Good morning from the farm in Lowrys, SC!

Growing up on the farm, I spent my childhood trying to keep up with my dad, Gary. In the summer of 1989, I was a three-year-old shadowing his every move morning after morning. On one particular day, I trailed him around all morning like usual. Thankfully, I wasn’t with him by the time afternoon arrived. I don’t remember what happened firsthand, but it’s a story our family has remembered ever since.

Dad went out to apply nitrogen fertilizer to a corn crop. He had been a bit of a pioneer by introducing anhydrous ammonia, a type of nitrogen fertilizer which was used by many in the Midwest, to this area of South Carolina. It’s an incredibly volatile, high-pressure chemical gas that is compressed into a liquid—dangerous to store, transfer, and apply, but viewed as a necessity in the industrial model to force high yields in corn.

While Dad was working, a high-pressure hose burst.

The ammonia blasted directly into his face. It burned him severely, tearing through his skin and entering his respiratory tract. The situation was so critical he had to be airlifted to a specialized burn hospital in Augusta, Georgia.

The doctors there delivered devastating news to my family: they believed he would be blind for the rest of his life. His nasal and sinus passages were heavily compromised.

By the grace of God, Dad did not suffer long-term vision loss. His sight returned, though he has battled chronic sinus issues ever since.

Accidents can happen in any line of work, but the industrial agriculture system inherently relies on practices that put the farmer at extreme risk. It forces us to handle toxic, volatile inputs just to keep the production treadmill moving. And the truth is, those same chemical inputs that threaten the safety of the farmer are the very things degrading the life of the soil and the wholesomeness of the final product on your plate.

The Reality of the Confinement Barn

We want to wish all the fathers out there a Happy Father’s Day! Thanks for the impact you have on the next generation.

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

Microbe-friendly Farms

Last week we briefly discussed how on our farm, we can literally stand in the middle of thousands of chickens and smell next to nothing. This is due to the mobility of all of our animals which keeps grass under them instead of manure like in the industry. This is one aspect of a regenerative farm that is inviting rather than repulsing.

This week, let’s look at another characteristic of regenerative livestock farms that make them attractive, and that is the tendency toward life rather than death. When you look at modern industrial agriculture, you see monocrops and the use of lots of “cides” (herbicides, insecticides, pesticides). Although the one thing that a particular farmer is producing may often look good and healthy, the fact is that they likely killed everything around it to achieve this.

Crop farmers rely on herbicides like glyphosate and paraquat to burn down a field and rid it of any other living vegetation before planting the desired crop.

Industrial poultry farmers use a plethora of insecticides and various other chemicals such as creosote and formaldehyde in an effort to sterilize the barns to create an environment that the severely-immune-deficient birds can survive in.

Being that we will be processing our last chickens for 2021 in the near future, we thought it would be a good time to discuss some of what makes pasture raised chickens from a farm like ours so different than what you would normally find in a grocery store. Let’s dive in!

First, since a picture is worth a thousand words, lets look at a photo of the respective environments that we will be discussing:

Watson Farms:

The industry:

Let’s look at some differences we can plainly see in these two production models: