what we do
100% COMMITTED
OUR MISSION
Our Mission is to be a part of the climate solution and grow food that is healthy for animals, people, land, and environment.
Integrated Farming
regenerative agriculture
Regenerative agriculture is an approach to food and farming systems that focuses on topsoil regeneration, increasing biodiversity, improving the water cycle, enhancing the ecosystem, supporting bio-sequestration of carbon, increasing resilience, minimizing waste, reversing climate change, and strengthening the health and vitality of the soil.
We use regenerative agricultural practices to produce high quality meat, nuts, and produce. Our system is a holistic one that thrives on an interconnected community with all the parts mutually working and benefiting each other. We raise poultry outside on fresh grass, clean air, and sunshine the way animals should be raised, as opposed to the confinement indoor industrial model. Our birds are rotated every day to fresh pasture where the get a new salad bar of grass and bugs to eat in addition to a supplemental feed with vitamins and minerals. The fresh diet of our birds keeps them healthy so we never have to use medications or antibiotics, and the meat is more nutritionally dense with less fat and a higher content of Vitamins A, D, and E and Omega 3. We have fruit and nut trees planted in our pasture that are fertilized by the manure left behind from our moving poultry which in turn eat the leaves and fruit that falls from the trees. Our birds act as our lawnmowers, pest control, and fertilizer program. People sometimes ask if we are a sustainable farm. I believe that sustainable is not enough and implies keeping something at the status quo. Obviously, what we have been sustaining for the last 100 years or so is not leading us to a good place. We want to have a net positive impact on our environment and build something better than it was before while reducing CO2.
Our Methods
Our management practices are based on many hours of dedicated study and research from some of the leading experts in the regenerative agriculture field. If you are interested in learning more about regenerative agriculture and its environmental impact we recommend the following scientific based resources. The Rodale Institue on organic agriculture research, The Savory Institute on holistic management, and Project Drawdown for climate change solutions.
We utilize a number of different tools in toolbox to achieve our goal of a successful farm with negative environmental impact. These are as follows.
- Minimizing and reusing waste streams We recycle everything including dead animals and manure on our farm. We place these “waste streams” in a vented container where the Black Soldier Fly lays its eggs. The larvae feed on manure and carrion and eventually grow to a large grub that is 50% protein. These high protein pupae then crawl out of the container where they are eagerly scarfed up by our birds as a high protein nutritious food source.
- Renewable Energy We use the power of the sun as free renewable heat to keep our brooder warm for our baby ducklings. By designing a low-tech solar collector coupled with a water storage tank, our baby birds stay around 90F for their first few weeks until they grow all of their downy feathers and can go outside.
- Silvopasture This is number 11 of Project Drawdown’s most effective solutions to climate change. Adding trees in pastures to aid in long-term carbon storage while allowing enough space for grasses to grow for grazing livestock can sequester 5-10 times more carbon than grassland alone.
- Rotational Grazing Studies by the Rodale Institute and Project Drawdown’s number 17, have shown that when adding livestock in an area and rotationally grazing properly can increase carbon sequestration 50 fold. What’s more is that if this practice was done on all agricultural land in the US, we could sequester enough carbon to reverse CO2 to pre-industrial levels in just a few years!
- Perennial crops We are trialing many different varieties of perennial crops including blueberries, mulberries, chestnut, pecan, citrus, paw paw, plum, goji berry, and more in order to hone in on the varieties best suited to our site and management. Perennials sequester more carbon, are more resilient, and require less inputs than that of annuals crops.
What we do
OUR MISSION
Our Mission is to be a part of the climate solution and grow food that is healthy for animals, people, land, and environment.
