Our Values

May has quickly turned to June. It's the time of year when time has a way of disappearing more than usual. Much like looking through a forest scape, there is a clarity in the winter where one can see far ahead, unimpeded by foliage and greenery. Yet equally necessary is the explosion of summer, when it is hard to see further than a few feet with all the foliage and abundance offered by the land. And so it is for us. We have kept our eyes in front of us as we’ve weaned many of our march piglets and sent them out to the woods for foraging and growing. Several calves have been dropped on our farm by our cows, who have been having smooth, easy and unassisted births. Meanwhile, Leroy the bull has been making his presence known with "hoos" and "haws", anxiously awaiting July when his time to be back with his harem returns. 

Between all these things we’ve had quite a busy May and early June on the farm, often resulting in dozing off at the computer screen when attempting to create an elaborate newsletter for this month. However, we’ve been spending some time on our retail operations and our website. We have added a new page outlining our core values, as well as a new page that has all of our past newsletters which in turn have been centered around these values. We are pretty happy with the final result and thought you might enjoy a refresh on what we’re all about here at Northaven. So cheers to the turning of spring into summer. We hope you're enjoying the season's bounty as much as we are.

OUR VALUES

Northaven Pastures is a small family farm with a big vision. We believe that both humans and the animals that sustain them are not inherently a threat to the earth’s vitality, slowly extracting resources overtime, but instead are stewards of tremendous ecological value who can leave resources improved and more abundant than they were before, all the while growing food. Our farm’s main values are as follows:

REGENERATIVE AGRICULTURE

As a means to the end of ecological restoration we are in pursuit of doing something very old in a new way.  Not only are we focused on land management to a meticulous degree, but we demand that the food that is the outpouring of this stewardship is made without compromise. We don’t strive for “good enough” or simply above average for our food or land management. We’re here out of a pursuit of excellence. Our goal is to produce the cleanest animal products possible while also producing food that is an amazing eating experience.

We implement adaptive grazing management– meaning we move our cattle 1-2 times per day, in a different way depending on weather, forage, season, etc. If you come to our farm on any given day you will notice on the majority of the land, nothing is happening. Except that is when everything happens, the land is resting, regrowing stronger than ever as soil is built and microbial life is exploding underground. While our cows are grazing fresh pastures, our pigs live free and comfortable lives in the woodlands of our farm as they clear invasive brush while they are moved around the woods. Everything we do is in an effort to make our farm just as much of a wildlife sanctuary as it is a productive farm.

ANIMAL HUSBANDRY

We raise beef from cows that have never tasted a grain, and only ever had clean water and organic forage flowing through their blood. Our pigs feast on the wild understories of the forest while being fed a locally-grown organic feed that consists of wheat, barley, field peas and oats. We only raise animals who have been carefully selected to thrive outdoors all year and convert the beautiful landscape around us into nutritious food without the need of any medical or pharmaceutical interventions or anything that the land can’t offer them itself.   

We believe in working with God’s design in nature as the blueprints for how to manage our land in a responsible way. We believe in giving our animals  the ability to express their natural behaviors that give each of them their distinct glory among other creatures.

COMMUNITY

Fundamentally, our values as a farm come from us as consumers. We wanted meat that was free from contamination of anything that hadn’t withstood the 1,000 year test of time. We wanted meat that was given an ethical life and death. All this from a farm that was operating in such a way that our children’s children would be able to feed themselves off of the same land. 

Our vision for our farm is that it is by people, for people, and this may be a haven not only for our family but for yours as well, and that when you support us, know that we strive to support you in return. You can rest knowing that the people producing your food are probably after the same thing you are– something we can look upon and claim to be good.