Tag Archives: Forage

Sustainable farming: Spring forage planting by the birds

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One of the strategies we use at Singing Prairie Farm to produce the most nutritious and sustainable pork on the market today is to grow some of our own feed.

We aren’t just talking about corn here. On our home farm, we have four separate planting seasons. Every spring, I mark March 21st on the calendar as the first planting date. This seeding is done when the land is just barely returning after the long winter.

The grass is still brown. The trees are black-barked and leafless. The only notice we have that spring is coming back is the birds.

I don’t know where they all go for the winter, but one species at a time they come back.

First, come the cardinals, then the robins, then killdeer, then western meadowlarks, then redwing blackbirds and finally eastern bluebirds and purple martins. Several new bird species arrive every week until on the first sunny day in April; then the mornings are a sweet and raucous circus of birdsong.

It is with the arrival of the western meadowlark that we typically plant our spring crops.

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Some Native Americans groups are said to have planted a “three sisters” garden every year. It was comprised of: corn, a tall, vertically growing member of grass family; squash, a horizontally growing vine with leaves broad enough to shade out weed competition; and beans, a legume which can take nitrogen out of the air and deposit it in the ground. When grown together, these three sisters offer a variety of nutrition and amino acids which aid human health. Their growth habits are also complimentary from a farming perspective.

Drawing heavily on that traditional inspiration — and on forage techniques used by dairy farmers — we came up with our own three sisters for pork production.

Our mix is a combination of organically grown forage oats, the vertically growing member of the grass family in this system; turnips, the broadleaf species to help us shade out weed pressure; and field peas, the legume helping us to fix nitrogen in the soil.

Since we eschew commercial fertilizer, our planting mix is somewhat heavy on the peas. The nitrogen the peas deposit in the soil will remain for the next time this field will be planted in the fall.

Just like the traditional Native American three sisters gardens, our spring forage trio offers a mix of nutrition and amino acids.

While most of our farming at Singing Prairie Farm is done with teams of Belgian draft horses, pulling a 3,000-pound no-till drill with horses is something that we haven’t learned how to do yet. This year we borrowed a neighbor’s John Deere tractor and another neighbor’s modern no-till drill.

It has been a fairly wet spring so far, so when four sunny days in a row showed up, I knew the window of planting was open, but only for a moment. The day we picked to plant, the weather forecast was predicting four inches of rain starting at 9:00 pm and continuing on and off all week. If we were going to plant a spring mix, we had to do it then.

The sun set about halfway through the planting session. I turned on the headlights and finished well after dark as raindrops speckling the windshield.  That night, lying in bed and listening to the wind howl and the rain pour down, I felt very satisfied with the day’s labors. Not only were all those cover crop seeds safely waking up in the ground, but also the rain officially closed out the spring planting season at Singing Prairie Farm.

John Arbuckle this spring on Singing Prairie Farm sustainable farming
John Arbuckle this spring on Singing Prairie Farms.

Spring planting is just one of many planting seasons we engage in over the span of the growing season. The pigs that graze this impenetrable jungle of peas, turnips, and oats; in June will go on to graze several other mixes before the season ends in November. We have begun this year’s circle of life on Singing Prairie Farm…a holistic web that includes pigs, turnips, cows, peas, clover, farmers, apples, pumpkins, families in faraway cities, and the cheerful springtime song of the western meadowlark.

Image via White Oak Pastures' blog.

White Oak Pastures, getting sustainable farming right

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White Oak Pastures is a farm outside Bluffton, Georgia where some of the pork sausage that ButcherBox distributes is sourced.

When it comes to farming multiple species, White Oak Pastures has it figured out.

Recently, I caught up with the farm’s marketing director Jenni Harris, the 5th generation of the Harris family to farm at White Oak Pastures, and she explained a bit of what makes her farm tick.

“My family has been farming here since 1866,” Harris said. “Back then, we farmed only beef cattle which we sold in Bluffton, a town about a mile north of here.”

“Over the years, we evolved to be the farm that we are today. We raise ten animal species —five red meat animals and five poultry,” she explained.

How does that even work? I’ll let Jenni explain. “It’s our belief that having all those animals following each other around the farm creates the same sort of synergies that you find in nature. In other words, they help each other grow and be comfortable.”

The pigs at White Oak Pastures are also a special breed that lives in the forest. “Here in Georgia,” Jenni said, “pigs don’t want to be out in the sun…They get too hot! So our pigs live out in the woods. They dig around and eat brush and roots as well as our unsalable eggs (raised by pastured chickens), local peanuts, and 100% non-GMO grain.”

But for Jenni Harris, the White Oaks Pastures’ mission is bigger than creating great, naturally- and humanely-sourced meat.

“When people ask me what my favorite thing about our family’s farm is, I like to tell them that we want to fill the countryside with farmers!” she said. “Imagine a whole world of middle-class farmers? We are trying to make it happen right here.”

“We started out as a farm full of cowboys,” Jenni said explaining the evolution of her family’s farm. “As we grew, we turned into a farm full of both cowboys and farmers. Then we grew some more and turned into a farm full of cowboys, farmers, accountants, graphic designers, chefs, and educators.”

That’s a pretty great family business right there.

“That’s our vision for the American countryside,” Jenni added, “with agriculture leading the way.”

John Arbuckle is a guest contributor for Roam. He and his wife run Singing Prairie Farm in Missouri, which supplies ButcherBox with the farm’s signature Roam Sticks as well as pasture-raised pork. John was featured earlier this year in Roam.

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Meet farmer John Arbuckle

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We have a dream of helping provide the healthiest, highest quality meat to the world — ranging from 100% grass-fed beef to organic free-range chicken and heritage breed pork.

It is widely understood that commercial farmers today raise and distribute cattle, chicken, and pork through processes that are ethically questionable, and, unhealthy for both humans and the animals. We’re on a mission to change that by working with farms across the world who raise the highest-quality meat, free from antibiotics and hormones.

We work with farms both large and small to change the food system for the better; John Arbuckle is one of the farmers that we work with that we believe makes ButcherBox so special.

We met John in a manner that is quite unique to entrepreneurs these days. At last year’s Paleo f(x) conference in Austin, we connected and hit it off while comparing recent Kickstarter campaigns.

Finding kindred spirits in John and his wife Holly, we thought it would be a grand idea to work together.

And, so, we include the Arbuckles’ Roam Sticks, snack sticks made with non-GMO and pasture-raised pork, as part of our ButcherBox subscriptions. Additionally, we use pork from their pasture-raised pigs in our breakfast sausages.

We love their delicious products, but, more than that, we are enamored with the passions that drive the Arbuckles: Love of adventure, family farms, and regenerative agriculture (pasture-based farming).

Pork grazing on the Arbuckle's farm.
Pork grazing on the Arbuckle’s farm.

John is a tenth generation farmer, a lineage that can be traced to Scotland, where ancestors raised wheat and lamb north of Glasgow. While living in Maryland, he grew organic vegetables as part of the business model that relied heavily on CSA, farmer’s markets, and farm-to-table restaurants.

But the itch for more wide-open space to roam was ever present. And so John and Holly packed up for what John refers to as “the-middle-of-nowhere” Missouri to raise livestock and their family. “You can stand on the roof and watch the dog run for three days,” Arbuckle said trying to explain the vastness of their space in the “The Show Me State.”

The greater expanse of Singing Prarie Farm lets John continue his passion for cultivating a wide array of delicious greens, and also allowed the Arbuckles to let pigs graze and forage peas vine, kale, and more. This alone is no small task. Pigs really like to eat. By John’s estimation, their livestock has consumed more than 100,000 pounds of kale.

Eventually, John and Holly decided to use their foraging pork to create a snack they’d feel good about giving their kids.

And so Roam Sticks were born. The sticks come in different flavors including hickory smoked pork with uncured bacon and hickory smoked pork with pineapple. John raises the grazing pigs and later naturally ferments and smokes the meat to create these healthy snacks.

The most rewarding part of these efforts is the understanding that they are not only helping people eat healthier, but they are also doing good by the planet, as John explained. John even uses sustainable farming techniques, including ecologically-friendly cultivation techniques. The entire farm is also 100% Non-GMO antibiotic free.