Rain for the Grass, a Big Birthday, and Keeping it Cool

We hope you’ve had a wonderful week!

We just caught a beautiful, much-needed soaking rain here near Lowrys! We measured about 2.5 inches of rain between Friday and Saturday. Around here, we don’t just see rain as weather—we see it as the fuel that drives our entire regenerative system. This moisture is exactly what our summer grasses need to kick into high gear, ensuring our 100% grass-fed beef cattle have the highest quality forage to graze as we make our daily paddock shifts.

Speaking of those daily cattle moves, today marks a massive milestone for our family. Our son, Noah, is turning 10 years old! If you’ve ever been out on a wagon tour or seen our updates, you know Noah is a huge part of the crew around here. He’s a tremendous help on the farm, especially when it comes to shifting the herd to fresh grass every day. Happy double-digits to our hardworking 10-year-old!

Cool to the Touch: Our Summer Shipping Standard

As the southern summer heat starts to rev up, we often get asked: “How do you safely ship frozen, pasture-raised meats to my doorstep when it’s 90 degrees outside?”

It’s a great question, and the answer lies in our Cool to the Touch shipping standard. We partner with UPS to deliver across the eastern United States, and we have engineered our packaging to withstand the summer heat through three specific layers of protection:

• 1.5-Inch Thick Eco-Insulation: We don’t use standard styrofoam. Instead, our boxes are lined with 1.5-inch thick, high-performance insulation panels made entirely from upcycled shrimp casings from the North Carolina shrimp industry. They provide world-class thermal protection and are completely biodegradable.
• Reflective Foil Barriers: During these hotter months, we add an extra layer of defense by placing your orders inside a specialized foil bag. This reflects radiant heat away from your meat, creating a vault-like environment inside the box.
• Calibrated Dry Ice: We carefully calculate the exact amount of dry ice needed based on your specific geographic zone and the predicted days your package will spend in transit.

🌱 Sprouting through the drought + Pork Blowout continues! (Beef bundles running low)

Hey Friends,

If you’ve been stepping outside lately, you know we are deep into weathering a tough dry spell here in Chester. Around a farm, weather dictates just about everything we do, and lately, we’ve been watching the skies with a lot of anticipation.

Thankfully, the rain we received back on Thursday, May 7th gave us just the window we needed. We were able to get out into the fields and plant about 35 acres of our warm-season grass and legume mix—a combination of pearl millet and sunn hemp. If you remember from last year, this specific mix did incredibly well for us, providing deep-rooted, nutrient-dense forage for our livestock when the summer heat sets in.

The great news? It has officially sprouted! Seeing those green shoots coming up out of the soil is a huge relief, and it’s off to a great start. Now, we just keep hoping and praying for more rain to keep that momentum going.

Here is what’s happening around the farm web store this week:

⚠️ Limited Supply: Whole Animal Beef Bundles

Because we are facing a limited supply on certain cuts, we currently have a limited number of our whole animal beef bundles available. If you are looking to restock your freezer with 100% grass-fed and grass-finished beef, you’ll want to grab these quickly.

We have a limited inventory remaining for:

• Beef Family Bundle
• 1/8 Beef Bundle
• 1/4 Beef Bundle
• Half Beef Bundle

Once these sell out, we will be waiting on our next anticipated major restock in early June.

🐖 Product Spotlight: Making Room for the June Restock!

To be completely transparent with you, our freezers are packed tight right now, and as we just mentioned, we have a massive restock of our 100% grass-fed beef coming in early June. To make sure we have the empty shelf space ready for all those incoming beef cuts, we need to move some of our premium pastured pork fast.

Because of that logistical puzzle, our Pastured Pork Blowout Event is rolling right along. We are holding the price of our Quarter Pig Bundle down to just $225, and we’ve also included our Pork and Poultry Prime Pack on sale for just $155 to help clear out those freezers.

Our pigs are raised out on healthy, vibrant pastures where they live a great life, translating into incredibly clean, nutrient-dense meat. If you have been waiting for the right time to fill your freezer with wholesome pork that is raised the right way, this is your moment. Buying in bulk like this is the absolute best way to save money while supporting our family farm.

What’s included in the Quarter Pig?

You get a fantastic variety of chops, roasts, sausage, and more, all packaged and ready for your freezer.

• Regular Price: $275
• Blowout Price: $225

🛒 Click here to grab your Quarter Pig for just $225!

Happy Mother’s Day to all the wonderful moms who are often the ones doing the daily work of sourcing healthy food for your families. We are truly honored to be the farm you trust to help nourish your loved ones. We hope you have a beautiful day filled with much-deserved rest and celebration.

10 Differences Between Grocery Store Pork and Watson Farms Pastured Pork! 🐖

Welcome to this week’s edition of Pasture Posts!

Tomorrow will be the weekly “moving day” for the two groups of pigs we have in the paddocks right behind the Farm Store. It’s a busy morning for our team. We head out with two tractors: one equipped with a loader to move the heavy self-feeder and the drinker, and another pulling the Grain-o-vator. If you’ve never seen one, it’s basically a tractor-powered feed truck that we use to refill the feeders with our non-GMO feed once they’re settled in the new paddock.

Here I am filling a feeder back in July 2019. 

The pigs are always excited when they see the crew; they know fresh pasture is coming! Once we do a final check on the perimeter fence to make sure everything is just right, we open the gates. They run through into the new grass. 

That paddock has had about 4 weeks rest since the last time pigs were on it, which is the “secret sauce” to our operation. That rest time allows the grass to recover and the soil life to thrive—it’s the core of how we regenerate this ground that was once starved for fertility.

The Great Pork Comparison

We believe all pigs should be raised like that. Unfortunately, that is not how 98-99% of U.S. pigs live today. While we work with a small network of trusted partner producers for the farrowing (birthing) side of things, they adhere to the exact same regenerative standards we do.

Here is the stark contrast between how we do things and the industrial “norm”: