How We Started
|
We started this journey with a few chickens for ourselves, and fell in love with the ability to control where our food comes from and the act of farming itself. Since then, our operation has expanded greatly. We now do multiple batches of White Rock and Heritage chicken, Bronze Orlop turkey, Peking duck, Chinese crested and Toulouse goose, Ringneck pheasant, Heritage Berkshire and Tamworth pork, and have our own breeding operation for our Katahdin/Barbados Blackbelly sheep for lamb.
We like to say our food is ‘beyond organic’ (thanks Joel Salatin), because organic feed doesn’t mean much. There is more to be said in creating a nutrient dense product that can regenerate the soil. Beyond organic to us means that we practice regenerative agriculture. Regenerative agriculture methods build top soil, sequester carbon, and create polycultures. |
We do this through holistic grazing, which simply means that we rotate our animals constantly! By rotating them, this allows the manure to be spread, their grazing to be maximized, and for the pasture to regrow naturally – which sequesters carbon, builds top soils, and remineralizes the soil.
There are no shortcuts at Sage & Shepherd Farm. We aim to be as transparent as possible, and want to answer all of your questions! We love to keep a meaningful, honest, and quality relationship with our customers. You should have the whole picture behind the food that you put in your body. We raise happy and healthy animals, 100% guaranteed. Eating meat that is raised in a regenerative manner is super healthy for you! We hope that you will put the same passion and responsibility in deciding what food you eat as we do raising it for you. |
Our Guiding Principles
Pasture & Forest Based
Our animals are consistently moved to new pasture or forest. This keeps our animals happy, reduces the parasite load, and allows the grass to get ample regeneration time.
Nutrient Dense
Animals that consume what they were made to eat (grass and other natural forages) are richer in omega 3 fatty acids, beta-carotene, vitamin b6 and CLA (conjugated linolic acid).
Regenerative
Animals that consume what they were made to eat (grass and other natural forages) are richer in omega 3 fatty acids, beta-carotene, vitamin b6 and CLA (conjugated linolic acid).
Beyond Organic
Our poultry and pigs are fed a supplemental non-gmo feed. Our sheep are 100% grass fed and finished. We raise all our animals without antibiotics, hormones, vaccines, or chemical dewormers.
Our animals are consistently moved to new pasture or forest. This keeps our animals happy, reduces the parasite load, and allows the grass to get ample regeneration time.
Nutrient Dense
Animals that consume what they were made to eat (grass and other natural forages) are richer in omega 3 fatty acids, beta-carotene, vitamin b6 and CLA (conjugated linolic acid).
Regenerative
Animals that consume what they were made to eat (grass and other natural forages) are richer in omega 3 fatty acids, beta-carotene, vitamin b6 and CLA (conjugated linolic acid).
Beyond Organic
Our poultry and pigs are fed a supplemental non-gmo feed. Our sheep are 100% grass fed and finished. We raise all our animals without antibiotics, hormones, vaccines, or chemical dewormers.
About Our Animals
Non-GMO & Pastured PoultryOur Cornish cross and heritage chickens, and Bronze Orlop turkeys are all raised on pasture the majority of their life. We get them as day-olds and they live in the brooder for two weeks, until they are brought out to pasture. They are then moved every 3-7 days to new pasture. We keep them in mobile electric netting which keeps them in and keeps predators out. They get 20% of their diet from foraging the pasture which includes grass, bugs, legumes, worms, frogs, etc. whatever they can find. Birds are omnivores, after all! The rest of their food comes from a supplemental non-gmo feed.
|
Heritage Pastured PigsOur heritage cross wild boar/Hereford and Berkshire/Tamworth pigs are quite the workers! They are rotated in poly wire throughout our coniferous and deciduous forest. They till up pine needles that have been sitting for many years exposing the soil underneath. After they go through we spread a shade pasture mix, which coverts the forest to a silvopasture. Our pigs are so happy outside as they find more than a third of their diet in the form of leaves, roots, bugs, grasses, legumes, weeds, nuts, grubs, frogs. We even feed them leftover eggs from our layers and food scraps. They are also fed a supplemental non-gmo feed.
|
Grass Fed + Finished SheepOur Katahdin/Barbados Blackbelly flock is fed and finished on 100% grass! In the winter they are fed chemical and acid free hay. Grass fed and rotated sheep are more happy and parasite resistant, they are rotated in mobile electric netting every 3-7 days. We use a leader follow system - the chickens follow the sheep to spread the sheep manure and eat fly larvae, which keeps the fly streak down for the sheep and grows lush pasture. We also feed our sheep a custom free choice mineral lick that keeps them healthy and remineralizes the soil. We don’t chemically deworm our sheep.
|
