I was feeling a little guilty that I hadn't planned some sort of special Earth Day service project as a family today, but I realized that we live Earth Day every single day around here.

While spending Earth Day picking up trash or planting trees definitely makes a positive difference in the health of our planet and are for sure important, raising animals the way we do and buying local foods on a regular basis makes a HUGE impact as well!

Here are a few ways buying local, and especially purchasing locally raised grass-fed and pastured meats helps create a healthier planet:

Rotationally grazed pastures can sequester as much carbon as forest land. Sometimes you’ll hear that livestock negatively impact the atmosphere with their ahem “toots”, but the reality is that properly managed livestock raised on forage have a POSITIVE impact on the environment by helping to keep the carbon sequestration cycle of grasses moving.

Pasture land protects fresh water resources by reducing erosion of topsoil. Bare soil is extremely prone to water or wind erosion when it isn’t continually covered with growing plants. Topsoil is absolutely essential to growing any crops, whether it’s grain crops or pasture forages. It’s estimated that if we continue to lose topsoil at the same rate we have been for the last 10 years that we will not have enough topsoil to feed ourselves in only 60 years. We have to make changes now, there’s no more time to wait.

Buying local decreases the amount of fossil fuels needed to transport food products around the world. There is no reason to ship in beef from South America when we have plenty being raised in our own communities. The amount of travelling food does before it hits grocery store shelves is absolutely crazy.

When you purchase locally it encourages the continued growth of small grass-based farms like ours. As demand increases for grass-fed and pasture-raised meats, more and more farms like ours will begin popping up to meet the demand. We would love to see many more farms like ours feeding our communities!

Thank you for being part of our mission to not only feed our community high quality food, but also to leave our little piece of the world even healthier than we found it.

Happy Earth Day!

~ Dana