Stewardship

We care for our animals the way we believe God intended; living outdoors and expressing their instinctive behaviors. Our cattle forage on pasture every day of their lives – no grain, ever. They live in a low stress environment and are rotated to fresh pastures to simulate the mob grazing effect found in nature. This practice enhances the natural growth of the grasses on our pastures, which creates a truly sustainable system that requires little additional input from us. 

Our hogs get to live outdoors, root in the dirt, run and play, sleep beneath the shade of a tree and simply enjoy being a hog. Rotated every 7-12 days through different paddocks, they always have access to fresh forage and don’t over-impact the topsoil. They are handled humanely and get to live outside as they were meant to do – rooting in the dirt!

Through these practices we continue to enhance the land by building regenerative landscapes that sequester more carbon, absorb more clean water, and photosynthesize more sunlight.

Honest Benefits

No misleading labels or tricks. It’s not enough to be grass fed, cattle also need to be grass finished. Meat that’s labeled as “grass fed,” only guarantees that it was fed grass at least 9 months out of its life. Since a cow usually lives for 18-24 months before being processed, that’s still a lot of time that they could be eating grain. All of our cows are grass finished, meaning they eat grass their entire life.

Any supplements provided to our animals are at a minimum non-GMO, some such as the kelp meal our cattle receive is even organic. We believe that keeping our products as clean and close to nature as possible is the best way to raise the highest quality product.

Helping Nature Helping Us

In addition to caring about our animals, we care about the land they live on. By utilizing rotational and mob grazing techniques we are better able to mimic the natural impacts of herds on the grasslands. The herd moves as it would in nature, only eating the tops of the plants leaving more strength in the plant to continue to grow and deepen the root system. Through this system the plants grow stronger and thicker, are able to reduce surface water runoff as more rain is absorbed into the soil, and continue feeding the soil in which it’s growing. The land is a living organism and we recognize the role our animals play in the life cycle of that environment. Soil microbes feed the plants that then feed our animals, those animals spread their urine and feces which feeds the microbes in the soil and the cycle begins again. This allows us to build our soils health and produce a higher quality forage for our animals without the use of synthetic fertilizer.

We are excited and proud to work with some of our local agricultural and conservation agencies to continue to improve our farm and the impact it has on our environment. In the past our animals had free access to any of the streams or ponds on our property as is traditionally done on many farms. One of our focuses is protecting the water quality coming from our farm as we recognize it has an effect ‘downstream’! In cooperation with our local agencies we have developed a plan to begin fencing our animals out of the surface water sources running through our farm. By late 2021 we plan to have the infrastructure in place to make sure our animals still have access to all the clean and fresh water they need while keeping them and their waste out of our surface water. Just another way we’re trying to leave it better than we found it!