BROADCASTER ARCHIVES

Grassway Organics: Organic Poultry and Raw Milk, A Perfect Pair
By Jody Padgham

This article was first printed in the July/Aug 2009 issue of the Organic Broadcaster, published by the Midwest Organic and Sustainable Education Service.

At first look, Grassway Organics Farm outside of New Holstein, Wisconsin, doesn’t seem like a likely location for a successful organic store. The nearest town with over 10,000 people is over 25 miles away, and the most sizable collection of potential customers is 45 to 60 miles away. But, owners Kay and Wayne Craig say, the balance of offering local, pasture raised organic meats along with organic raw milk is a winning combination. The store, stocking a full range of organic products along with local organic pasture raised broilers, eggs, stewing hens, whole turkeys, turkey parts and jersey beef plus pastured pork and lamb from neighboring farms, is now in its fourth year and grossing around $20,000 per month in sales. “I don’t think we could have made it with just the raw milk, or with just the meat,” Kay says. “It’s the combination that makes it work.”
 
Kay and her husband Wayne, along with son Rudy, farm on 247 acres in this gently rolling pasture land that lies in the eastern part of Wisconsin between Lake Michigan and the large inland Lake Winnebago. Their seasonal organic dairy, milking an average of 100 cows that graze on intensively managed pastures, has for years been the cornerstone of their farm operation. But the Craig’s poultry operation has become an important piece of their retail and farm management puzzle. Kay has been raising broilers on pasture for several years. This season her broiler production will be about 500 birds, down from a typical year of 1,100 to 1,400, due to predator problems and backstock from last season. She likes to keep about 300 active laying hens, and plans to again raise 125-150 turkeys this season.

Successful Egg Production
The laying hens enjoy an entirely free range system out in the pasture, following the dairy cows by about 5 days. The Craigs built a henhouse similar to Joel Salatin’s eggmobile, using an old hay bale carrier as the base. With roosts and nests inside, the wagon can comfortably house 300 hens during the summer season. Kay likes to rotate birds every year, and so buys in around 225 day-old pullets each spring. These she will raise up in another rolling house, built on an old running gear base and managed in another pasture until the birds are old enough to join the main laying flock at about 5 months of age.
 
The mature birds have a ramp from the house to run up and down and are allowed full range of the pasture. “The birds really like to roam,” Kay notes. “They play a big role in our pasture sanitation program.” Someone in the family goes out every night to shut the hens into the wagon, and Kay laughs as she says that it always takes a few weeks every spring to get the young birds trained to all go back in every night. “We all go out with our plastic rain clothes on, since someone has to be under the house tossing birds out to the person setting them inside the pen door.” She says that it takes about ten days for most of the hens to learn to go back inside at night, but there are always a few diehards who just seem to like that great open sky. The wagon is pulled forward every day with a 4-wheeler. Daytime predators have occasionally caused problems, but Kay notes that they have learned to keep the hen wagon away from certain areas of the farm- most notably at least 100 yards from a known fox den. “We’ve been really surprised by how small the fox territory is,” she claims. “If we stay a certain distance away from the den we don’t seem to have fox problems.” Eggs are collected daily from outside access to the nests, washed and put in cartons for sale in the store at $4.00/dozen. Kay generally culls the oldest of the layers each year, and has a steady market for stewing hens in the store, where she charges anywhere from $2.00 to $4.00 per pound, depending on how many are left after all the predators have had their pick.
 
Winter housing for the hens is a beautiful 50 x 22 foot hoophouse. It is perfect winter territory for the laying flock, Kay says.  But, she laughs as she explains the nesting and roosting setup they have settled on for the winter quarters. “We had it all nicely set up for the hens inside the hoophouse,” she says, “but egg production dropped dramatically a few days after we first put them in.” She finally figured out that the hens could see their summer rolling pen, which was parked just outside the hoophouse. “They kept pacing back and forth, and were obviously stressed that they couldn’t go ‘home’” Kay laughs. So, the Craigs pulled the summer house up to the east end of the hoophouse, and opened the end door. The henhouse ramp ran nicely down into the hoophouse, and so now the hens happily range in the hoophouse all day and lay eggs and spend their nights at ‘home’ in the rolling house. Because the house doesn’t quite fit tight to the greenhouse, as spring comes around the hens start to range out into the yard. “Once we start to find eggs all over the farm and yard we know it is time to get that henhouse out into the pasture again,” Kay chuckles. They need to wait until the ground dries up enough so that the heavy house doesn’t cause ruts in the soft pasture. Most years the house is out on the newly growing grass by early April.
 
Organic Meat Chickens
Cornish cross broilers are raised in, ideally, a day range system using a modified cattle panel pen (see the pattern in the book “Raising Poultry on Pasture” published by the American Pastured Poultry Producers Association, APPPA, or on the web at www.apppa.org). The Craigs have expanded this pen to twice its length, with a footprint of about 20 ft by 10 ft, and one open end so the birds can roam in and out freely. They typically run two pens, about 10 feet apart. Kay likes to hook a tarp between the two pens with bungee cords to create extra shade for the birds. She has learned that it is worthwhile to keep the pens in open country, to discourage avian predators, but that the extra shade is really needed by the birds during the hot Wisconsin summers. The two pen setup is protected from ground predators by 2-160 foot and 2-80 foot lengths of electro netting fences, set in a large rectangle.
 
Daily chores are pretty quick– Kay roars out to the pasture with four buckets of feed perched on the running boards of the 4-wheeler, and dumps two buckets on the outside edge of each pen. The birds come running out to eat, and Kay then hooks each pen to the 4-wheeler and drags it forward, after first unhooking one side of the tarp. After the 2 pens are pulled up, she rehooks the tarp, pulls the waterers up, and everything is good to go. Someone will return midday to bring more food. The watering system is simple- three open rubber pans, about 18” across and 3” high. Each has a DARE water float attached to an air-hose water line. The air hoses are hooked with a 4-way coupling to the extended pasture water system with quick-link hydrants they have set up for the cows. After the pens are moved, each water pan is dumped and swished with a hand to clean, then the linked set of three pans (one in each house and one in between under the tarp) is dragged to the new location where the floats do their job to fill the pans with clear water. Kay notes that their gear takes a fair bit of set up at the beginning of each season, but is very easy on daily maintenance and activity.
 
Birds are butchered at 8 weeks by a local butcher, who has vacuum sealing equipment. Although treated organically, they are not certified since the butcher is not certified for organic processing. Kay feels very lucky to have a local butcher that she enjoys working with.
 
Kay also really enjoys her day range system, with open pens surrounded by electro fence, and is feeling pretty sad that they may be forced by the predator problems (specifically an owl) to move to a more confined pen system. She has tried many recommended solutions to discourage the owl with little success so far. She likes the activity of the birds in the day range, the efficiency of the work load and the results on the pasture.
 
Broad breasted white turkeys are raised in a set up similar to the broilers, except the turkey pens were modified to a 12 foot height to discourage the flock from roosting on the top (60 mature turkeys WILL flatten a pen, Kay assures me.) Predator problems have again forced the Craigs away from a day range with poultry netting to a set up that keeps the birds enclosed in extended pens that are moved every day. “It is just too expensive to lose nearly grown turkeys to avian predators,” Kay sighs. Again fed organic feed, the turkeys are managed in an area that is entirely separate from the broilers and hens, but also part of the cattle rotation. Kay says that demand for the organic turkeys, even at this year’s price of $4.10 per pound, is very strong. She will sell 60 whole turkeys, cut 30 up into parts (yes, people will buy turkey wings and legs!) and sell the rest as halves. She has been surprised at how well the turkey parts sell.
 
The broilers, hens and turkeys are all managed in a rotation with different groups of cattle. Kay explains that the chickens tend to be on about a three year rotation- they have enough land that they only return to a pasture with birds once every three years. As we talk I notice that Kay is talking about her farm and the management in a way that I rarely see in poultry people- she regularly mentions the pasture, and dips frequently into comments about the soil. I often work with dairy people and other ruminant graziers, and recognize this passion for raising quality meat by raising quality forage from this group. Ruminant graziers spend a lot of their time learning about soil management and pasture species mixes, so that they can ensure that their animals are getting peak nutrition from their feed. Although poultry will only receive a maximum of about 20% of their nutritional needs through grazing, the nutrients they pick up are what makes the taste, texture and nutritional difference between a pasture raised bird and that store-bought confinement bird. The things that Wayne and Kay bring to their diversified grass-based farm from their study of pasture management is invaluable, I am sure, to their producing quality poultry high in nutritional value.
 
Creative Marketing is Successful
One of the main reasons I wanted to talk to Kay was to get a sense of her successful marketing program. Kay began with poultry by developing a mailing list and pre-selling broilers to customers who then came out to the farm to pick them up. She also sold eggs from a sign by the road that drew customers into the farm and direct marketed halves and quarters of beef. She found customers initially by just talking up the product with everyone she met. She had developed a customer base of about 100 people when their requests for more products led her to the idea of setting up an on-farm store. Like most of us, she just went forward with inspiration and a gut knowledge that a store would succeed. (Though, she was quick to point out that a business plan would have been a smart first move.) The farm borrowed money from Farm Credit Services to set up the store. Now, four years later, the store fixtures and set up have been paid for and sales support a full time staff person. One of the best pieces of equipment the Craigs bought was a four-door glass front Zero Zone display freezer. Although it was $12,000 for that and the compressor, Kay says the purchase was well worth it. “People need to see the meat to buy,” she says. The vacuum packing and glass door freezer ensure strong meat sales.
 
One of the cornerstones of the store is raw organic milk sales. About five years ago the Craigs began exploring the complex rules and exemptions within Wisconsin state law that govern milk sales, and decided to try to respond to the growing demand to provide raw milk to customers. They managed to overcome the numerous hurdles (Wisconsin, as the dairy state, has some of the toughest laws in the country regulating milk sales) and at peak production sell about 300 gallons of raw milk per week. With the seasonal dairy, most of the cows are dry for a few months of the winter, and so when Kay and I talked in early March their production was down to only about 180 gallons per week, with Wayne and Kay milking only a few cows until new moms were ready to come back on the milk line later in the month. At this point they are only selling their raw fluid milk, and not doing any further processing, although they do sell WI made cheese, ice cream and butter.
 
There have been various schemes developed in WI and around the U.S. to find a legal way to sell raw milk to consumers, which is ridiculously difficult in most states. In WI the best way the Craigs have found is to develop a separate business (Grassway Organic Farm Store, LLC) that owns the farm’s milk handling license. In response to local zoning laws they were required to sell memberships to anyone who wishes to purchase products in the store. They set a $10 fee for this life time membership, and must charge annual “dues” and have an annual membership meeting. Members can shop freely in the store, and bring their own containers to purchase raw milk. Raw milk is difficult to find, and a huge draw for consumers, many of whom are willing to travel some distance to get it. Fans of the Weston A. Price Association are strong supporters and bring a loyal customer base to the store. Once raw milk fans come to the store, they tend to stock up on the diverse array of local, organic and grass-fed meats and other products. The milk brings them on a regular basis, and the other treats sustain them once they get there. Kay notes that spring always brings in new interest in membership. The warm weather increases people’s interest in health and being good to themselves and the environment. Over the four years of the store’s operation they’ve signed up about 1,000 members, and at any one time have about 200 that are active.
 
As for the economy and predicted changes, Kay says that she is noticing that broiler sales have dropped off recently (they are selling excess 2008 stock this spring, thus the reduced production for the 2009 season). She will be dropping chicken prices a bit, but still expects strong sales in whole turkeys, turkey parts and raw milk.

As we talk about marketing, Kay mentions that she sees our customer base as like a person’s hand- the thumb represents folks that love McDonalds and Walmart, and the little finger is the food groupies and 100% organic devotees. “We are geared to the number fours and fives,” Kay says. “We’ll never appeal to those ones and twos who like Walmart. They just don’t see the value in what we do.” So, she recommends, don’t even try to capture that one and two market. The Craig’s focus is producing quality food, and educating their customers (and potential customers) about why their grass-fed, organically raised food is different. “We are selling a value, an idea, an environment,” Kay explains. “We’re not selling meat, we’re selling information.” The store and web give them a forum to educate, with signs and a farm blog. Both Wayne and Kay have also made a pledge to get out into the community to make presentations to community and farm groups about the importance of raising and eating nutrient-rich food.  “As producers we need to get out there and tell people about why the food they choose makes a difference,” Kay concludes.
 
To learn more about the Craigs and their successful farm and store, visit them on the web at www.grasswayorganics.com.

Jody Padgham has been with MOSES since 2002. She is the organization's Financial Manager, the editor of the Organic Broadcaster newspaper and co-coordinator of the Organic University. Jody raises poultry and sheep organically on a 60-acre farm in west-central Wisconsin.