what the farm feeds us

Our diet consists of what the farm produces: meat -- mostly pork, beef, and chicken; milk, and milk products; eggs; garden vegetables, by season or extended season; long storage vegs, especially potatoes; orchard fruits; wild harvested foods like mushrooms, berries, pawpaws and the like; farm beverages like cider, shrub, and herbal teas; other things we forget at the moment.

'Our animals' diets start with pasture -- whatever is growing out there. After twenty-six years of farming on this land, and maybe twelve of managed grazing, 'whatever is growing out there' is making some really lovely animals. Cows and sheep get pasture only -- never grain. They don't recognize it, and they don't want it.

Pigs also get a lot of mown plants. Hay is easy, of course, but in summer there's an abundance of other forage, like riverweed and jewelweed, plantain and dock, that they love. We don't turn pigs loose to graze these hills; we've seen how fast pig pressure on a slope can lead to erosion. They eat a lot of garden waste. Pigs also get a lot of secondary grass in the form of milk products, and a lot of root crops, like mangels. Actually, almost everything on the farm has its last stop (before the compost bin) in the pig pen.

Chickens are the only animals on the farm that routinely eat purchased anything. The farm feeds them pasture (rotated daily), milk, butchering offal, and some wheat and buckwheat; we buy more wheat from a neighbor. The farm could support about a dozen hens without the purchased grain, we presently keep about sixty birds: hence the bought grain.