The reason for the seasons

One of the first thing that a new gardener, homesteader, or farmer learns is the value of seasons.  This is also a lesson being learned by people who have decided to eat local.  It comes as a big shock to a person who expects to go to the grocery store any time of year and buy a fresh tomato to learn that in a natural setting these delights are only available in the summer and fall.  Of course you can always have your greenhouse and ways of extending the season but in December there is just no natural way to grow a tomato.

So it is with the meat that we eat.  There is a reason why beef is so much better in the spring.  With the lush new growth of grass and ample water these animals finish out at fatter into a rather tasty treat.  IN the same way as summer drags on slowing the grass and therefore the ability to finish a cow on grass the season switches to the lighter chicken.  Chickens thrive in the summer and the lightness of their meat gives our body a sense of colling as well.  Pigs provide "the other white meat" that gives us sustanance in the fall and winter.

Learning to eat with the seasons is hard but rewarding.

Spring is almost here!

It is crazy to think about but the above headline is kinda true.  Even though Christmas is a week away the spring rush is closing in upon us.  That means that planning for next years crops is already in the works.  We just recieved our first shipment of seed from Gurney's.  We got enough to get us thru the spring and summe rplanting seasons.  Next thing on the list is to find a tiller that we can purchase or one to rent so We can plow up the fields.  We currently have the cows out on the plot where we will have the garden and they are doing some fertilizing for us but we will soon have to rope them out of the area to give it a little less hoof preasure.  Again as we stated earlier it is our goal to grow all of our own meat and veggies for 2011 and beyond so we have been working extra hard to prepare the ground in the right way.

As with our cows we will be practicing a sustainable approach to our garden meaning no pesticides for use.  We will do all of the weeding either with a tiller or by hand (both is more likely) and will plant in aoordance with the organic practices to take natural allies together (e.g. tomatoes and cucumbers).

Spring also means that we can hear the chirping of little chicks in our future.  We will be getting about 100 broilers in the mail to raise and use for chicken (yum!). Out on pasture of course in a salatin style pen.  If anyone of our friends in Tennessee would like to buy some feel free to drop us a line on the blog or at littlefeetfarm@yahoo.com.  Since we are not looking to get into too much federal regulation we will sell you the live bird and then dress it for free if you so desire.  Again, in order to do this you must pre order the birds otherwise we fall into all sorts of govt regulations.  As we all know the government is good for about nothing and food inspection is unfortunatly not any diffrent.  Note the egg salmanila breakout earlier this year.  Again this is why we have stuck out on this path and hope that we can grow a good customer base to support Logan's goal of staying at home with the kids.  If you like what we are doing than support a family like ours in your local area. You can find people who believe in sustanable agriculture at eatwild.com or do a goole search for grass fed.

My cows go to the beach every day

Now that is just crazy talk right? The nearest beach is a good 6 hour drive from here. So in the physical sense this statement is crazy talk but what my cows do get is that miracle vitamin called Kelp meal. What the heck is kelp meal?



Kelp is the green stuff in the picture above. It hangs out in the oceans of the world and grabs nutrients out of the sea. Those nutrients are stored into these wonderful plants until they are harvested by kelp farmers!! They then air dry the kelp and grind it up. That leaves the kelp meal that the cows can gobble up. on average they will eat about 1 oz of kelp meal per animal. Why not just give them grass you ask? Well the simple answer is kelp meal is like the cattle version on Veema (a multivitamin). Just like us cows are picky eaters and left to their own accord they would only eat the junk food grass on pasture. So what we are able to do is supplement their diet with this kelp meal that is kept out on pasture with them. They can eat as much or as little as they need b/c it is fed buffet style. The nice thing about kelp is that is is super high in iodine so it helps the animals avoid getting pinkeye disease. When you pour it out it smells just like the ocean so it makes me think of the beach every time I am in the field near the mineral feeder.

The easy way and the right way

One of the things that my wife and I decided early in our marriage (and really before that) was that nothing we were going to do was going to be easy. We spent 2 years of our courtship separated by 13 hours (her in Georgia and me in Texas). We had 2 kids within 21 months of each other and then came this crazy idea to move with a one month old baby and a two year old out to Tennessee. We settled in a rental house about 30 minutes outside of Knoxville. We made the decision early on that city life in east Tennessee was not really something that interested us. In keeping with our knack for doing things the hard way we decided that we needed to find the perfect piece of land for way below our budget price (thanks Dave Ramsey). So after looking at 100 houses (no joke) we found the homestead for us. Three days before closing this dream was almost take from us, but we pulled through and were able to get a clean title. Furthermore, we decided that in order to get out of our rental contract we would move in 4 days, while also having one of the busiest work weeks of the year.

All that to say, we don't like cutting corners and have learned that the right way isn't always the easy way. It is the same philosophy we have taken in creating this farm. We want to produce and sell all natural products, raised the way God intended, on grass. This is especially true of of cows but also of our chickens. We will be giving them a new pad of grass daily to munch on that allows them the freedom to exercise. Our cows are given small patches of grass each day from which to eat as well. This is known in the cattle biz as, a bunch of hippy crap (j/k), it is really known as, managed intensive grazing. Long story short, cows don't wallow around in the same spot every day which is good for the grass and good for the cows. We try and mimic the herds of present day Africa or the great Bison herds of the Midwest. They would stay in one place only for a short time and then move on, which gave us the great bread basket we all depend on today. This allows us to finish our cows (grow them) on grass alone with no need to feed grains like corn. Why is that important? Their are 2 benefits to this production model. the first is that cows are not shipped half way across the country to be crammed into feed lots like sardines and pumped full of antibiotics and growth hormones. The second is that it produces some of the leanest meat that can even compete with chicken. Think about a deer for a second. Do hunters pen them up for the last year of their life and pump them full of corn? No of course not they live on grass and this allows them to gain weight the health way. For more nutritional benefits just google grass fed beef or visit Oprah's site.

Well there you have it. The philosophy behind Little Feet Farm. We want to provide for a select number of people a product that rivals any on the market in quality, freshness, and healthiness all while doing it in a manor that leaves this place in a shape better than it is now.