The mid morning sun shines piercing amber light through rows
and rows of grapes, their leaves the color of fall during these last days
clinging to the vine after a bountiful harvest.
Soon these vines will be naked, waiting out winter in Southern California,
until they can be pruned and brought back to life by careful hands. I’m in Temecula, a little valley of wine
and agriculture between Orange County and San Diego, in the southwest corner of
Riverside County. It’s harvest festival weekend, so the wineries are full and
limos and party buses creep along the 2 lane roads, but I make a turn, and when
the pavement ends I park up a sloping driveway and am greeted by a tall smiling
man, welcoming me into his garage.
I’m at Primal Pastures, a project launched by Tom McDaniel to
promote local, sustainable eating. He
found that finding good quality, pastured meats in Southern California was
tough, and why truck in something from out of state when we practically have a
year round growing season? While he’d always
been interested in healthy living (he even mentioned the old hippie staple,
Mother Earth news) and had been toying with the idea of getting something
started, it took a few family members – and coincidentally Crossfit
enthusiast/Paleo eaters – to really get the operation up and running. The family rallied, and his ‘pasture’ was
born. Taking cues from Joel Salatin, who
is considered a pioneer in pasture farming and a voice for conscious eating, he
set up his 2 acres, built some pens, and ordered some chicks.
What are pasture meats?
Pasture farming is different than free range. The USDA defines free range or free roaming
as such: “Producers must demonstrate to the Agency that the poultry has been allowed
access to the outside”, but the definition of allowing access is up for
debate. It could be that the coop door
is left open to a concrete slab, or the chickens have access to outside some
time in their life but not consistently.
They do not have to have access to grass and bugs, or the ability to
walk around, peck, nest, roost, and engage in general chicken shenanigans.
More conventional (factory
farmed) chickens are kept tightly packed in pens, where they are so crowded
they’ll often peck at each other. This
has led some farmers to ‘de-beak’ chicks when they hatch, which may seem
barbaric and inhumane, but has yet to be outlawed. The McDaniel’s chickens not only have the
freedom to roam, but they can establish a pecking order and sort out any
issues. A few of the chickens puffed
chests and made little squawks, but they soon moved on to eat grass and enjoy
the sunshine. While you might see
“vegetarian fed” eggs and chicken in the store, chickens are not
herbivores. They eat bugs and worms, so
while it’s good to know that supplemental feed doesn’t have any ground up
animal parts in it, pasture chicken will not be vegetarians....read more after the jump!
