We desire to provide our family and your family with fresh, healthy food. We want to do so in a way that sets a good example for sustainable, fun, family farming. We want to respect the land, our animals, our neighbors, and the farms around us. We want you to feel like you are part of our farm's family. We want to grow the food in a way that makes you happy to be eating it. We want to share ideas for preparing, preserving, and enjoying food.

What is sustainable farming? Sustainable has become a buzzword lately. The definition we use is that we want to grow food that can grow in this region in the most natural way we can. We don't use synthetic pesticides or fertilizers, and rely mostly on elbow grease and animal droppings to get your food growing.

We also believe in permaculture. Permaculture tries to mimic the patterns found in nature. If a chicken pecking cow manure will feed the chickens and spread the manure, why not? We are trying to learn ways of designing our farm that work with nature instead of battling against it (weeds, critters, etc.) Any ideas you have are welcomed! We are still learning.

We certainly believe in organic gardening principles, but we are not certified as an organic farm. Why? So far, because we know each of you personally. We rely on our customers to let us know when and if certification becomes important. For now, we practice these methods as much as we can, let you know when we don't, and ask you if we want to try something that is not organic. We absolutely believe that certification is important in a marketplace when you don't know your providers or where your food is coming from. We may get to a size where certification is the most practical way to assure you of what we are doing. But right now, we rely on the fact that we only grow in a way that we would want to eat.

We practice Tuckered Out Farming. This means:

• We do not and have never used pesticides in the produce garden or on our seed starts, or on anything used in the production of food.
• We irrigate with water from the East Fork Irrigation district.
• We have amended the soil with manure from our livestock, compost and some commercial organic fertilizer (blood meal, bone meal, etc.)
• We use a combination of organic and non-organic seeds depending on availability. We focus on supporting vendors who share our beliefs, which usually means organic or heirloom seed providers.
• Our seed starting soil is not always organic, we sometimes use commercial seed starting soil. We never use soil that has been amended with pesticides or fertilizers.
• We start most of our own plants. In a pinch we buy locally.
• We use biodiesel in our tractors and two of our delivery vehicles. When time permits, we make this fuel from grease we collect from local restaurants.
• We attempt to reduce waste by reusing all of our packaging and collecting used packaging from our customers. Our goal is to never buy any packaging.
• Our hens eat a combination of organic and non-organic food, including food scraps from our household and the garden itself. We don't feed the hens any hormones and do not use artificial chemicals or techniques to encourage production. They have a yard and spend some time rotating through the garden itself in our mobile coop.
• Our cattle graze in our pasture, or eat stored hay in the wintertime. If we didn't grow the hay, we buy it locally. We supplement with spent hops or grains from a local brewery, and give them a little corn near the end. When it's time, they are slaughtered and processed at a facility just a few miles from the farm.