With our spring grass at a very high rate of growth we are rotating our cattle over it very often and at a high density as well. This yields many benefits from the cattle’s rate of gain to soil health. We’re sequestering carbon while producing a premium quality grass-finished beef product. It’s truly a win for all involved!
The latest from Watson Farms (Newsletter #5)
We hope you’re enjoying our newsletters! You’ll find a lot of information packed in each one such as what’s keeping us busy right now, what stages different sets of livestock are in, product offering news, and much more!
One goal with this is to establish and nurture a direct relationship between you (the well-informed consumer) and us (a pasture-based farm). That’s something that industrial agriculture and supermarkets will never be able to fully duplicate. Thanks for your support and enjoy the latest from Watson Farms!
What’s keeping us busy
New Feeder Calves
We recently received some new feeder calves from a partner farm in Virginia. These are premium quality calves that are South Poll influenced. South Poll is a breed that has been developed to thrive in warm climates and do well on grass only. They are usually smaller-framed animals which makes them do well in a grass-finishing program like ours.
Below, you can see Noah meeting some of them for the first time.
After letting the calves get acclimated to a new farm for a day or two we turned them in with the main herd where plenty of spring grass is growing very fast, and where we need more mouths to consume an abundance of grass.
Every time we allow the cattle to clip off the grass, the plant also sheds roots below the soil surface which feeds the soil with an ever-important source of carbon. This is the secret that many consumers have not realized yet – grass fed/finished cattle that are intensively grazed can be the answer to sequestering atmospheric carbon!
Check out this film for more information on why it is so important to know your farmer and to support those who are committed to the right practices.
Below, you can see Abby on the UTV just after moving the herd of about 160 head to a new paddock of approximately 2 acres.
The Latest Newsletter (#4)
We hope you’re enjoying our newsletters! You’ll find a lot of information packed in each one such as what’s keeping us busy right now, what stages different sets of livestock are in, product offering news, and much more!
One goal with this is to establish and nurture a direct relationship between you (the consumer) and us (a pasture-based farm). That’s something that industrial agriculture and supermarkets will never be able to fully duplicate. Thanks for your support and enjoy the latest from Watson Farms!
What’s Keeping Us Busy
Broiler Turnout
After some rain and a chance for storms, we were able to move our broiler chickens from the brooder house to their pasture shelters on Friday. They know exactly what to do with the fresh, tender spring grass that was waiting on them. They clipped it off like a lawnmower just in time for their first shelter move the next day.
We move them daily using Salatin-style shelters that don’t require a tractor which allows us to service them in all kinds of weather. Larger mobile range coops require a 4wd tractor and when fields are saturated with rain, you can’t move them without making ruts and damaging pasture and soil structure.
All pastured poultry is labor-intensive, but we find that it a worth-while tradeoff for birds that are able to enjoy their natural environment and provide you and us nutrient-dense meat that can be consumed with confidence.
Newsletter #1
We are looking forward to starting a periodic newsletter to keep you up to date on the happenings here at the farm. We look to talk about anything of interest to our customers such as what’s keeping us busy at the current time, what stages different sets of livestock are in, product offering news, and much more! We hope you’ll find this interesting, and we look for it to be another way for you to connect with your farmer. To make sure you receive an email when we have a new issue, you can subscribe to our emails at the bottom of this page.
What’s keeping us busy
When it’s not raining, our team is working on some of the following tasks each day:
- Tending to our 1000 baby chicks in the brooder pens.
- This is probably the easiest time we have with the broiler chickens since they don’t eat a lot of feed and we’re not moving them each day like we will be soon.
- We top off their feed each day and make sure everything looks good with them – especially their temperature.
- They need supplemental heat when they are small, and that’s what the saucer-like thing is in the picture.
First chicks of 2021!
We received a new flock of 1-day-old chicks in the mail earlier this week. This is our first flock of 2021, and they are off to great start so far!
We check them often to ensure everyone is comfortable and happy. The brooder pens will be their home for 3-4 weeks, then it’s out to pasture where they will learn quickly to forage for grass and bugs.
We received a new flock of 1-day-old chicks in the mail earlier this week. This is our first flock of 2021, and they are off to great start so far!
We check them often to ensure everyone is comfortable and happy. The brooder pens will be their home for 3-4 weeks, then it’s out to pasture where they will learn quickly to forage for grass and bugs.
Birds for fly control
My dad, Gary, has been working on a project we’ve wanted to do for several years now: attracting tree swallows for fly control.
New efforts in customer service
Improvements implemented
Our customer base has grown a lot in the last year, and we are extremely grateful for this. In order to serve our customers most effectively we have responded with everything from more production capacity to better delivery software. Here’s a quick rundown of some of those improvements:
Continue reading New efforts in customer serviceCharleston/Columbia Home Deliveries with a helper!
Abby did a wonderful job as my Delivery Assistant (except when she had to take a nap). 
A quick stretch at a gas station, then back on the road.
Metering out our winter forage stockpile
We have been able to turn our cattle back out on grass for the last couple weeks. Here’s a video giving you a behind-the-scenes look at how we maintain our grass-only protocol during the winter.
Weekly Home Delivery for Columbia area
We are pleased to announce that in February we will be launching a weekly Home Delivery service for 32 zip codes in the Columbia area. Here’s some highlights of this new opportunity:
- Home deliveries will occur each Wednesday unless otherwise announced.
- Our current Columbia-area pickup locations (Northwest Columbia and CrossFit Soda City) will be discontinued.
- We will be serving 32 zip codes which cover all of our current Columbia customers. If your shipping zip code matches one of these 32 zip codes as you checkout, then you will see the “COL Home Delivery (Wednesdays)” option appear. Select this option and your order will be put on the van the following Wednesday for delivery to your doorstep.
- The Columbia-area zip codes that we service are:
29016, 29033, 29044, 29045, 29053, 29054, 29061, 29063, 29070, 29072, 29073, 29078, 29147, 29169, 29170, 29172, 29201, 29202, 29203, 29204, 29205, 29206, 29207, 29208, 29209, 29210, 29212, 29223, 29225, 29229, 29729, 29036
- If you are unable to be at home when we deliver, you may leave an adequate-size cooler for us to leave your order in or provide other instructions.
- You will receive a text message the day before the delivery as a reminder that a delivery to you has been planned with an ETA. You will also receive a text message when the delivery driver is within a half hour from your address. Finally, you will receive a text message when the driver marks your delivery as complete. Please make sure that you enter your mobile number accurately as you checkout.
- We will deliver to the shipping address you provided in your account on our website. Please keep this up to date so that your deliveries are successful.
- If you live in a gated community please provide us with the necessary information to get to your house.
- Home Delivery is carried out by Watson Farms in a refrigerated vehicle. Therefore, your order will not be packed in insulated containers. All orders will be left at your doorstep on the delivery day unless you have made prior arrangements. Our delivery driver cannot wait until someone comes to the door at each house due to time constraints.
- The deadline to order is 12 noon the day preceding the delivery day.
- Subscription Box customers choosing Home Delivery will receive their orders on the first delivery day after their payment has occurred.
- The home delivery fee for retail orders is $12.95 per invoice. If you place multiple orders before a certain delivery day then we will waive additional delivery fees and combine the orders.
