Agriculture”. Subscribers to our CSA program commit in advance to purchase a certain amount of meat from the farm each month of the year, which helps us plan and invest as needed for the rest of the year. In return, we save some of the best retail cuts of meat for our CSA customers, at a discount to farmers market prices.
Can I buy a specific (special) cut of pork or lamb?
If you want a standard cut like pork chops, lamb chops, bacon, ground pork or lamb, and so on, you’re welcome to ask what we have available. If you want to place an order it’s best to do so several months in advance. We process pigs every few months of the year so you may have to wait until our next processing day. We process lambs only in the winter. We raise meat chickens only in summer.
If you want something special like a crown roast, you’ll need to order well in advance. The most prized cuts of meat are that way because there are only a few per animal, so if you want us to set something aside for you we need to know that before we promise it to someone else. If you really want something specific, order a year in advance — we’re not kidding. Consider placing a bulk order and getting a whole or half animal custom butchered exactly the way you want it. With the savings you get from buying in bulk, for a large and special item this possibly more cost effective than paying the retail price.
Can I buy a specific cut of chicken?
We sell whole chickens only, but if you pick up on a processing day you can get a fresh chicken and cut it up into any parts you want.
Can you help me decide between buying in bulk or ordering a meat subscription (CSA)?
A bulk order is by far the better option if you want to eat good meat for a good value and you have the freezer space, can get the freezer space, or can find someone with whom you can share freezer space. With a bulk order you have total control over what cuts of meat you get, and overall you will save quite a lot of money buying in bulk, even though we try to also make our CSA subscription a good deal. The monthly meat subscription CSA is a better choice if you want to get meat from us for a few special meals each month and you don’t want to fill up your freezer or don’t have room to do so. Sometimes people will start out the the CSA for a year to give it a try, then decide they want more choice (and more meat) and opt for a bulk order the next year.
I just want to support what you are doing and price isn’t really an issue, what’s the best way for me to buy your stuff?
In all honesty, place a bulk order. It saves you money and it is better for us. With regulatory fees, storage, transportation, and other costs, we make substantially less from CSA subscriptions and farmers market sales even though those prices are higher. We structure our business so that we do well when you do well, so go ahead and get the discount on a bulk order.
Can I get the meat CSA but without (pork/chicken/lamb)?
No. You’re welcome to check out our bulk purchase programs.
Can I get the meat CSA but without some specific item? (For example, you’re allergic to a sausage ingredient.)
Almost certainly! If you tell us in advance about a food allergy or other specific request, we can probably accommodate your needs. You might not get quite the variety everyone else gets in some boxes, but we’ll make sure you get a good share and that it doesn’t include that item.
I really want to buy your products but I just can’t afford it on my budget. What should I do?
We do accept payments through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). If you are experiencing financial hardship and you haven’t applied for SNAP, please consider applying. It is neither just or socially beneficial for you to be deprived of natural, healthy food like your great grandparents ate because of modern economic conditions outside of your control. And please let us know you’re interested but can’t afford our prices: we want to know. We do have a blog post with some ideas on how to eat better on a budget. In summary, it proposes that you should spend what money you have on good meat, and that you can also grow good food on your own. We promise we aren’t saying this because we are a livestock farm, it’s just true. In fact, that’s kind of one main reason we raise livestock. Small family farming isn’t exactly a get-rich-quick scheme, and it’s unlikely we would be able to afford to feed our family this quality of meat if we didn’t raise it ourselves. Again, if you are interested but our products are out of your price range, we want to know that. Maybe we can find a way to help.
Why don’t you sell beef?
Our pastures get very wet in winter and the weight of cattle would destroy the grass. In addition, we’re working on growing enough grass to have enough lambs to fill all our orders, and cows eat even more than that. We do plan to add cows…eventually. Eventually is probably closer to a decade and not just a few years.
Do you have eggs available?
If it’s July, the answer is probably yes. If it’s October, the answer is maybe. If it’s December, no. If it’s February, maybe. Eggs are a seasonal item for us. You’re welcome to email us and ask.
Do you accept interns?
No. We believe in paying a fair wage for a good job. We can’t afford to pay a fair wage to get someone else to do our work for us. We certainly hope that will change in the future! We suggest that you just start farming. Owning land isn’t a strict requirement for small-scale livestock farming. With some legwork and ingenuity you may be able to find someone who will rent you land in exchange for a share of the profits. If you have even a small yard, you could consider raising something like meat rabbits, if it’s permitted in your area. There’s no substitute for experience, even if it’s an experience of failure. We believe you’re capable of failing — so go do it! If you succeed, let us know and maybe we’ll buy something. One important note: it’s best to start small. As the saying goes, if you’re not failing, you’re not trying. But the corollary is, if you fail, make sure it’s at a scale where you can handle the loss.
Can you really support a family as a small farmer?
Yes. We don’t, yet — we have alternative sources of income. But we’re working on it, and we wouldn’t be farming if we didn’t think it was possible. We’re still growing, and we’re trying to grow the farm organically and sustainably, without additional debt. We don’t know of anyone who is getting extremely wealthy from farming, but there are absolutely family farmers who make a reasonable living by farming full time. Then again, it depends in part on what your definition of “a reasonable living” is.
What’s the biggest obstacle to successful small farming?
Artificially low wages. None of you earn what you actually deserve, and this is due to the design of the macroeconomy. It’s difficult and relatively expensive for a moderately well-off working family to buy meat from a small farmer within 100 miles of where they live. Your great-grandparents probably ate healthier and better food than you do. Wages and salaries are absurdly low compared to your actual or potential productivity. You can go to a store and get super-size portions of cheap, unhealthy garbage to feed your family, but it’s considered a luxury to eat food grown and raised the way it was 100 years ago. The only way we see of breaking this vicious cycle is for all of us to make sacrifices to support what we want. If you don’t want it to be cheaper to buy processed junk from a junk food store than to buy real food, support people who make real food. If you want people to be able to work for local businesses at a fair wage instead of for soulless corporations, support local businesses who treat their employees and communities right. If you’re a manager at a soulless corporation, run your part of it like a local business and treat your employees and customers like real people.
How would you define success as a small farmer?
Our goals, of equal importance and in no particular order, are to make a living (pay the mortgage and reasonable monthly expenses), to preserve our local ecology (especially Thomas Creek which goes past our farm), to improve the soil fertility on our farm (we really would like to be able to feed cows someday; there’s a dairy farm next door so we know it’s possible on the local soils), and to inspire other families to try to make a living as small farmers or to support small farmers with your food dollars. We don’t really think of it in terms of achieving “success”, we think of it in terms of “being on the right track.”
What limits your growth?
Processing. We aren’t allowed to process larger animals ourselves; setting up such an enterprise is extremely expensive. (Also, even if someone gave us several million dollars to start a small scale meat processor, we don’t have enough time in each day to run the farm, let alone to add an entire new business line.) So we have to take animals to an approved processor to have them butchered. Our local small scale meat processors are great, but there aren’t very many of them, because setting up such an enterprise is so expensive. This means independent local processors are extremely busy. If we get an order today for a half pig or a lamb, it could be months (if we’re lucky) before a local processor has time to butcher it. To sell meat by the cut, which is a retail sale, we have to have that meat USDA inspected. This program is supposed to protect consumers from meat you buy from an unknown animal from an unknown farmer processed at an unknown processing plant which is then shipped from who knows where and you buy in plastic wrap from a supermarket case. Despite the fact that you could, if you wanted, come to our farm and see the animals which are producing the meat you buy from us, and you can visit the local processors who do the butchering, and inspect everything yourself, we still can’t sell you a package of chops unless it’s inspected by a Federal employee (even if those USDA workers are mostly really great people.) It is even more expensive to become a USDA-inspected small scale meat processor. Actually, it’s essentially impossible. This means there is even more demand for their services and we have to wait even longer to fill an order. We encourage everyone to support your local, independent meat processors. You can get a good deal on top quality meat if you simply go to your local butcher shop / processor and order from them. They are often family-owned small businesses and if you shop with them regularly they will remember your name and give you personalized service. You won’t find that at the supermarket.
Can I butcher my own pig or lamb share?
Absolutely! There will still be a harvest fee you’ll need to pay the butcher, but just tell them you want to pick up the carcass and butcher it yourself.
Can I slaughter my own pig or lamb share?
If you run a mobile processing business and you want to bring your truck, sure. Otherwise, no. We want to make sure the animals are harvested humanely and while you may have lots of experience doing so, we don’t have any way of knowing that. We also need to make sure that your meat is kept clean and healthy, and we don’t have facilities to ensure that here on the farm.
What is your practice regarding vaccinations and medications with your animals?
We do not give animals prophylactic medications for any reason. This includes all vaccinations. Our primary concern is flock and species health, so if our livestock are going to be exposed to a pathogen we prefer to breed in resistance rather than chase it with chemicals.
We will administer common and potentially useful medications on a case-by-case basis. If we have an animal that is clearly sick and is failing to thrive, we'll absolutely give it a shot if that could save its life. We're not going to let an animal suffer needlessly just so we can claim we never use antibiotics or anthelmintics. Likewise, if we ever had some kind of vaccine-preventable illness that was actually affecting a large number of animals, we would vaccinate. For example, baby lambs can (supposedly) get tetanus, for example through their umbilical cords before they dry up. We've never heard of anyone this happened to and examples are rare in the academic literature, but they do exist. (Often it's a case of the site of another vaccination getting infected with tetanus.) Anyways, if a whole bunch of our lambs one year get tetanus, we would probably consider vaccinating against that. But we aren't going to vaccinate for something that isn't currently and never has been a problem on our farm.
That covers everything we do (or, don't do) on the farm. Some of our animals start off the farm.
Our meat chickens and other meat poultry that come to the farm as newborn chicks are vaccinated against Marek's disease. This is not our choice, but we understand why our local, family-run hatchery has to vaccinate, and you can read the linked post for more information. We support our local hatchery and if they are ever able to offer unvaccinated chicks, we will buy them. The chicks don’t receive any other medications.
We are new at farrowing pigs, and sometimes our sows refuse to match litter size with our orders, despite us asking them nicely. We sometimes buy weaned piglets from a local Gloucester Old Spot breeder we have known for years. Because her business is breeding an endangered breed of pigs and she can’t afford to lose breed-specific genetics due to disease, she follows a vaccination protocol and also prophylactically administers an anthelmintic, as well as an antibiotic to any male piglets that are castrated, which she has to do as part of her breeding program. Once the piglets are weaned and come to our farm we don't further medicate them, unless, as mentioned, they actually get sick.
What do you do to prevent disease?
Number one is rotation. We move animals around the farm and restrict their access to where they’ve been already until the parasite life cycle is disrupted.
Number two is fresh air. All of our animals are in the open air 24/7 — except the baby chicks when they don’t have feathers yet, and we keep our brooder at a relatively low stocking rate and get the chicks out on pasture as soon as they can keep themselves warm at night.
Number three, we occasionally mix garlic powder in with the pig feed, and we occasionally feed raw garlic and hot peppers to the chickens. There are some studies showing that garlic is as or more effective than medicines at preventing pathogens in lab mice, and whether or not it's as effective as in the lab, it doesn't hurt the pigs or the chickens. We would give the sheep garlic as well, but since we only feed the sheep grass, we haven't found a way to get them to eat the garlic.
Number four, we cull. Some farmers are very focused on keeping their livestock alive. We'll do what we can for an animal and try to make sure they're comfortable. However, if we ever have to medicate an animal for any reason, we pull them from the breeding stock and they get to “graduate” to the table that year. We would rather accept a short term loss for long term population health; we don't want to breed in genetics that are disease-prone. If we do administer an antibiotic, there are laws that already prevent that animal from being processed until the chemical is out of its system; we also normally notify whoever is buying it so you know what happened and can make your own choice.
Number five, late weaning. Industry practice is often to wean lambs or piglets as soon as possible, so that the mothers can regain condition and be pushed into the next breeding cycle. We leave our animals drinking mother’s milk for as long as we can, until it looks like they're only interested in solid food. After the first few weeks they usually aren’t getting much extra nutrition from the milk, but the milk also passes disease immunities from mother to offspring. (It also helps prevent mastitis.)
Can I eat cured meats like ham raw?
No. You should not. We do not sell deli meat. First of all, the ham (or sausage, or anything else) tastes better when it is cooked.
Second, “curing” refers to adding nitrates to the meat in the form of a nitrate salt in order to preserve the meat from certain kinds of bacteria such as that which causes botulism while the meat is absorbing other flavors. The flavor you get in ham or bacon comes from the meat soaking in a wet brine solution (usually) for several weeks that is full of the spices and herbs and other things (sugar, possibly) that give it flavor. Because it needs to absorb those flavors it can be kept chilled but can’t be frozen. Without the curing salt, it would turn out like any other meat that you leave in a water bath in your refrigerator for 3 weeks. The same goes for some kinds of smoked sausage which need to stay in the smoke room for a while to absorb flavor.
The reason the curing is necessary is that the kinds of anaerobic bacteria that would grow in these conditions are not normally destroyed by normal cooking temperatures. This is the same reason you can’t water bath can meat: botulism toxin isn’t destroyed at the boiling point of water, so you can end up with a jar full of botulism = death. Properly cured ham and so on can’t grow these kinds of bacteria so you are safe from that.
However, even if the ham is completely free of any bacteria or any other pathogen when it gets frozen, as soon as you defrost it all the normal food-borne pathogen culprits that are potentially floating around in the air are going to latch onto the ham just like they would any other raw meat. So while you shouldn’t need to worry about the instant death kinds of bacteria, you do still need to cook it to get rid of the regular upset stomach kind of bacteria, just like you would any meat.
Deli hams, prosciutto, and things like summer sausage are dry-cured, meaning they are cured, and flavored, in a way that removes so much moisture that it is impossible for any kind of bacteria to grow on them. This is a very specialized process because you need to hold the meat at a specific temperature and humidity for a long time, often months, and that’s not something your typical butcher has the facilities to do.
This is all yet another reason why we don’t fool around with weird kinds of “uncured” cured meats. First of all all cured meat is cured, anything that is sold “uncured” is basically lying to you and required to do so by law because Federal food labeling guidelines are whack, dude. But also, while YOU are more than welcome to try to cold smoke uncured homemade bacon-flavored salted pork belly, if you mess up AT ALL you are risking botulism. Yes, people do it successfully all the time, but we don’t want to be involved in a food prep process that has a chance of killing you.