Our Journey into
Free Range and organic Farming
Our humble homesteader farm is primarily geared towards the production of free-range chicken. Our journey into free range farming was one born out of sheer necessity. In 2016, one of our dear family members was diagnosed with a chronic and life-threatening disease that put us on this path.
It was during many months of research into healthier diets and healthier food sources that we came across the benefits of both free-range farming as well as organic farming, two concepts that perhaps have become overly commercialized in the past decade.
Although our family has always been what we considered close to nature, having grown up in small holdings later on in a fully commercial farm, we considered ourselves to be much healthier and better informed than most of the population.
It was therefore quite surprising to us to find out how little we actually knew about the foods that we consumed daily. Our initial goal was to simply source foods that had less chemicals, medicines, fertilizers and of course another buzz word – non-GMO. This was as a per the recommendation of a very dear Dr and friend of ours from doctors without borders, that helped us navigate the complicated journey as we battled the chronic disease as a family.
We were surprised to find out how little information was out there about the benefits of free ranging and in general healthy farming. Worse, was the scarcity of sources of these foods. We knew what we wanted, but we did not know where to turn to. There were several big buck’s stores - as we like to call them – that claimed to stock only whole foods and organic foods, including free range eggs. After some research, we concluded that many of the claims in their packaging could not be easily verified, although they came at quite hefty price tags.
We spent many thousands and many hours shopping for fresh vegetables and free-range eggs, sometimes 3 – 4 times a week as we had begun a vegetable juicing program, that turned out to be very effective as part of the diet we were following. This made the journey so expensive and in fact almost impossible, despite the determination we all had to follow through.
It is then that we started looking into acquiring a small holding property for the family, that we could raise our own animals and farm our own vegetables. We eventually settled on our small holding where we now reside, Plot 73 De Deur in the Midvaal. The plot offered us exactly what we were looking for, strong borehole, proximity to town, quiet lifestyle, fertile ground and of course, enough room to farm.
Our initial offering was only to friends and family, and we were excited to put farm fresh organic eggs on our family’s table every morning. We in addition immediately planted several fresh vegetables, including tomatoes, carrots, onions, spinach, mustard, and herbs such as coriander, rosemary, mint and several others to name a few.
For livestock, we kept goats – primarily for milk production and we bought 2 calf’s, one male and one female, from a farmer in KZN.
We had no idea on free range farming, although we knew a few things here and there about backyard farming, for our previous experiences. We kept 11 chickens, that averaged 3 to 6 fresh table eggs a day and we felt excited that we were now modern farmers. We immediately embarked on a journey of learning, and we researched day and night to find out “What makes a chicken truly free range” as we knew that this is what we wanted. After all everyone around us said that it is better for our diet as well as our health.
There and many guidelines out there including several provided by the Agricultural research council of south Africa, that outline the several conditions that must be met before a farming operation is considered “Free Range”. We plan to discuss this in other articles, including our experiences in trying to achieve these requirements and the challenged we faced and successes we had.
Additionally, ethically speaking, we wanted to find out what it meant to raise our animals ethically.
We came across several philosophies, including some written into law, which we used as a frame work to establish our own philosophy. The key principle that we followed was on the 5 freedoms every animal is entitled to. These freedoms are protected by law and are in fact also listed on the SPCA website.
These freedoms can be summarized as:
- Freedom from hunger and thirst
- Freedom from pain, injury and disease
- Freedom from distress
- Freedom from discomfort
- Freedom to express behaviours that promote well-being
As we became more and more acquainted with healthy living, we found that we desired less and less the commercial products offered in stores and we had in fact started questioning many of the meals and ethics around the production of food we consumed.
We made a promise to not only raise our animals in an ethical manner, but also to raise them in the most natural way we could.
This however is easier said and done. However undesirable and unethical commercial farms sometimes conduct themselves, we found that many times, it was the only way this entities could survive. It is not easy to set up a self-sustaining farming operation especially in a larger scale, without often compromising on the principles of ethical farming. It is however not impossible and over the years, we have learnt many lessons that have put us on this journey of self-sustainable heathy and ethical farming.
The truth is that organic farming is a lot of work and requires passion. It is also more expensive that traditional commercial farming and thus becomes difficult to do on a large scale, as the market often doesn’t understand the importance of it especially when it comes at a premium. The key reason as to why free range products are often priced higher than the commercial counterparts is really found within the production process.
Farms have of late become big commercial entities – and perhaps by necessity – that are almost purely profit driven and run as such. This generally means, minimizing production input while maximizing the production output. The simplest way to achieve this is by getting crops and animals to grow on less space, grow faster – many times unnaturally so and do so in the shortest time. This often leads to force feeding animals, caging animals so as to maximize their eating capacity while minimizing the energy consumed by this animals. Genetics of both plants and animals have also been modified so as target the growth hormones and genes so as to accelerate growth.
These has resulted in crops with a shorter production cycle and animals such as broiler chicken that can grow into fully grown edible chicken in just 6 weeks. On the other hand, free range chicken take up to 25 weeks to mature and even then, end up weighing in less than that of a 6 week old broiler. However, the benefits of the free ranger really lies in the content and quality of the meat produced as well as the less antibiotic burden it takes to raise a chicken as nature provides most of the immunity required for this bird. We plan to write an article later outlining our chicken raising programme to try and encourage others to believe in the possibility of going free range.
We are grateful that we have had the opportunity to walk this journey and that you our customer base have supported us through this journey. We have learnt a lot and are still learning on a daily basis. We will continue to use this platform to teach and share in the lessons we have learnt.
Happy farming from the Daily Fresh Team!
