Sunday, Jan 23rd 2011

 

The lovely farm we visited during our tour was called Sequatchie Cove Farm, nestled in (litterally hugged by) soft Tennessee mountains. No roads nearby, no traffic noise. Completely quiet. And very cold in January. The river running through it was bright greenish blue, and seemed in a hurry to get somewhere, unlike the fog settling thickly onto the forest and pasture.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Note the tiny white dot...Their Great Pyrenees guard dog, protects the cows now that the sheep have moved to a different location.

 

 

                                           

 

They raise grassfed pigs, chickens, and cattle, marketing their meat at an on-farm stand. Recently, they also added a dairy and produce cheese from grassfed dairy cows.

 

 

Calves near the dairy

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Finished (market ready) pigs                                                                                                 

 

 SSAWG CONFERENCE

 

The day after the farm tour, the full conference began. James and I divided our time up between as many classes as possible, but kept the focus on Grassfed beef/ Farm development and marketing.

My favorite two classes were Grass-Fed Beef in the Deep South taught by Anne Blanchet of Brookshire Farm in Louisiana, and Management intensive Grazing (MiG) taught by Greg Brann and Ann Wells, who have a wealth of knowledge in this subject. We learned enough to keep us busy for about a hundred years. But, to start, we are developing a rotational grazing plan for our acreage.

 

The SSAWG conference will be held in Arkansas next year, and I highly reccommend it to everyone involved in farming interested in sustainablilty.

 

While the conference was outstanding, the best part might just have been....our hotel the Chattanooga Choo-Choo. How often do you get to stay in a hotel with a train on top of it?

 

 

 

This post owes its existance to Raquel, je t'aime!