We set out with three main objectives:
1) To operate a farm that is completely sustainable as defined by the rural community in which we live, the families that live, work, and play on the farm, the ecological environment we occupy, and the customers who make it economically possible. We refer to this as Traditional Farm Stewardship, as was practiced by agrarians around the world prior to the emergence of the Post WWII agri-industry.
2) To produce an environment capable of sustaining healthy animals, as well as farm workers, neighbors, and customers who consume the by-products from our efforts.
3) To ensure that what we are doing brings enjoyment to our customers and other members of our community through our natural beef.
Farming was a sustainable, healthy, and naturally enjoyable endeavor before the post WWII chemical revolution, the surge of fossil-fuel driven mechanized farming, and the establishment of feedlot beef finishing utilizing the government subsidized corn surplus. The agri-industrial combine has exploited these post-war trends and produced a legacy of unsustainable, unhealthy, and unpleasant mono-crop, mega-farm conglomerates that, combined with insatiable suburban development, threaten the rural pastoral beauty and agrarian way of life with which our country was blessed. Some look to bioengineering and advanced chemical technologies to continue the agri-industry’s drive for higher productivity and low-cost food to "feed the world" (even if it is also low nutrient value food), regardless of the environmental cost. Fortunately, many consumers are demanding a more wholesome food supply and are fueling the sustainable “Slow Food” movement that is looking to our history to rediscover the natural balance in rural, agricultural life.
We on Wolf Creek Farm have the good fortune of being part of the movement back to sustainable, healthy, and enjoyable grass farming, supported by our customers. Our objective is to not only provide our customers with nutritional sustenance for their bodies but also feed their souls with the knowledge that they are part of a growing section of the population that is participating in the “Slow Food” movement, a movement that can ultimately reverse the damage caused by the hubris of the agri-industrial complex.
Publications that you will find on the kitchen table of many "sustainable grass farmers" include:
The Stockman Grass Farmer
Acres USA
Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education
Books authored by pioneers who have influenced many "sustainable grass farmers" include:
- An Agricultural Testament by Sir Albert Howard (1940)
- The Soil and Health by Sir Albert Howard (1947)
- Fertility Farming by Newman Turner (1951)