Core Values:
Respect our livestock and land
Our pledge is to tend to our livestock and our land to the best of our ability, providing our birds a healthy, natural, and respectful lifestyle, while producing only at a level that the land can maintain year after year. Our goal is to optimize, not maximize production.
Broaden the customer base for pasture-raised poultry.
Our goal is to produce at a scale that allows us to maintain a high-quality product, but can be priced more affordably to a wider range of families.
Support Virginia agriculture, businesses, and our community.
Our business depends on the value our customers place on supporting local agriculture, so we do the same in our business practices. We make every effort to keep the money we spend within our community and within Virginia.
Create work within our community.
Our business cannot be run by just two people. We will always seek to create as many jobs within our community as financially feasible. Creating more opportunity in agriculture is vital to the future health of our nation’s food supply. Without opportunity, how do you instill experience and passion for farming in the next generation?
Production Practices:
Raising poultry seasonally in pastures is a triple win for the consumer, bird, and land. By eating pasture-raised poultry meat, you’re supporting local agriculture, encouraging sustainable stewardship of livestock and farmland, and enjoying poultry as it was meant to be.
The health of our birds is greatly increased since they are able to enjoy sunshine, fresh-air, exercise, and a varied diet. These four things make us humans healthier and happier, so why not provide the same to our poultry flocks? By imitating a chicken’s natural lifestyle, we are allowing them to develop stronger immune systems and grow at a slower pace. This eliminates the need for antibiotic use for preventative measures, as well as growth hormones (which are prohibited by law anyway).
We house our chickens in portable, floor-less cages, similar to those popularized by Joel Salatin. Our chickens leave behind valuable nitrogen in their manure as we move them throughout our pastures, as well as spread cow manure. We partner with a neighboring farmer who grazes our pastures first with his cattle, then our chickens follow closely behind. This system spreads natural nutrients without the use of heavy machinery or fertilizers, saving us time and money.
The slaughter process is done by us, on our farm, as per the poultry exemption under P.L. 90-492. We are thankful for this exemption, because it allows us to guarantee our consumers that the birds were slaughtered humanely and under sanitary conditions by the same folks who raised them.
After slaughter, we air-chill our birds in our walk-in refrigerator instead of in ice-water. We feel this method reduces the potential for cross-contamination, as well as allows you to enjoy a truer flavor of the meat because it has not absorbed any excess water. When cooked, an air-chilled chicken will have slightly crispier skin due to some moisture evaporating out of the skin during the chilling process.
Our production practices are simple, but effective. They help us to produce a product that we feel is a worthwhile sacrifice by each bird, allowing us to enjoy poultry meat as nature intended.