Sustainable Agriculture Inspires GRIT Editor
Returning from Ayrshire Farm, in Virginia, Hank Will reflects on a remarkable experience.
September/October 2009
Oscar H. Will III
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GRIT Editor Hank Will spent a few days at Ayrshire Farm in Virginia, and came away impressed and inspired.
K-Squared Photography
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I just returned from visiting a most remarkable livestock farm on the outskirts of Washington, D.C. – I was there to participate in a Chicken Choosin’ and to find out which of 10 heritage chicken breeds is the best, culinarily speaking. The event, which was sponsored by the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy, Humane Farm Animal Care, Slow Food U.S.A, Chefs Collaborative and Ayrshire Farm, was held at Ayrshire, near Upperville, Virginia. I was lucky enough to stay at the farm, where I was placed in the gracious care of several staff members who are passionate about domestic animals, organic vegetables and sustainable agriculture.
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Ayrshire farm is the brainchild of Cisco Systems cofounder Sandy Lerner. The enterprise is home to Shire horses, Highland, Shorthorn and Ancient White Park cattle, Gloucestershire Old Spot and Tamworth hogs, and many rare and/or endangered heritage poultry breeds. The farm is certified organic, certified humane and employs a level of husbandry and land stewardship that improves the soil, air and water and allows the animals to live out their genetic potential.
Large Animal Manager Don Schrider gave me a behind-the-scenes tour of the farm’s beef and hog operations. Both are pasture based and both are organic. The farm’s cattle are grazed using a management intensive rotation system. Animals are fenced out of waterways and springheads except for brief periods when they need to be grazed off using fairly high stocking rates. Don says the grazing strategy actually improves the stream bank ecosystem, a practice that’s backed up with sound science. Likewise the hogs spend most of their lives in cross-fenced woodlots populated with some of the largest mature oaks and sycamores that I’ve ever seen. The pigs don’t get everything they need from the forest floor, but the woodland pasturing significantly improves their health, and flavor, and substantially reduces the organic feed bill. All slaughter animals are brought into roomy feedlots with access to pasture for finishing on an organic ration that keeps them healthy and happy, and that produces some of the best tasting and most nutritious meat available.