At Good Family Farms, we focus on a regenerative approach to our farming practices. Our first and foremost metric being our soil health.
We are a Certified Organic Farm where we raise livestock, grains, and vegetables. Our grain and cover crops support our livestock and our livestock support our crops. Diversifying what we grow allows our farm to work as a whole where we can manage pests without the use of harsh herbicides or insecticides. Having livestock such as pigs and chickens gives us a reason to grow grains such as peas, oats and barley as a polyculture (grown together) which allows for a longer cropping rotation. Also, because our beef is grass fed, we rotate our crop fields back into pasture for 2-3 years allowing the cattle to graze which drastically increases soil health. Allowing pasture to be part of the cropping rotation is like taking your field to the spa for the year. When pasture is grazed properly, i.e by rotating ruminant animals, it is highly beneficial to the nutrition of the soil, which is our sole goal; healthy soil.
As a farm, we are focused on producing more food from a perennial based farming system rather than the typical annual based food supply chain. We believe grass fed beef and other ruminant animals are just the place to start. We have many endeavors and plan to continue working to give back to mother nature and the soil. For example, planting bushes and trees that will produce berries and nuts over time. We hope to continue to support mother nature on our journey.
What does Organic Mean?
We believe that how we treat our earth directly effects how we treat each other. On the farm, we work with the rhythm of mother nature and keep her at our forefront with everything that we do. This is why organic is so important to us. Organic means that we do not use any synthetic chemicals to control pests on the farm such as weeds, bugs and disease. Consequently, we do not have to use genetically modified organisms (GMO) in our cropping rotation. Everything that we feed to our soil and our animals is organic and as nutrient dense as possible. On top of this, we only add organic amendments to our soil such as manure, compost, dried bacterial bodies and bio-available minerals. Doing this allows us to harvest nutrient dense, healthy crops and animals while having a net positive effect on our soil and our environment.
