One of the most common things I get asked on the farm is "are your animals happy animals?" And I love this question for a couple reasons. First, it tells me that we have really engaged customers that are asking the right questions and secondly, the answer is yes we do!

One of our driving motivations for the purchase was to be able to start doing more value-added products with our chicken and turkey.

I believe that farming regeneratively does require working with the seasons to be successful.

When we took over the conventional corn/soybean fields that now make up our (now) lush pasture the soil had been totally depleted by conventional farming practices. It had been depleted to the point that our first grass seedlings would barely grow! Since then, we have seen an increase in our organic matter of 60% in the first 5 years.

We came to the realization years ago that there were always going to be difficulties in owning businesses (and especially a farm being one of those businesses), so we weren’t going to be surprised at hardships.

Winter grazing really requires the ground to be frozen so that the cattle don’t do damage to the pastures. We had planned to graze quite a bit of acreage with stockpiled forages, but we haven’t really been able to get to hardly any of it this winter.

I think that my job as a regenerative farmer is the opposite of limiting losses… we focus on working within our environment to ENCOURAGE life to thrive.

One interesting nuance about raising poultry on pasture though is that the 800 sq. ft that our chickens get each day is a brand new, untouched 800 sq. ft of pasture.

So, we had a couple really long, cold days digging paths out to the cattle and repairing fence lines in the cold. Such is farming.

It’s a much bigger issue of lying with marketing that goes on so that these brands can present themselves as wholesome.

…we’re constantly improving, sometimes failing and always changing. We’re realizing that we can’t do everything ourselves, so we need to tailor the farm to suit what we WANT to do and what we’re exceptional at.

Farming is a very unique industry because there is always a level of cooperation and assistance for each other.