Here's an article I found this morning that is a nice outline of the various categories at work in contemporary food culture: Avoiding Factory Farm Food, by Nicolette Hahn Niman.
Note that all our animals fall into Niman's "Pastured" category. That is, all of our animals are raised entirely outside on pasture, and are rotated to fresh paddocks every few days. As Niman also points out, the labeling for eggs these days is specious at best. Our laying hens are outside all of the time (even at night, when they sleep in portable "tractors"), and are free-ranging within movable electric fencing. Our turkeys are raised the same way, and are indeed the heritage turkeys Niman writes about.
Also, to clarify, our eggs, turkeys, and pigs are raised on an all-natural ration that is custom mixed without any antibiotics or hormones. We use this term instead of "organic" because, to be organic, all the feed must be organic. Not only have I been unable to find organic feed in middle TN, but if I were, it would raise the price of everything to almost twice its current rate! One of the most surprising things about getting into farming was the almost total lack of any standard feed that is without antibiotics and/or hormones; as such, for this season I've been driving to Lebanon to get a custom ration from Edward's Feed every few weeks. So you can be confident in the integrity of our products, and that we are not adding anything to the feed ration or misleadingly labeling anything. We take this quite seriously.
I would be more than happy to talk with anyone about the details of this article, or the details of how and why we raise our animals the way we do. Also, please feel free to come out and visit the farm to see for yourself. We're only 15 minutes from downtown Nashville!
Note that all our animals fall into Niman's "Pastured" category. That is, all of our animals are raised entirely outside on pasture, and are rotated to fresh paddocks every few days. As Niman also points out, the labeling for eggs these days is specious at best. Our laying hens are outside all of the time (even at night, when they sleep in portable "tractors"), and are free-ranging within movable electric fencing. Our turkeys are raised the same way, and are indeed the heritage turkeys Niman writes about.
Also, to clarify, our eggs, turkeys, and pigs are raised on an all-natural ration that is custom mixed without any antibiotics or hormones. We use this term instead of "organic" because, to be organic, all the feed must be organic. Not only have I been unable to find organic feed in middle TN, but if I were, it would raise the price of everything to almost twice its current rate! One of the most surprising things about getting into farming was the almost total lack of any standard feed that is without antibiotics and/or hormones; as such, for this season I've been driving to Lebanon to get a custom ration from Edward's Feed every few weeks. So you can be confident in the integrity of our products, and that we are not adding anything to the feed ration or misleadingly labeling anything. We take this quite seriously.
I would be more than happy to talk with anyone about the details of this article, or the details of how and why we raise our animals the way we do. Also, please feel free to come out and visit the farm to see for yourself. We're only 15 minutes from downtown Nashville!
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