Hello, my name is Steven and along with Chris and our wives Geri and Natalie we are Franciscan Family Farms. Farming has always been in our family’s history and all around us but until this last year we haven’t really been farming. My wife and I have had horses for about 5 years and have become very interested in driving and working horses. This led to me attending Horse Progress Days with Chris (my brother in law) last summer. While there we became very interested in organic farming practices and trying to get the most out of your land after hearing an Amish organic dairy farmer and seeing all the new equipment for small farms.
Our great grandfather, Joe, bought 300 acres and farmed that land while raising 3 children. Two hundred of those original acres are still in the family and have been rented out, along with the farm house, for row crops since our grandfather, Cornel, retired. The farm is now slowly being used again by the new generation of family members. In 2006 we renovated the old farm house and my sister now rents it with her husband and little girl. For the last 5 years or so I have been using the barn and barn lot for boarding a few horses. Finally, this spring we have rented 10 acres from our uncles and my dad to start our endeavor.
We’ve fenced in these 10 acres and sowed seed for pasture because the grasses and legumes will be the foundation of the whole farm. We are striving for as natural of an environment for each of our animals as we can provide so that they can provide us with the healthiest meats, eggs, and maybe even milk. We have now acquired a small flock of chickens, three hogs, a Great Pyrennes puppy, and six Irish Dexter Cattle. The 100% grass fed beef from our Dexters will be the centerpiece of our farm but many other products are sure to come, as pork and eggs already have.
I hope that you enjoy following our progress as we grow and learn along the way. Feel free to click on any of the links on the right to learn more specifics about what we’re up to.
What an amazing blog, what a great way to be in the world…thanks for letting us see you work out how to do all of this stuff. It takes a lot of guts to broadcast the process, with all of its successes and failures.
I simply want to put in a request for some info, perhaps some subjects for futures posts. I’m really interested in what FFF is doing vis-a-vis the rest of the farming community in Southeast Missouri and the “eating public” of the region as well. Is there a community of farmers committed to practices similar to your own? If so, is there collaboration/consultation of any kind going on? If not, are there plans to consult/collaborate? Regarding the non-farming community, what kinds of awareness-raising strategies (if any) are a part of the project? Perhaps my questions sound overly strategic and not sufficiently attuned to the fact that private practice is its own reward. But I ask my questions as a big fan of what y’all are doing and as a firm believer that more producers and consumers need to know about it.
RH
I think pasture based farming is the focus of Stockman Grass Farmer: http://www.stockmangrassfarmer.net/
@ Ryan – Thanks for the kind words. You are definitely raising the kinds of questions that we’ll try to address in future posts. FFF is making it one of our goals to be a part of changing the food scene in our local area, but we’re still early on that path.
Thus far, we have found connections to other local farmers, and have gained a great deal from it. Just yesterday, we had an experienced farmer come for a “pasture walk”, where we were able to swap strategies for both farming and marketing. At the same time, our kids were able to play games of pirates burying treasures in the manure pile and royalty riding away in their horse-drawn wagon. So that’s just the kind of thing I was hoping for when we got into this – working (and playing) with like-minded folk on both a societal and a social level.
As for outreach to the community as a whole, this blog is probably our first foray into that element of this effort. I think that our awareness efforts will probably grow “organically” with the amount of product that we have to sell. Beef is at the center of our operation, but it takes a while to have a large quantity ready to bring to market. In a 2-3 years, we expect to have thousands of pounds of beef for sale… so in the meantime, we’ll be out there building customers with pork and poultry (much quicker times to market), spreading the message about our practices, and mastering the craft.
Thanks JohnW, I’ve been getting The Stockman Grass Farmer for a while now. It’s a great resource and source of encouragement.