Here’s the weekly roundup from Watson Farms and your direct connection to your farmer. Enjoy the latest edition of Pasture Posts!

Happy Mother’s Day to all the Moms out there! You are truly loved and appreciated!

A Limiting Factor in Regenerative Farming

A question that we get asked from time to time when explaining all the benefits of moving cattle daily is “Why don’t more farmers do the same thing?”

While I can’t speak for other farmers, one reason that I can come up with is simply the intensity of management that’s required with daily moves. Good labor is hard to come by these days which exacerbates this problem. Fences and water lines have to be installed, and then it is a daily commitment that has to be planned for.

It’s not that farmers wouldn’t do the work if it penciled out economically, but rather it’s probably that they don’t have a market that pays a premium for the extra work that is required.

We are extremely thankful for a customer base that sees the value in grass-finished beef and daily moves for the herd is one tool we use to get the cattle fat enough for a good consumer eating experience. A consumer base that is willing to pay a little more for a regenerative product is essential to our model.

Thank you for being some of the most informed consumers in the country!

Check out this video that Noah shot of just one of the many paddock shifts that our cattle have had in the past couple of weeks.

Product Spotlight

Memorial Day is also right around the corner so we have put together a Memorial Day Bundle for you! There is also a version available to our UPS customers! It is packed with all your grilling needs for your cookouts at a great price!

Produce is back in stock!

We are happy and know you are too that produce boxes are available again! Please make sure you pay close attention the order deadlines for these (they are different then our normal deadlines).

Ordering Deadlines
Charleston and Columbia Home Delivery – SUNDAYS at 9pm
GSP Home Delivery and Farm Pick Up – TUESDAYS at 9pm
Local Home Delivery – THURSDAYS at 9pm

Tell a Friend!

It’s now easier than ever to Give $15 and Get $15 through our Referral Program. We don’t spend a lot of money of advertising, but rather we focus on producing products that people love and are willing to tell others about. So we depend on word of mouth to find new customers and ultimately to heal more land.

So in an effort to streamline this process we have made it easier to tell others (via email, Facebook, or Twitter) about Watson Farms. And it’s all automated on the backend, so you don’t have to rely on us to issue the store credits manually. Just head over to our Referrals Page and start sharing!

Start Sharing!

Thanks again for being partners in this endeavor of local, pasture-raised proteins that has truly transformed our farm.  We look forward to continuing this transition while serving you long into the future.

Sincerely,
The Watsons

Pasture Posts is written by Matt Watson.

Here’s the weekly roundup from Watson Farms and your direct connection to your farmer. Enjoy the latest edition of Pasture Posts!

Mother’s Day and Memorial Day Bundles

Mother’s Day is right around the corner! Mom’s do so much in our families so lets show that special someone just how special they are! This week we want to highlight some of our favorite bundles that we think Mom will love!

Here are some options for our Home Delivery areas! These are some of our most popular bundles!

We don’t want to leave out our UPS Customers so here are some options for you as well!

Memorial Day is also right around the corner so we have put together a Memorial Day Bundle for you! There is also a version available to our UPS customers! It is packed with all your grilling needs for your cookouts at a great price!

Produce is back in stock!

We are happy and know you are too that produce boxes are available again! Please make sure you pay close attention the order deadlines for these (they are different then our normal deadlines).

Ordering Deadlines
Charleston and Columbia Home Delivery – SUNDAYS at 9pm
GSP Home Delivery and Farm Pick Up – TUESDAYS at 9pm
Local Home Delivery – THURSDAYS at 9pm

Tell a Friend!

It’s now easier than ever to Give $15 and Get $15 through our Referral Program. We don’t spend a lot of money of advertising, but rather we focus on producing products that people love and are willing to tell others about. So we depend on word of mouth to find new customers and ultimately to heal more land.

So in an effort to streamline this process we have made it easier to tell others (via email, Facebook, or Twitter) about Watson Farms. And it’s all automated on the backend, so you don’t have to rely on us to issue the store credits manually. Just head over to our Referrals Page and start sharing!

Start Sharing!

Thanks again for being partners in this endeavor of local, pasture-raised proteins that has truly transformed our farm.  We look forward to continuing this transition while serving you long into the future.

Sincerely,
The Watsons

Pasture Posts is written by Matt Watson.

Here’s the weekly roundup from Watson Farms and your direct connection to your farmer. Enjoy the latest edition of Pasture Posts!

Some Challenges with Pastured Chicken

Did you know that many pastured broiler producers across the country have either gone out of the business or significantly changed their production or marketing models?

This is a trend that we’ve been paying close attention to for the last few years. The reasons are varied but can probably be summed up mostly with labor and processing bottlenecks or costs as well as other increasing input prices for the producers. We have definitely been affected by these rising costs as well. Here’s some of the things we’re paying more for than we were a few years ago – some of which you might not have thought about:

Insurance – Even though we hope to save money by processing our chickens on-farm, we do have to carry insurance on our processing facility which is something many farms don’t have to think about. Unfortunately, this policy and all the others associated with our farm business have all gone up significantly this year.

Wages and Labor: We strive to find quality people and do our best to pay wages that everyone can live with. We’re extremely grateful for the great team we have!

Fraud: Believe it or not – as we found out recently – there are people out there that will write bad checks for large amounts of meat. We then have to spend time and resources to recover these much-needed funds.

With all that said, the fact is that the biggest bottleneck for our farm when it comes to producing broiler chickens is processing. We have processed birds at USDA facilities in the past, but this has become very cost prohibitive with all the rising input costs that they face as well. The quality of the product from these USDA poultry plants has been less than satisfactory as well. So we have concluded in the past few years that for us to stay in the broiler business, we have to process the birds on-farm. With our current processing labor lineup, we are limited to a certain number of birds per year.

Another limiting factor is that we only produce our broiler chickens during the warmer months of the year (March – November). This is because broilers don’t do well during cold, wet weather not to mention having deal with frozen water many mornings would be troublesome to say the least.

So where this left us is that as you may recall, we ran out of some chicken back in February. We know this isn’t ideal and we are actively searching for ways to alleviate this. In the meantime, as you probably know we restricted the purchase of some chicken products over the last week or so to Herd Members only. This allowed us to build a good stock in the freezer over several rounds of processing, and we’re happy to announce that we have opened up all of our chicken products to all customers.

For all of our Herd Members, there’s still some great discounts that are available, and there will likely be times in the future when we once again restrict high-demand or low-stock items to our Herd Members. Here’s a quick rundown of some of the current discounts and low-stock items that all Herd Members receive access to as of today:

Chicken has been re-stocked!

Check out this page to see photos and videos of our pasture raised chickens and learn more about our methods.

Watson Farms HD Customers

Pastured Chicken

These meat chickens are started in a brooder house for the first few weeks after hatching. Once they develop adult feathers they are moved onto pasture where they have shelter, fresh air, sunshine and a new “salad bar” every day. The once-per-day move helps the birds to ingest as much grass as possible and gets them away from yesterday’s manure. We process the chickens under a South Carolina poultry processing exemption for small farmers.

Shop now

UPS Customers

Tell a Friend!

It’s now easier than ever to Give $15 and Get $15 through our Referral Program. We don’t spend a lot of money of advertising, but rather we focus on producing products that people love and are willing to tell others about. So we depend on word of mouth to find new customers and ultimately to heal more land.

So in an effort to streamline this process we have made it easier to tell others (via email, Facebook, or Twitter) about Watson Farms. And it’s all automated on the backend, so you don’t have to rely on us to issue the store credits manually. Just head over to our Referrals Page and start sharing!

Start Sharing!

Thanks again for being partners in this endeavor of local, pasture-raised proteins that has truly transformed our farm.  We look forward to continuing this transition while serving you long into the future.

Sincerely,
The Watsons

Pasture Posts is written by Matt Watson.