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Pasture Posts #156

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

Why do we feed corn and soybeans?

As we identify trends in customer feedback we like to address those trends here in Pasture Posts from time to time. One trend we have seen in the past several months is the question of why we feed corn and soybeans or even grain at all to our monogastric livestock (chickens and pigs).

This discussion does not involve our cattle at all, as they never receive grain and are 100% grass-fed and grass-finished.

So first off, we addressed the issue of feeding grain to chickens and pigs back in Pasture Posts #36, so be sure to check that out.

As to why we use corn and soybeans, there’s several reasons. Here are the main ones:

Proximity

We are able to source our non-GMO corn that we use in our grain rations from a neighboring farmer. This is usually grown within a five minute drive of our farm! Corn is the ingredient that we use the most of in our rations so it is the most important that it is grown as close to us as possible. The miles that this ingredient travels are next to nothing which saves fuel, time and money!

Non-GMO roasted soybeans are a more rare commodity so we have to source them from a bit further away, but we still consider it local. We source these from Barrier Farms in Mt. Pleasant, NC, which is about a 2 hour drive with our truck.

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Pasture Posts #155

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

Looking Back

About 5 years ago we had a problem. Despite our efforts to grow our meat business, it just wasn’t taking off like we wanted and needed it to.

We had many of the components in place for growth such as:

  • farm equipment for producing forage for our grass-finished beef
  • walk-in freezers to store our pastured meats
  • plenty of cattle on grass gaining weight everyday
  • a website where customers could learn about us and place an order
  • as well as a fledgling home delivery business

We had a good number of dedicated customers, some of which are still with us today, but in order for our meat business to become more than just something on the side, we needed our order volume to grow by about 7 – 10x.

As I looked back at some of my photos from about five and a half years ago, I came across the ones below of a group of cattle that we had retained for grass finishing. We were forced to sell this group through a conventional channel because we simply didn’t have the demand for them in our fledgling direct-to-consumer meat business.

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Pasture Posts #154

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

An Uncommon Method

It’s estimated that up to about 98% of hogs produced in the U.S. are raised in confinement. This makes our pigs extremely fortunate in our opinion. Here’s a post that Rebecca put together a few days ago that explains some of the reasons we choose pasture for our pigs.

Check out this blog post that’s part of our Comparison Series to see many of the key differences in our practices compared to the industry version of pork production:

Compare our Pork
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Pasture Posts #153

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

Cattle Attract Birds

One important fact about cattle raised regeneratively is that they enhance the amount of life that the landscape supports. We’ve talked before about how our cattle help to build soil, but did you realize that when cattle are on the landscape and soil life increases so does the amount of birds?

We easily find this to be the case on our farm. The earthworms, flies, grasshoppers and other insects all encourage bird activity. We believe this is the natural order of things and we try to mimic this natural symbiosis with the key species being cattle.

In a recent blog post, our friend, Joel Salatin, pointed to a neighbor of his that does a great job explaining the importance of grassland bird species and their dependence on herbivores for survival. Check out the YouTube channel of Michael Godfrey where he has some great information on grassland birds. Here’s a video to get you started.

  • Look closely at the Sparrow Tailed Kites.
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Pasture Posts #152

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

Have you noticed a difference with our social media lately?

The improvements over the last couple months on our social pages are thanks to Rebecca who started with us around mid-November. She’s done a great job not only with design but also with managing the Farm Store and taking care of some customer service!

Be sure to say hi next time you’re in the Farm Store!

Here’s a great post she did a while back talking about some of the reasons that we raise cattle using the methods that we do. Our avoidance of things like grain, hormones, and antibiotics have been central to our production protocols since we sold the first pound of grass-fed beef back in 2007.

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Pasture Posts #151

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

Answering some FAQ’s

2024 is off to a really strong start! We have seen record numbers of orders and we’re seeing lots of new customers! Thank you!

Here’s some common questions that have come up lately that we thought others might have as well. We appreciate any questions you have and do our best to answer all of them in a timely manner. Our customer service team can get stretched to its limits during really busy times so addressing some of these questions generally can help reduce the number of related support questions.

Q: How many steaks are in a pack?
A: NY Strip, Rib Eye, and Filet all have 2 steaks per pack. Sirloin has 1 per pack. At times it can appear as though there may only be 1 steak in a package that is supposed to have 2 when it is frozen, but you will find 2 when you thaw and open the pack.

Q: Why was I charged less than the original amount that I saw as I checked out?
A: Selling meat online has some challenges. One of those is variable package weight with muscle cut items such as roasts, steaks, stew meat, whole chickens, pork chops, etc. On the website we have to assign a price to each product. A la carte products like the ones listed above will have different prices depending on the weight of the actual cut that we put in your order.

For example, Chuck Roasts can weigh from 2 to 4 pounds. So on the site we assign the price as if all the Chuck roasts were 4 pounds. Then when you place your order our system is set up to only authorize your payment. Your payment will be captured only after we know the actual weight of the Chuck Roast. This is when your card is actually charged.

If we find a better way to deal with variable weights in the future then we might implement those methods, but changes like that will probably call for a complete overhaul of our workflow so we have to take those projects on with caution so disruptions are kept to a minimum.

Thank you again for such a strong start to 2024! Customers like you have been essential to keeping our family on the farm!

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Pasture Posts #150

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

New Year, New Feature!

We’re pleased to announce that our website now has a new, much-requested feature that allows you to add-on small orders if you already have an order pending with us.

Here’s the details:

If you have placed an order and your delivery nor the deadline for placing an order have occurred then you can now place a small order that can be added on to your existing order. Your add-on order(s) won’t be subject to the normal site-wide minimum of $75 or any additional shipping charges.

There are some pre-requisites for everything to work properly:

-You must be logged in.
-You must have an order that is awaiting delivery/pickup. In other words, you have placed an order and it is simply waiting to be delivered or picked up at the farm.
-Your shipping address must match the first order exactly.

If all these conditions are met, our system will automatically bypass the minimum order amount and allow you to proceed with checkout. It will also automatically add a note telling us to add this order to your existing order and they will be delivered together at the same time. Lastly, you won’t have to pay additional shipping for the add-on order!

One important note about Pasture Picks customers:
You must wait until your Pasture Picks subscription renews before you can successfully take advantage of the add-on feature. This is because until your Pasture Picks box has been successfully paid for the system will not show a pending order. If your subscription renews close to the deadline this could make it difficult for you to hit a small window of time between your renewal and the deadline, so keep that in mind.

None of this applies to UPS orders as all of our UPS Bundles meet the order minimum anyway.

New implement makes winter bedding for pigs easy!

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Lots of Christmas Cheer at the Lowrys Christmas Parade! – Pasture Posts #147

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

We try to participate in the Lowrys Christmas Parade each year and here are some pictures from yesterday’s parade. It was truly a great time, and there was a huge crowd!

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