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From left, Julie, Holly, Steve and Kindra Atkinson, with their Dorper sheep. Alternative agriculture? At Greenwood Farms, animals get fat on grass By R.D. Hohenfeldt Greenwood Farms sits on 304 acres outside mainstream agriculture, but describing what the Atkinson family does as “alternative farming” seems inaccurate. After all, just like so many other Ozarks farmers and ranchers, the Atkinsons raise beef cattle, hogs and sheep. They milk cows and collect eggs from laying hens. “I don’t think we’re alternative,” says Holly Atkinson, who founded Greenwood Farms in 1981 with her husband, Dr. Steve Atkinson, a Rolla dentist, to give their children, David and Julie, an opportunity to grow up the way their parents did. Greenwood Farms started near Salem and operated until 1988. “We moved here in 1995,” Holly says, and in 2000 she and Dr. Atkinson started talking about starting the farm up again. When their children learned of their plans, they asked to be a part of the rebirth of Greenwood Farms. In 2002, Julie, David and his wife, Kindra, after living in cities and working in the corporate world, left urban life and joined their parents in an endeavor to change Greenwood Farms from just a wonderful lifestyle to a wonderful lifestyle AND viable business enterprise. The operation has almost reached that point, but not yet. Dr. Steve Harrison is still working off the farm to supplement the income, but he is looking forward to the day when Greenwood Farms can sustain the family and he can become a full-time farmer. They may not be alternative farmers, but they are going about the business of agriculture differently. Most of today’s Ozarks farmers and ranchers are part-time beef producers who sell their calves to feedlot operators, or to backgrounders who feed the animals for a period of time before selling to feedlot operators, usually in other states. Pork production in the Ozarks is almost gone, because meatpacking companies contract with just a few pork producers who operate what are sometimes referred to as “factory farms.” What makes the Atkinsons’ farm on the Little Piney River south of Newburg different is what they feed their animals and how they market the meat from the animals. Greenwood Farms feeds grass, lots and lots of grass. Their animals graze on high-quality, high-protein grass, much of which the Atkinsons plant annually. The only grain they feed is whole corn to the hogs. Julie stresses that the Atkinsons do not disparage feeding grain to animals. Most Ozarks farmers feed some grain to their animals, and that’s fine with the Atkinsons. “It’s not a matter of being anti-grain at all. We’re doing it this way. It’s not the only right way. It’s the path we’ve chosen,” she says. “But pitting grassfed vs. grainfed, that’s not us.” The Greenwood Farms livestock menu never includes such modern-day supplements as growth hormone, and rarely do they give an animal a shot of antibiotics. When they do, they take that animal to the sale barn, for they are keen on keeping the animals they raise for sale to the public natural. The Atkinsons’ method of marketing also is closer to what was practiced in the Ozarks 50 and more years ago. Perhaps “traditional agriculture” is a more accurate description than “alternative agriculture,” for they are carrying on that Ozarks tradition of raising animals naturally and selling meat, raw milk and eggs straight from the farm instead of to a cooperative or a feedlot backgrounder. “All the meat we sell we take to Swiss (Meat and Sausage Co. in Hermann) for processing and then directly retail it from the farm,” says Holly. “Some people want to buy halves or quarters, but we aren’t doing that, we sell cuts only,” says David. “We’ve also started selling a selection of meats at Chefs Pantry,” says Kindra, David’s wife. “It’s primarily lamb and chicken.” Greenwood Farms makes money, but it isn’t yet turning a profit, says David, because so much is being spent on infrastructure, clearing land for pastures, building fences, running water lines. “We don’t have any trouble selling everything we produce,” says David. “Our main interest now is in increasing production.” That means clearing more land for pastures, and David says he plans on clearing 20 acres by fall to add to the 50 acres already in use. Ten of the acres are premium fattening pastures, planted with annual grasses and partially irrigated. “We want to expand that to 15-17 acres,” David says. The animals they work with are Dorper sheep, two rams, 30 ewes and 50 lambs; British White beef cattle, 20 head including one bull; four Jersey dairy cows and about half a dozen Berkshire hogs. They also have 45 laying hens of various breeds, three Suffolk draft horses, two Great Pyrenees guard dogs, a border collie and a yellow Labrador. Greenwood Farms also sells 800-1,000 broiler chickens raised in cooperation with Amish families in the Dixon area. The breeds they picked for Greenwood Farms are not traditional Ozarks animals, but the Atkinsons picked these breeds for specific reasons after much research. “The Dorpers we picked for several reasons. For one, they shed instead of shearing. Shearing is labor intensive and stressful to the sheep,” David says. Related to that, the Dorper does not produce much lanolin because it is hairy rather than wooly, so the meat has a milder flavor. Wooly sheep that produce large amounts of lanolin have a strong flavor to the meat that some Americans don’t like. Also, the Dorper is a short, compact sheep that has “good cutability,” meaning that the cuts of meat, while not as plentiful as the cuts from a larger animal, are cuts of substantial size. Holly notes that Dorpers are popular so there is a good market for seed stock. There’s also a good market for breeding stock in the British White beef cattle. “We’ve got a fan club that keeps an eye on our website, waiting for us to advertise bulls for sale,” Julie says. It, too, is a compact animal, smaller than other, better-known beef breeds. “They fatten well on grass and they’re easy to work,” David says. The Atkinsons want to have heifers of about 1,000 pounds, so they can fatten steers to about 1,100-1,200 pounds. “We have one now that’s 1,700 pounds. That’s bigger than we want,” David says. “We’ve got a very, very small bull now that we hope will lead to smaller offspring. We’re wanting animals with heavy bodies and short legs. Our goal is to produce a very high quality meat. With grass feeding, you need a smaller animal that will convert more of the grass into meat.” They picked Berkshire hogs because they produce a tender, moist, highly flavorful meat, David says. Holly adds that the flavor is enhanced by what the hogs are fed. “Pigs metabolize fat differently than humans, so a pit will retain the flavor of what it was fed,” she explains. “If a pig eats garbage, its flavor will be garbage. We serve our pigs raw milk and whole corn.” The Berkshires live in a cave that is 50 degrees year-round and forage in a grass pasture and a small wooded area with an abundance of acorns. They drink water from a spring-fed pond although they cannot get into the pond. “Pigs want to be a lot cleaner than they are allowed,” David says. For milk production, the Atkinsons like Jersey cattle, the same breed they had when they operated a Grade A dairy in the 1980s. Jerseys traditionally did not produce as much milk as Holsteins, David says, but the butterfat and protein content was higher. “The trend (among modern dairymen) now is to turn the Jersey into a producer like the Holstein,” David says. Dairy cattle breeders today are trying to develop Jersey herds that produce much more milk, even at the cost of lower butterfat and protein content. That trend is, of course, not being followed at Greenwood Farms. Greenwood Farms sells whole raw milk off the farm. The Atkinsons have experience in the dairy business, so “we know all about sanitization,” Holly says. In addition to seeking out breeds that produce quality over quantity, the Atkinsons also stress that marketing directly off the farm assures consumers of safety of their products. “Source verification is extremely important to some people,” David says. “They want to know where the animal comes from.” Some people come out and tour the farm just to see where the meat comes from and how the animals are fed and treated. Holly and David tell of a Mississippi State University researcher who tested the DNA on a pound of hamburger bought in a supermarket and found 1,000 DNA strains. “At that point, source verification is very, very difficult,” David says. “If an illness is traced to that meat, how do you find the animal that it came from?” Safety, health and nutrition are all important the Atkinsons, but they strive to offer more than that. “People will talk about healthy food, but they won’t stick to it without flavor. We’ve all done rice cakes,” says Julie. “That’s why we don’t want our food to be just better for you. We want it to be good-tasting. The health benefits are extras.”
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