What is Regenerative Agriculture?
So what does a farmer do?
Traditionally: Rooster for an alarm clock. Grab a wooden pail and head toward Bertha the milk cow. Throw some grain to free roaming chickens. Pat the pigs on the head. Hearty breakfast of eggs and bacon. Hitch up the tractor to plow some fields.
Conventionally: Check on operations. Occasionally enter confinement operations. Drive vehicle around industry-deemed “houses”. Office work.
Regeneratively: Animals come first. Chores are done ASAP. Build, experiment, improve. Marketing. Lots of marketing. Educate educate educate; selves, customers, communities. Some days are spent in the library working away. Some are spent under the sun.
Some days it’s a marathon on a time crunch, like it was yesterday...
Up at the butt crack of dawn (Ok, not off to a great start, but I heard a farmer once say this and thought it too hilarious to pass up. You're welcome.)
Transfer the adolescent turkeys from the brooder into crates. Old enough for moving day!
Power clean the brooder. New bedding, sanitize materials, restring heat lamps.
Day-old chicks arrive. Unload the floofs. Examine for any stress signs. Cuddle for exactly 2 minutes.
Prepare temporary adolescent turkey home. New bedding. Set up ramps. Sanitize materials. Get crapped on. Turkeys poo something fierce when they’re scared, but surprise! They have nothing to be afraid of. It’s a new outdoor home.
Move pastured chickens from hoop coop to free-range pen. They’re now big enough to not slip through gaps. Haul trampoline in for shade (many uses, trampolines). Install new waterer system.
Rotational move of pastured turkeys. Time for new patch of fresh grass. Herd back in Escapee per usual. Joke’s on her, we found the eggs. Great for making pancakes. (Yes, you can eat them. Yes, they taste like chicken eggs.)
Rotational move of pastured pigs. Feed has been withheld for 24 hours, and they’re demanding (and LOUD) when hungry.
Head to the garden. Stop at the volunteer pumpkin patch on the way (what goes into a pig, must come out, and occasionally that means a pumpkin patch the following year). Water, prune, harvest. 105 lbs of produce and counting!
Chiropractic appointment. Health. Matters.
Pick up truck load of custom feed from the local mill.
Breakfast at noon. (Farm fresh bacon and eggs are still a thing!) We live like farmers but eat like kings. Food. Matters.
Marketing. Prepare email campaign. Identify gyms to reach out to. Develop nutritional talk we’ll be giving at the chiropractor in a few weeks. Education. Matters.
Snack on our mouthwatering bull jerky.
Research. We take educating ourselves very seriously. If we don’t know what we’re talking about, no one will.
Build awesome resources list for the website. (Coming soon!)
Spend the remainder of the day preserving food, checking on new animals, testing meat recipes (also for website!), and thinking about our awesome customers. People. Matter.
The end.
And there you have it! Day to day it changes, but farm work keeps us on our toes. During the summer, Joshua and I wish days were at least 36 hours long. Local farmers don’t work for the weekend. We work through the weekend, but winters are like our weekend. Just one, giant weekend...
Everything you need to know about every pork cut.