Know your beef farmer - and stock up on grass-fed and grass-finished beef you can trust.

written by

posted on

August 25, 2026

It certainly seems like knowing your farmer - and sourcing beef from that farmer - has never been more important.

Whether you’ve known this for a while - or whether you’re just getting educated about why importing and underselling foreign beef is a bad idea - we welcome you to our small, regenerative movement.

Knowing your farmer - and sourcing your beef from that farmer - solves many of the issues that the wider public is upset about right now.

Our beef comes from one single animal. You don’t need to worry about dozens or hundreds of animals, of questionable species or health, being ground into a single package of ground beef.

Our animals are truly grass-fed and grass-finished, right here, in a 10-mile radius in North Carolina, for their entire lives. They’re born on our neighbor’s farm and come to our farm at six months old.

They graze at our farm and a few neighbor farms that we partner with to expand our access to fresh pasture. Their lives are the same every day - moving to a new area of fresh grass, eating and resting in the sunshine, and enjoying a calm and happy life. They never receive any grain - 100% grass-fed and grass-finished.

And when it’s time to harvest our beef, we load them up on our trailer, ourselves, and take them to our small regional processor. We pick up our beef directly from them, store it in our walk-in freezer, and then deliver it directly to you.

This means that we’re not a cog in a big industrial machine. We grow animals to the standards we believe in. And we can offer the same to you. You’ll know that you’re getting food from Joe and Michelle - real people that you can meet, know, and talk to.

This is the power of knowing and purchasing from your small farmer. It’s powerful because it removes so much of the stress and confusion. Instead, you’ll have simple answers, a clear understanding of how your food was raised, and a freezer filled with meat that you can know, without a doubt, you can trust to nourish you.

If you want to fill your freezer with beef that you can trust – beef that can help you ignore the chaos in the industrial beef system right now - it’s the perfect time to order a quarter beef bundle.

90 pounds of grass-fed and grass-finished beef, a few pounds of bones, and one quart of tallow. All from one animal. All rich in vitamins and minerals. All from the same small farm you can trust. Enough meat to last 3-6 months so you can ignore the current noise.

Try our small regenerative farm. You'll say what our customers do - that once you source from a small farmer you can trust, you're never going back.

Can we care about animals - and still raise them for food?

I probably spend the most time with the pigs on our farm. Part of this is practical: since pigs can’t sweat, we spray them down twice a day to help them wallow in the mud and stay cool. But part of it is emotional, too. I enjoy being around the pigs. When there’s a lot on my mind, or I’ve spent too much time on the computer and need to get outside, wandering over to that week’s pig paddock is one of the ways I can clear my mind. Pigs are highly emotive and responsive. When I spray them down with the hose, they like to sit back on their haunches, prick back their ears, and snap playfully at the water as it showers down on them. And then joyfully roll around in the mud afterward, of course. But they’re responsive to humans in general, too. They are naturally curious and, in the case of our heritage breed Red Wattles, gentle. They’ll come up and sniff you, rub their mud-streaked bellies over you, and let you scratch their ears. And maybe this is the part where you start to wonder: But aren’t you raising them for food? Why would you want an emotional connection to an animal that you are raising for food? I understand where this question is coming from. I was a vegetarian for nearly a decade because I didn’t like the thought of killing animals, especially within the framework of our industrial food system. But actually, it isn’t a problem or moral quandary for me. Yes, we grow fond of and attached to our animals, including our pigs. Yes, we still send them to the butcher or process them on our farm for food. And yes, this still makes sense to me. I would gently suggest that the idea that we shouldn’t have any emotional connection to our food - that we can only eat meat that comes from animals we withhold our emotions or affection from - is a sign of our disconnection to the way food is grown. That is, after all, one of the premises of industrial agriculture. Designate animals with one sole purpose - “becoming food” - and then shut them away in buildings, cramped quarters, or far away from humans who might interact with them beyond the farmer. And the farmer, too, should be as disconnected as possible. After all, this is an efficient machine. The problem, from a regenerative perspective, is that growing food is never just about growing food. Food is the gift you receive at the end of your work, but it’s the work itself - and the consequences of the work beyond the food - that is the point. The work, on our farm, is caring for the land. That means working alongside animals to nurture native plants, clear forest areas to make existing trees healthier, and create habitats for birds, pollinators, and wildlife. And that means becoming attentive and thoughtful - to animals and to the land. Watching, learning, and yes, developing bonds with the habitats you’re nurturing and the animals that are helping you do so. Is it sad to load up animals and take them to the butcher at the end of the season? Yes, it often can be. But I don’t feel guilty about it. I know that we’ve given them the best life possible, and that we’ve partnered with them to leave our farm better than we found it each year. And if that doesn’t make sense, that’s okay. I’m not saying that everyone has to agree with me. I’d simply like to advocate for a way of farming and consuming meat that includes this experience - one of affection and bonding between animals and humans. After all, this is one of the many ways we try to do things differently on our farm. We don’t want to just provide you with food that meets your standards - non-GMO, no vaccines, no antibiotics, grass-fed and pasture-raised. We also want to help you reconnect with that food. And part of that is knowing the animals, hearing stories about them, and yes, maybe even having an emotional connection with them, despite the end goal of providing meat to you.

How do we protect small farms from disappearing?

Why do small farms disappear? It's often due to the future of "progress" and "innovation" people promise is coming. But is this a future we want? And if we lose small farms, what kind of future will we actually have?

How do we know if small farms matter?

Farmers love to argue about whether small farms matter. But is that actually what we should be debating? Here's why we think the conversation should focus on the choice that small farms offer you, outside of the industrialized agriculture system.

Know your beef farmer - and stock up on grass-fed and grass-finished beef you can trust.

More from the blog

Can we care about animals - and still raise them for food?

How do we protect small farms from disappearing?

How do we know if small farms matter?

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