Welcome to Pecks Farm!
We have grown! We have seen so many new faces and our page followers have grown, so I figured it is time to reintroduce ourselves for our newest additions.
Our little operation is ran by Amber (ME!) and Gary with the support of our Daughter, Anna. If you had told us twenty years ago that we would own a poultry farm, well we would have laughed and laughed! To be honest, I hated chickens! I showed rabbits and dogs in 4-H. If you have been to the county fair you know that the rabbits have to share a barn with the chickens and that was my first experience with the noisy, dusty, obnoxious feathered beasts. Maybe I was a little quick to judge and a little snooty about our feathered barnmates but I didn’t like them.
Gary was a cattle guy, he wasn’t raised on a farm but he sure grew up on them. He had an opportunity early in life to work a local Dairy and ran with several farm boys. Somehow, his employers and friends became family and he spent most of his time dealing with herds and learning to fix anything with wheels.
I spent some time away from Ag, when our children were little, working on my degrees was a priority. However, homesteading became an important part of our life, gardening, canning, and raising our own livestock. Gary, was always around a farm somewhere, doing something. But then came the exciting time, our son was old enough for 4-H! We were so excited! What would he choose? Rabbits, Cattle, pigs? Nope, he wanted chickens, out of every farm species he chooses CHICKENS! So as supportive parents we built a pen and drug in the first of what would eventually be thousands of Broilers (Meat chickens).
That little boy was hooked, he loved the feathers, colors, and noises of the barn. He loved finding eggs, monitoring the incubator and watching them hatch. He found mentors and friends in every poultry barn he entered. We went from chickens, to turkeys then geese, and we found our home among the birds. Eventually he grew up and decided to retire from showing, which meant less travel, less birds and less feathered chaos. So, Gary & I started to talk about what’s next, when I realized that I had grown to love our feathered friends and noisy chaos! So instead of deciding to start with something new, we used our homesteading skills to provide locally grown turkey & chicken for the community.
We started selling at the local River City Farmers Market, just showing up and hoping it sold because if not we were eating A LOT of chicken. Then through the years we grew, our customers and our flocks, just a little each year. This year we have expanded into offering on farm pickup, our products have been served at several large dinners and you can grab Pecks Farm products at a local store (soon, maybe two), with more dreams to turn into plans on the horizon. We have even gotten involved in the Market board because if you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem. It all may seem small but to us, it is living the poultry dream.
So what makes our little farm special? Our opinion, the customers! But when we look at our operation I would have to say passion for great local food! We don’t jump on any of the modern bandwagons of farming techniques. I have been through the books, and completed tours but I just can’t bring myself to push those methods, I do see the value in many of them, but we raise our birds with old school methods, back to the basics (which is the basis for many modern techniques but with fancy names). They run pastures, with room to exercise, grass to graze, bugs to hunt, they have safe nighttime housing and a guard dog to protect them. They are raised on green grass, under blue skies, on our turn-of-the-century farm. I don’t need to give a science lesson to explain our farming style, it is Simply raised poultry with more than a decade of experience and a lifetime of passion for Agriculture.
Today, it has been almost five years since we decided to pivot into local poultry products and almost fourteen since we brought home those first birds. We have had to learn so many things about regulations, processing schedules and managing our business, the ODA permits, USDA processing and NPIP certifications. But the most important thing has been the pleasure of serving so many families wholesome local food and to think it all started with an eight-year-olds decision to drag home chickens.
