About us
Who We Are
We are a little family on a sizable stretch of land in east TN, building up a local food/farming community.
One of us is an artist, homeschooler, chicken lady whose favorite part of every day is hugging the dogs. One of us is a sheep fence mover, water toter, family doctor who rides in trucks with goats. There are little people who are great at catching chickens, petting bunnies, digging up carrots, and climbing trees.
What we Do
We grow meadows and forests.
They in turn feed and house pastured chicken, turkey, duck, eggs, pork, and grass-fed lamb.
We focus on quality nutritious food, highly respectful animal welfare, sustainable and regenerative land management, and cultivating joyful community around food and land.
We are also building up relationships with community members who wish to participate in farming. Stay tuned on this part. It’s going to be fun.
How We Got Here
Children
As our family grew we began to take a hard look at the quality of the food we were consuming. We were concerned with the nutritional quality, the flavor, and the cleanliness of our food (no chemical additives anywhere along the way). We wanted our food to nourish our bodies in a restorative and medicinal way.
We also considered the environmental impacts coming from large scale food production. All the learning and listening led us to grow our own food – as much as space and time allowed. Enter: homesteading.
Responsibility
After a few years of homesteading, we began to feel a little selfish. We felt (and still feel) a sense of responsibility to share our flavorful and nutritious food with our neighbors. We all deserve access to quality food, not just those of us fortunate enough to have access to farmland. We also feel a deep responsibility to steward the land we are on for our lifetime well. We want to use it wisely now and to build it up for future generations, protecting soil and water and air.
Pleasure
We like to ride in trucks with dogs and goats. Bouncy piggie tails are the best. Turkeys are the most magnificent birds and in our humble opinion should be the national bird (watch out bald eagle). Fried pastured chicken tenders taste heavenly. Sheep calm us. Ducks in a kiddie pool represent irreplaceable joy.
We got started farming in 2020, after many years of homesteading. We like food – really good flavorful fresh food. We also really like getting dirty and working hard and hanging out with non-humans.
Growing Practices
Our primary goal in growing food is to grow it in the most ecologically sustainable way possible.
Most current commercial agricultural relies heavily on importing fertility to the soil with chemicals, even if they are organic chemicals. Our objective is to use sustainable practices to create an environment that maintains fertility for generations without the use of chemical fertilizer.
Practically, this involves using our chickens and sheep as primary means to mow the fields and then add nutrients back to the soil. We do this by lots of movement: moving our sheep, with chickens behind, around our meadows. We use smaller paddocks to make sure every inch of the field is fertilized, as all us animals tend to find favorite spots and keep to them. This also minimizes tractor use so the soil is minimally disturbed, limiting erosion.
We try to mimic nature as much as possible, giving each species what they love in a way that provides optimum health and happiness. Here again comes a benefit of intensive grazing. By moving the grazing paddocks very often and allowing for ample pasture rest between, the animals have a balanced fresh diet free from parasites and pathogens found in heavily grazed areas. The soil also has an opportunity to rebound from the trampling and mowing. Root systems deepen. Pathogen and parasite life cycles are interrupted. This practice imitates large scale migration which is what most grazers would do if they were able.
These practices do require extra effort on our part but should pay off with fertile soil for decades to come.
