Our story
How we farm, and what we are trying to build
What we are trying to do with this ground, why we sell direct, and where we draw the line on claims.
The short version is that we are trying to farm in a way that leaves this ground better than we found it, and to sell what comes off it straight to the people who eat it.
Those two things are connected. Selling direct is what makes the careful version affordable, because there is nobody in between taking a margin that would otherwise have to come out of how the food is grown.
What follows is how we think about it. It is the reasoning rather than a set of specifications, and toward the end there is a plain account of what we will not claim yet.
What we are trying to do with this ground
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Raised outdoors on pasture
The birds live outside on grass. That is the one thing about how they are raised that we state plainly, and it is the piece that shapes everything else, because animals on pasture and animals in a building are two different farms.
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Leave the soil better than we found it
The topsoil is the actual asset here, more than any building or piece of equipment. A farm that mines it is spending its inheritance, and a farm that builds it is doing the only thing that compounds over a century.
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Small enough to pay attention
There is a scale past which you stop noticing individual animals and individual beds, and a great deal of what makes small farm food better happens below that line. Staying under it is a deliberate choice.
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Diverse rather than specialized
Birds, vegetables, storage crops and flowers on one place. It is harder to run than one enterprise done at scale, and it is far more resilient, because a bad year in one part of it is not a bad year outright.
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Sold direct, to people nearby
Straight from us to the household eating it. That is what lets a farm this size be careful about how things are grown, and it means the person who raised your food is somebody you can put a question to.
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Built to still be here in fifty years
The front place has been in one family since 1905, which sets a standard for the timescale decisions get made on. Almost nothing that looks smart over one season looks smart over four generations.
What we will not claim
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1
No certification we do not hold
We are not making a certification claim of any kind. If one ever becomes real and is on paper, we will say so and you will be able to check it. Until then the absence of a claim is the honest position.
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2
No detailed husbandry promises yet
Beyond birds being outdoors on pasture, we are not publishing specifics about how they are raised. Not because there is something to hide, but because a specific in writing is a promise, and promises should follow experience.
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3
Ask us anything specific
What a page cannot do is answer your particular question. If there is something you want to know about how something was grown or raised, ask us directly and you will get a straight and specific answer.
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We will publish more as we earn it
As practices settle into things we have actually done for several seasons, they will go up here in detail. A farm six months in that publishes a full specification is describing an intention and calling it a method.
Why any of this matters
Alex puts the argument better than a website usually can. All wealth bottoms out in food and water, so anyone with an interest in the real thing needs some handle on where theirs comes from. That is not a marketing line, it is the reason two people with a young family took this on.
The version of that most people can act on is small. Get a deep freeze and put a few chickens in it from a farmer down the road. Grow a couple of things in the yard. Put a herb box on the windowsill. None of that makes anyone self sufficient and all of it moves somebody a little further toward having a say.
There is a version of food that is extractive, of the land and of the people eating it, and there is a version that heals a bit of ground and feeds somebody nearby. We are trying to farm the second way, and being close to the people who eat it is most of what makes it possible.
That is also the answer to what makes this farm different, and it is not the practices. There will be other people doing this, and more of them every year, which is a good thing. What is different here is the two people doing it, a hundred and twenty years of one family on the front place, and the fact that you can drive out and ask.
Questions people ask
Are you certified organic?
No, and we are not making any certification claim on any of this. If one ever becomes real and is on paper we will say so plainly. What we can tell you is the intent, which is farming in a way that leaves the ground better.
How exactly are the chickens raised?
Outdoors on pasture. That is the claim we make in writing. For anything more specific, ask us directly rather than reading it off a page, and you will get a straight answer about how it was actually done.
What does regenerative mean here?
In plain terms, farming so the soil improves rather than depletes. It is a word that gets used loosely, so we would rather describe the intent than lean on the label, and let what we actually do settle over a few seasons.
Why sell direct instead of wholesale?
Because a margin taken in the middle has to come out of somewhere, and on a small farm it usually comes out of how carefully things are grown. Selling direct is what makes the careful version work financially.
Why does the family history matter?
It sets the timescale. The front place has been in one family since 1905, and decisions made against a hundred year horizon look different from ones made against a single season. That is most of what shapes the approach.
How do I know any of this is true?
Ask, and come out. A farm you can drive to, where you can meet the people and see the birds, is a very different proposition from a label on a package. That is the whole advantage of buying close to home.
Elsewhere on the farm
Ask us anything specific
If there is something you want to know about how something is grown or raised, ask and you will get a straight answer rather than a label.
Get in touch