The sun, waking a little later each morning, waits until after the sixth hour to light the sky and warm the ground. Blue Oak leaves have long since begun to slip into their sepia tones, trading the heights of the canopy for their annual tumble to the floor below. The acorns aren’t far behind, raining from the treetops with each gusty breeze and rolling beneath the boots with every step.
The little black-tailed buck, the one that was just a lone spike last year, reemerges from the trees with a couple more points in his rack and his sights set on the doe grazing the creek bottom. Digger Pine branches flex and flutter as ponderous, wild turkeys descend from their twilight perches. In the distance, piercing yips and barks of adolescent coyote pups bid a final farewell to the night and call the livestock guardian dogs into instant pursuit.
A faint nip in the air at the breaking of the dawn confirms the previous perceptions of the senses: the season has turned. Fall has fallen – upon this wild, little Northern California woodland, and this feral, little farmstead nestled in it.
BASS LINE
This time of year in the north valley has never ceased to be my favorite. I was blessed to be raised a farm kid right here, growing up in Palo Cedro with Cow Creek as the eastern border of my family’s property. You name it, we farmed it: from sheep and cattle, to oats and row crops. I had a special affinity for the livestock, spending many a night in the barn during lambing season, and rarely missing a chance to ride after cows with my dad.
Meanwhile my husband, Tim, was growing up in a different world entirely. With his earliest years spent in New York City and his family then settling down in Pasadena, CA, urban life characterized his childhood. Tim’s mother, however, had strong ties to the agrarian central coast of California, and he found himself spending summers on a working cattle ranch in Arroyo Grande. Those summers evolved into a ranch management position that he relished and maintained throughout college at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo.
Cal Poly, “Beef Production” class to be exact, was where Tim and I met and eventually became inseparable. The next six years would result in marriage, a move to Colorado, my completion of veterinary school, our first child, and a return to California to plant our roots in Cottonwood.
Soon after we bought our first home, looking quite successful on our quarter acre lot with both of us working full time: Tim as a financial advisor and me as a veterinarian. However, the demands of the career-driven, corporate life were noxious, and we found our growing family paying the ultimate price of peace and health. Searching for change and overhauling our life’s purpose and intentions, our shared passion for agriculture and love of nature reignited. We found ourselves immersed in books about permaculture, regenerative farming, self-sufficiency, and traditional butchery. Authors like Joel Salatin and Wendell Berry filled our minds and piled atop our coffee table.
It was November of 2014 when we first visited the west Cottonwood land we’d later name Brush Arbor Farmstead; and at first sight, we were taken in. The entry gate to the property precisely marked a transition from imported landscaping and curated homescapes, to native beauty and untamed wildwood. In the arching canopy of oaks sheltering the floor below, was a likeness to the brush arbors of old which housed the countryside revivals of the 18th century. And oh, revival was eminent. We’d been looking for a place to farm, and were captivated by a forest - in search of a home, but awakening to dreams of a homestead. Thus, the seeds of regenerative agriculture were planted and a farmstead sprouted among the timbers.
MELODY
The past several years of sowing, growing, and gleaning have wrought such a natural satisfaction in living according to the seasons, appreciating each one for its unique bounties and challenges. So here we are today dear friend, as we start down the path into what I would consider the most splendid season of them all - autumn. The harvest. Where it all begins, really.
And how is it that we begin at the end, at the culmination, at the ingathering of the fruits of spring and summer labor? The answer is found even beyond the harvest, at the harvest’s encore - the table.
The magic of small scale, hand-hewn, artisanal farming is most fully experienced in the eating. Not a pasture is rotated, nor a feeding change made, nor an animal handled without affecting that ultimate end of the food being grown.
As farmers who sell directly to patrons who we invite to our farmstead, whose hands we shake, and friendships we cultivate, we sow and grow with family kitchens ever present in our minds. With each progressive day of cultivation throughout the warmer months, the goal of the harvest and the experience at the table dictate the habits of our husbandry: shaping every grazing pattern of the flocks, directing every fence post driven, and brightening every egg packed.
Because several of our meats are most optimally harvested in the fall, these are by far the most demanding and taxing days of our farming calendar, while simultaneously the most joyous and fruitful.
FORTE
Autumn ushers in the acorn drop, an event we look forward to with anticipation. The music of acorns falling sings of pork finishing to perfection, harkening to the forest-dwelling pigs of the Iberian Peninsula from whence our Portuguese ancestry hailed.
Pork is one of those meats that, while decadent throughout the year, becomes a thing of transcendent extravagance when harvested at its prime after the animals have feasted for weeks on the fruits of the oaks.
Our pigs rotate through the property, efficiently clearing dense, dead underbrush and turning over the soil enough to allow germination of once dormant grasses. While their rooting behaviors awaken the soil and make for very happy hogs, their synchronous snacking contributes to healthful animals which deposit nutrient-intense fat throughout their bodies. Meats and fats are only as healthy as the animal that made them, and this could not be more true for pork.
Wise animal husbandry demands that in order for domestic animals to thrive with minimal human intervention, the appropriate breeds, with region-appropriate adaptations, must be selected. Qualifications for the pigs we breed and raise here in this Blue Oak savannah include: being aggressive foragers, well adapted to our unforgiving terrain, and of course of a body quality which will produce the most ideal meat and fat character. They must be agile and sure footed, resistant to the intermittent brutality of our summers, with sows able to farrow independently in the field. Heritage breeds, including Tamworth, Berkshire, and Red Wattle, have proven to fit that bill well.
And so, ideally, we have a late fall pork harvest – not only for our patrons who’ve pre-ordered their meats, but for our own family. A local abattoir will custom butcher for our customers, delivering meats cut, cured, and packaged to individual specifications.
However, when it comes to the pork that fills our own larder and freezer, we set aside three to four days to commit to nothing but preserving the harvest, immersing ourselves in tradition, lard, and pounds upon pounds of salt. This labor of love begets slabs of skin-on bacon and smoked ham-hocks, head cheese and sausage, and a larder ceiling decked with hanging prosciuttos and coppas. The fresh meats are frozen and the alchemy of pork + salt + time begins.
BRIDGE
Fall yields another lovely harvest that is perhaps even more difficult to find at the level of the small market farm, chicken.
Eat homegrown chicken once, and you’ll soon discover it is something special, beyond compare to anything on a grocery store shelf.
Because our meat birds are raised outdoors, foraging and rotating through the trees, we choose to grow them during very specific times of the year in order to minimize their stress, maximize their nutrition, and optimize their benefit to the land. Avoiding the wet winter and scorching summer months, our birds are grown with the goals of harvesting in the early summer and mid to late fall. Each flock reflects the nuances of the different forages of the seasons, the weather, and the location of the birds during their rotation.
The chicks await us at the post office at a day old, and come to the farm to start out in the protected and climate-controlled brooder until three weeks of age. From three to eight weeks, they are moved daily to new pasture in field pens we call “chicken tractors.”
At eight weeks old, they are finished and processed right here on the farm by Tim and I. Once they are plucked, eviscerated, cleaned, and chilled, I package each chicken individually and prepare them for distribution to our patrons who’ve pre-ordered them. When something goes awry in the scalder or plucker, causing a wing to break or skin to tear, well that chicken gets marked with a “B” (for “Bork”) and is designated for our dinner table. They certainly don’t have to look pretty to be delicious!
CHORUS
The pinnacle of fall, the summit of the year’s work, is the celebratory expression of gratitude and culinary delight, Thanksgiving. While the intense weeks leading up to it are anything but a holiday, we look forward to this final and most anticipated harvest.
Reservations for turkeys begin to trickle in around April, bursting into a flood of requests by October. We have to order turkey poults in the spring, with delivery to the farm in July, which allows for 18-20 weeks of turkeys growing, grazing, flying, and foraging.
A foundational element of multi-speciated, regenerative farming is animal movement. A few acres of land can be productively and beneficially grazed, by hundreds of animals, multiple times over the course of a year, provided that those animals are of differing species and don’t stop moving.
Our most successful example of this phenomenon thus far is our canyon area. Our soil here is hard, red, and rocky. Left alone, this land’s natural grasses are sparse and spindly, but the grass now growing on the few acres in our little canyon can now feed forty sheep (as well as our resident deer herd) for a few weeks in the early spring.
By May, once the sward has been munched down to a reasonable height by the herbivores, we can then run 200-300 chickens in tractors across the same area. The birds clean up after the hoof stock, loosen up the top layer of soil, and of course deposit amazing fertilizer in their wake.
By September, the grasses, vetch, velvet plant, and volunteers from produce fed to the spring chickens are growing strong. Enter the big birds, a hundred plus turkeys. Zealous foragers, turkeys waste no time transforming those greens into the soil’s top dressing that will nourish the following spring’s grasses.
Once they are large enough to be outdoors (approximately 4-5 weeks of age), the turkeys start their grazing rotation, finishing in the canyon. Using electric netting to protect them from predators and to control their impact on the soil, we move them weekly to fresh paddocks. Once they’ve crossed the gully area, we start moving them up the hill toward the farmyard. During this procession in the final week leading up to Thanksgiving, we will harvest 30-40 birds per day right here on the farm. Customers come to the farm to pick up their fresh birds directly from the hands that grew them, harvested them, and packed them with the utmost care.
Raising a bird destined for a family’s holiday feast carries with it a duplicity of emotions for me. On one hand, it is a bit terrifying to take on the responsibility of delivering the integral centerpiece of a once-a-year meal. It causes us to be hyper-vigilant over the birds for the 5 months they are here, hovering over them even more so than we do the other enterprises.
Growing birds for one, specific, important meal would be an exercise in exhaustion if it weren’t for the brilliant flip side of the feather, the joy and pleasure wrought in those who serve their loved ones a turkey like none other.
It does my heart good to help our dear patrons savor those exceptional moments year after year.
CRESCENDO
I can’t think of a more fitting conclusion to the farming calendar than the Thanksgiving celebration. My heart explodes with gratitude as our family and friends crowd into our little farmhouse, little hands holding frail hands holding calloused hands, around a feast we were blessed to be able to grow right here on this land. Heads bowed before our Maker, giving thanks for His marvelous bounty and mercy, I am humbled to live this life and reap this abundance of grace.
It’s at this end and encore of the harvest – the table – that all of the beginnings, the sowing and the growing, make the most sense. Flavor profiles, texture qualities, and aromatic nuances of the meats, paired with plate-side commentaries and expressions of holiday epicureans, provide abundant insight into the strengths and weaknesses of husbandry decisions made throughout the year, and help us formulate our approach to the next.
Forks in hand, Tim and I muse upon how fat color was affected by the fall forage quickened by the late rains, and mull over the depth of flavor developed by allowing an additional week of growth. Our aching backs will most assuredly lament the corpulence of the birds at butcher time, while our appetites rejoice at the prospect of leftovers. And so it goes on the farm.
The seeds saved today are the harvests of tomorrow - dreams and plans tucked into their beds, to overwinter and bear their fruit in seasons to come.
💕you
A song so beautifully sung! 💗