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Busy Week...Field Trip Friday











Our CHES group took a field trip to Deep River Cattle Farm. http://www.deeprivercattle.com/ smithfamilyfarm@gmail.com The Smith's are a local home school family that has a farm on the deep river in Moore County. They moved from Fayetteville 2 and a half years ago to start a grass fed beef business to sell healthy lean beef as an alternative to local feedlot hormone/steroid injected beef. They also added pastured chickens (which looked so healthy and clean compared to the chickens on the trucks I see going down the road!) I was immediately interested in this healthier alternative. I grew up with a beef in the freezer every year. A cow would be bought at the market, grain & grass fed to grow it (including many spring days I spent in the barn helping to bottle feed the baby calves) even bred with a bull to have a baby. But the slaughtering in the fall was as much a part of life as any of the process...It was just what happened. I have often thought that meat was a whole lot healthier than what I was buying for my own family at the grocery store.
Even with those experiences, I still learned a lot. I think Emily learned a lot too. Nate is letting everyone know about the tractor, petting the chickens, feeding the horses and riding in the back of the big truck. My son is the one who reached right out and touched a live electric fence as Mr. Smith yelled, "It's hot...hot...hot!" Thankfully, it had accidentally been turned off...


It was fun and peaceful visiting the farm and the family was wonderful and gracious and seemed glad to have us! It's a kids paradise. With 8 children, six boys and two girls there is plenty to keep any kid busy. We had a picnic on the grounds and visited. Suprisingly, Mr. Smith is also an attorney in addition to being a cattle farmer ; ) They attended an integrated congregation church in Fayetteville, which also sounded intriguing...details on that as I do more research, another day...
The advantages of eating grass fed beef and chicken seems so logical and so much more the way God intended. As I was going on and on about the details of our day, Joe remembered that one of his uncle's had always wanted to cattle farm in this way...Uncle Donal had a degree in Agriculture but was drafted and life took another path.

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Jennifer Kirby said…
Hey Loretta, I tagged you! http://jenndare.blogspot.com/2008/09/tagged.html
Friday, September 26, 2008 at 7:24:00 PM EDT
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