Antibiotics are only used if the animal needs it on our farm. The chickens never get antibiotics. The pigs and cows might if they get cut or bit and are fighting an infection. This is very rare on pasture based farms. I worked on a 200 head cattle operation for almost 2 years, and we never gave an antibiotic to a cow. The environment is very clean and antibiotics are not needed. I will not tell you our animals never get any antibiotics in their life. Antibiotics are an important tool to use when your animals have an infection. We will use them if we need them, but it is very rare. Withdrawal periods of any medications used are greatly exceeded before any of our animals are brought to processing. There is absolutely no antibiotic residues in the meat because we exceed the medication withdrawal periods. We will not sell you anything we would not eat ourselves and feed our own children.

Factory farms routinely use antibiotics because the environments are so filthy. The animals never get out of their own poop. This causes disease issues needing antibiotics on a regular basis.

Factory farming also causes global public health issues like bird flu and swine flu. The diseases originated in filthy factory farms and passed to their farmers which then spread it to their neighbors, then around the world. We believe nature condemns factory farming. Did you now that the majority of factory farmers won't eat their own meat products? But they sell it by the millions at the store!

We do not give any growth hormones to our animals.

There are no legal growth hormones used in chickens and pigs. There are, however, growth hormone implants for cattle. It is a pill they inject in the ear of a cow. Small local farmers don't do hormone implants because of cost prohibitions.

I check all the ears of cattle I buy to make sure no one was messing around with hormone implants and I have not found one yet. Like I said, small local farmers don't do this. It's the big operations tied into the feedlots who do it.

No, we are not USDA certified organic.

We want you to approve of our farm, not necessarily have a badge from the USDA.

The USDA certified organic designation does not necessarily specify how the animals are raised. We have found that a lot of organic meat products come from factory-farmed animals fed organic feed or hay while still being in their fully automated stinky manure pits.

Pasture raised meat offers a more dense nutrient profile than traditional organic meat because it is raised freely on pasture with a wide variety of fresh forage and a very clean environment where manure is a land fertilization asset NOT a disease, contamination, and public nuisance liability.

We buy our chickens fresh out of the egg from local hatcheries and raise them on pasture from day 1.

We buy feeder pigs from local farmers at weaning and rotationally graze in the woods.

We buy feeder cattle from local farmers and rotationally graze them on our high quality pasture.

We don't raise pigs from birth because we don't currently have a big enough demand for pork meat yet. I might as our business grows. Breeding pigs is not as easy as you might think - you can quickly have more pigs than demand. Breeding is really its own enterprise. This is why I currently stick with just buying feeder pigs from other local farmers already doing the breeding.

We don't raise cows from birth because we don't have a big enough land base. We only have 20 acres of grass, and a cow/calf operation of a bull, 5 cows, 5 fresh born calves, and 5 finishing calves would degenerate the land and require over half the year feeding hay. Breeding cattle would limit my beef production to 5 calves per year. That's not enough to justify all the work put into raising all those animals. I cannot profitably raise cattle from start to finish on 20 acres, so I have to buy them from other farmers to finish.

I buy feeder cattle coming off pasture based local farms and rotationally graze them for 2 months to nearly a year depending on the size calf I buy and the demand for meat. I put on anywhere from 100 to 400 LBS of weight on them before processing by just rotational grazing our high quality pastures. I do not feed any grain once I buy the calf. This is why I call them grass finished beef, because I don't raise them their entire life.

We’re all about regenerative agriculture. We use the animals to regenerate the land, but we also use the land to regenerate the animals.

I do care about how the previous farmer raised the pigs and cows before I get them.

I don't buy poor quality animals. I look for ones in good body condition that have vigor in their eye, a spring in their step, and a good temperament. It's not what you say about your animals, it's what your animals say about you.

The majority of local farmers do not feed NON-GMO, Corn-free, Soy-free feed. Pigs are normally fed what is available at the local feed store, and cows are fed mostly grass and supplemented a little grain in the winter with their hay to not starve the cow through winter.

I wish it was a perfect world and other local farmers would farm just like me, but they don't. I am not concerned about this. I believe it is more important how an animal finishes rather that what happened in it's early life.

We are all about regenerative agriculture. We use the animals to regenerate the land, but we also use the land to regenerate the animals.

I could probably answer yes to that question because in reality all feed products are some part of forage. Grain is just seed heads off of grass whether it is in it's whole form or highly processed form.

I do not feed my cattle any grain, but I buy feeder cattle from other farmers, and most farmers feed a little grain in winter to meet the nutritional needs of their cattle. The smart farmers will test the quality of their hay and supplement just what they need to keep the animals on the right track for their age. It's not about making a cow fat, its about keeping the animal healthy through winter. After all, it's just seed heads off of grass fed at a ratio you will find in nature at certain times of the year. In reality, feed is very expensive for small farmers. Small local farmers don't feed much grain to cows because of this. Only when they have to, they will, and it's normally only in winter.

Feedlots are where cows get unhealthy. They flip the diet of a cow from mostly grass to 90% grain and industry by-products. They turn a healthy normal cow into an unhealthy obese cow. You can't buy live cows from feedlots. You buy their meat at the store. A lot of organic beef at the store is exactly this. Just because they are organic does not mean they weren't in a feedlot getting pumped full of 90% certified organic grain and turning obese the last few months of life. And grass fed and finished beef can mean anything under the sun because in reality all of the grain and industry by-products originate from some part of grass. The management of the animals is what matters. They paint the picture with their marketing that their cows are out on lush pastures rotational grazing, but when you go to the farms, they are in feedlots getting fed whats on the package label... hopefully...

I call my cows grass finished because that is the part I have control of, and I don't want to tell you lies. I buy healthy good quality calves to finish off other farmers. They have been on pasture their entire lives. They may or may not have been supplemented a little grain throughout their life. Once they get on my farm, they get no more grain. Just rotational grazing our high quality pastures. We plant cover crops for winter for high quality forage year round rather than having the need to supplement grain.

We’re all about regenerative agriculture. We use the animals to regenerate the land, but we also use the land to regenerate the animals.

Every 1% increase in organic matter in your soil holds around 25,000 gallons of water per acre. We have increased it by 0.3% in one year by rotationally grazing cattle and planting cover crops. I know that doesn’t sound like much, but that means we can hold 7,500 more gallons of water per acre on our land. That helps us grow better quality forage even in droughts.

We are also plant people. We love to garden. A lot of regenerative agriculture people will tell you that cows heal the land. They do… to an extent, but gardening and planting cover crops has shown me how to raise world class grass finished beef.

When I first started planting cover crops, I couldn’t get anything to grow. I started testing my soil, and found out that the soil had almost zero phosphorus. I started brainstorming why that was and how to correct it. I thought it may have been herbicide damage from years ago locking up phosphorus in the soil, but every specialist I talked to said herbicides usually left an excess of phosphorus in the soil.

Then I started getting serious about market gardening, and was researching all the different soil amendments. I came across bone meal. It’s an organic form of phosphorus. They take cow bones and dehydrate them and grind them into powder to feed plants to correct phosphorus deficiencies.

Then the lightbulb clicked on in my head… that’s where all the phosphorus in my pasture soil went! It got vacuumed off the land by all the cattle produced off of it through the the many years it has been grazed. Cows are “crops.” Every time you produce a crop and eat it, and don’t return your manure and urine and the parts you didn’t use from the crop back to the land you grew that crop on, you are removing nutrients from the soil. It’s the same with cows.

Cows don’t return all the nutrients they eat from the land back on the soil. 1,200 lbs of meat, fat, bones, skin, hair, and cartilage didn’t come from thin air and does not get returned back to my farm. It came from the plants which came from the soil. I test my soil every year and apply what nutrients are needed to grow strong healthy plants. This grows strong healthy cattle.

I use as much organic soil amendments as I can on our pastures. The only synthetic fertilizer I use is diammonium phosphate. I only use it because I can’t find an organic form of phosphorus in my area in the quantities I need it. Buying bone meal or rock phosphate in 40lb bags from the local feed store to spread on 20 acres would bankrupt me.

Diammonium phosphate is locally available in large quantities. It is made from rock phosphate that they mine from the ground and treat with an organic acid then bind with ammonia to put it in a pellet form. Rock phosphate is ancient creature bones that were destroyed in Noah’s flood in the Bible… pretty cool stuff. The organic acid and ammonia are all made from nature. People take this organic thing and that organic thing, do some heating and stirring and come up with a food that is ready to eat and plants love… sounds like my wife’s cooking. I have no issue with this.

I don’t use extra synthetic nitrogen sources to make plants grow faster. I shoot for normal natural growth. I make sure the correct mineral balance is in the soil through applying soil amendments, then focus on growing lots of organic matter with plants to feed the soil and turn into nitrogen for the plants.

78% of the air we breath is nitrogen. My pastures are swimming in nitrogen. I focus on strengthening the soil microbiology through proper nutrient balance and lots of organic matter so that the microbes and bacteria can take the nitrogen in the air and organic matter and feed it to the growing plants.

I don’t use chicken manure except from my pasture raised chickens I grow on the pasture. Factory farming chicken manure is a big chunk of what is causing all our global climate issues. Watch my “What is Regenerative Agriculture” series to see what I mean. I don’t want to support factory farming even if it is helping them get rid of their wastes.

I would much rather support people digging ancient minerals from fossilized creatures from Noah’s flood in the Bible to return them back to the land where the nutrients belong… not in ancient tombs from the condemnation of man’s sin from the global catastrophic flood.

Beef is only as healthy as the soil it is grown on. This is what sets us apart from the rest… we are healthy plant people.

As far as I'm aware, there are no pasture raised chicken and pork sold in our major local grocery store chains. They all carry factory farming chicken and pork - yes, even if it says it's organic. There are a few local mom and pop grocery stores that sell pasture raised meat from local farmers. What makes our meat different?

Like I said before, we’re all about regenerative agriculture. We use the animals to regenerate the land, but we also use the land to regenerate the animals.

We feed our chickens and pigs NON-GMO, Corn-Free, Soy-Free feed, but so do other local farmers. But it’s not the same feed, and you can’t tell that from just those 3 statements.

Our feed is made from all plants that are harvested above ground. We will not feed our animals any root crops. Why does that matter? It matters a whole lot to the health of our environment. Our feed is made from Milo, Canola, Barley, Wheat, Field Peas, Kelp, and Fish.

Most people locally feed this local corn-free, soy-free, Non-GMO feed thinking they are doing the best for their health and the environment. There’s just one problem - there are peanuts in all that local feed.

Peanuts are root crops. They have to dig in the ground and rip up the entire plant to harvest peanuts. Then all the loosened soil from harvesting is subject to erosion with the next storm or wind. Have you been to the Mississippi River lately? It looks like chocolate milk from all of our tillage farmers growing feed for livestock fed in confinement. Towns from Longview to Dallas all the way to Lubbock have been covered in dust from our farms outside Lubbock, TX growing peanuts. Watch our “What is Regenerative Agriculture” series to see how this is the number one issue affecting climate change.

You’re not a regenerative farmer if you feed root crops to your animals. You can rotationally graze and raise your animals on pasture from start to finish, but if you’re supporting massive operations denuding massive amounts of land causing massive amounts of America’s topsoil to be dumped in the ocean to make feed for your animals… you’re not being regenerative… definitely degenerative. You can’t tell that by visiting the site where the animals are raised. You can tell it by reading the crop species on the feed label and learning how those crops are grown.

So that is what sets us apart from the competition… we are truly regenerative from the fields growing our feed to the fields growing our animals. We feel it’s our responsibility to take care of our world the best we can.

The chickens do not get any vaccines or dewormer.

There are no vaccines given to the piglets. I deworm my pigs when I first get them orally with Safe-Guard to clean them out from any parasites from the previous farm. The previous farmer may or may not have dewormed them.

I don't give any vaccines to the cattle I buy. Only an intact bull that I get castrated will I give a tetanus shot. I deworm my cows when I first get them orally with Safe-Guard to clean them out from any parasites from the previous farm.

The previous farmer may or may not have given the cattle a Virashield 6 respiratory vaccine, Calvary 9 for protection against clostridium infections, a pinkeye vaccine, and some kind of dewormer. The max withdrawal period for any of these products is 3 to 4 weeks.

I don't have any issues with this. I worked on a 200 head cattle farm, and I helped give these exact products. I can see why as a farmer you want to spend a few dollars of preventive vaccines and dewormer to keep from losing your cattle that cost roughly $1,500 a piece. I am also up to date on all the vaccines recommended for people and have had no issues. The vaccines for cattle are basically the same stuff... your flu shot and tetanus shot. All the cattle you have eaten your whole life have had these products. That's why they have withdrawal periods. Scientists do rigorous testing to develop these withdrawal periods.

This Safe-Guard dewormer is some interesting stuff. I met a man at the farmers market who was on his death bed with cancer. He had a friend in the veterinary world who had done a bunch of testing of Safe-Guard as dewormer on mice. They were also testing cures for cancer on a batch of cancerous mice. The cancerous mice got worms, so they dewormed them with Safe-Guard. The Safe-Guard killed the worms, but it also cured the mice of cancer. The veterinary friend told the guy on his death bed to try this regiment of Safe-Guard to try to get rid of the cancer. He was going to die anyway, so he tried it and it cured him. They have people versions of Safe-Guard they are developing for cures for cancer now.

Medications and vaccines are not bad, they are just tools for us to use. How we manage our animals can greatly reduce or eliminate the need for these products. We strive for those ideals, but this isn't a perfect world, and we will use the tools at hand to fix issues we come across. We use rotational grazing to keep the environment very clean for the animals as well as working hard at keeping high quality fresh feed, forage, and water available at all times. This virtually eliminates all health issues in our animals.

We make sure we greatly exceed any withdrawal periods of any medications used before processing. We don't use anything but Safe-Guard dewormer, and the minimum processing time is two months on our farm which is twice the time for any products used by a previous farmer.

We will not sell you anything we will not eat ourselves and feed to our children. That is not the case at the grocery store. The majority of factory farmers will not eat their own meat - that makes me worried! What about you?

Our cows and pigs are processed under USDA inspection at Panola County Processing.

Our chickens are processed under USDA inspection at Windy Meadows Farm.