100% grass-fed raw milk

Resources

Real Milk- The Campaign For Real Milk was founded by the Weston A. Price Foundation, they advocate for the consumption of clean, unpasteurized, whole milk, and additive-free organic dairy products.

Chris Kresser, L.Ac on the safety of Raw Milk- an informative article on the risks, benefits, and challenges of buying and consuming raw milk by this accomplished practitioner of functional and integrative medicine and licensed acupuncturist.

100% grass-fed yogurt

In our management-intensive production system we are constantly making decisions for the health of our cows and of our farmscape's ecosystem.  A byproduct of those choices is meat with the wonderful flavor and the highest nutritional profile possible.  Utilizing every bit of these special creatures feels like the deepest way to honor their life.

Our cows are dual purpose animals.  They share so much amazing milk with us, and consequently they store less fat in their bodies than animals raised solely for beef.  But the fat that they do store is magical.  The fat of grass-fed animals has a more balanced omega 6 to omega 3 ratio and higher levels of Conjugated Linoleic Acids (CLAs).  People are starting to realize that those are important for keeping our human organisms humming along at optimal health. 

Because our cows are leaner, our butcher grinds all of the muscle groups to create our ground beef.  That means all those parts that usually become steaks and roasts are in the grind.  This leads to a distinctly special ground beef.  Our dairy cows live longer than most animals sold for beef in this country, resulting in a more flavorful beef.  

Our happy pigs get all the whey they can drink and cheese scraps from Chaseholm Creamery.  Feeding whey to pigs imparts a slightly sweet and delicate flavor to the meat.  Plus the pigs love it. Our pig feed comes from Stonehouse Grain, one of our neighbors in the Hudson Valley that is also working to understand the intricacies of drawing carbon from the atmosphere back into the soil. 

The other trick to a happy pig is introducing novelty into their lives on a regular basis. As a gift to the pigs we rotate them onto fresh paddocks on the margins of our fields and forests on a regular basis.  We're still trying to find the right balance whereby the pigs get to root and eat greens and grubs, but we don't take too much pasture from our diary herd.  But we keep trying because pork from happy pigs is just better.