My Days at the Butcher

I have taken an active role in making sure that our beef, pork and chicken are cut and packaged.

Read more

The Meaning of "ZOE"

Why our farm is called ZOE

Read more

Our New Podcast: Test

This is one of the first test of ZOE Farm's new podcast. After a few more tests, I (Sierrah) have managed to get a grasp on what what we need moving forward. Meanwhile, while I've been working on the technical side, Mom and Dad have been brainstorming what the future of this podcast looks like.

Read more

Hi, I'm Sierrah

There are many things we take for granted, especially for those of us who have our health. Maybe you can run. Maybe you can see perfectly. Maybe you can breathe out of your nose. I can’t...breath out of my nose. I’ve had chronic allergies since I was young, giving me a perpetually stuffy nose. It’s a rare and happy day when I can take a deep inhale through my nostrils. In elementary school, I remember eating at my friend’s house and one of her parents scolded me for chewing with my mouth open. “You can chew with your mouth closed?” I asked. When you have to breathe through your mouth, you chew and breathe at the same time.Both my parents have degrees in biology, so growing up, my love for research was encouraged. I was specifically fascinated with what we put in and on our bodies. The food we eat, the makeup we wear, the fabric of our clothes. I’d listen to podcasts and read blogs about health and nutrition, all the while listening to the discoveries my parents made as we talked at the dinner table.We learned about what to avoid when making wise food choices. Why preservatives such as nitrates commonly found in meats like jerky and bacon are harmful (in case you’re curious: nitrates are a preservative that disrupt our gut microbiome) which is why our bacon and snack meats don’t add artificial nitrates. We learned about the horrible effects glyphosate--a widely sprayed pesticide used on pretty much any food-bearing plant imaginable--has on our gut. This is why we team up with a family that grows organic produce, never spraying glyphosate. Early on, it was clear that what we eat has the power to hurt or heal us. All of this helped us make good decisions as consumers, but now, we get to be mindful producers too.Through all this discovery, I hadn’t given much thought to my allergies being linked to foods I ate because it seemed unlikely. Afterall, I change what I eat all the time, but my allergies are constant. It wasn’t until recently that a string of YouTube videos led me to a community of people with severe autoimmune disorders who had healed themselves through diet alone. But these folks were kinda nutty. In an attempt to find their “triggers,” they scrapped everything but meat in their diet. And it worked!“Well,” I thought, “I live on a farm that produces a lot of meat. What have I got to loose?” So I hopped on the nutball train and ate nothing but meat and eggs for 10 days. It worked. Three days in, I was able to breathe through my nose a bit. By day seven, I could hum a tune, perhaps another thing nose-breathers may take for granted. As I began adding new foods into my diet, I found the trigger. Dairy. Before my experiment, I used to drink two gallons of milk a week during the summer months. Milk was my favorite drink. No wonder I couldn’t smell! Fortunately, Paint Valley, the Amish micro-dairy with which we partner, supplies us with plenty of goat milk and goat cheese I can enjoy.I’ve experienced first hand the power of food. As farmers, we want to give our patrons the best chance at a healthy life because there are so many others out there who have problems much worse than mine. We’ve always committed to selling the kind of food we would want to buy. We aren’t the dairy farmer who buys his milk at the grocery store because it's better than what’s in his pale. We eat everything we produce because it’s the best. This isn’t a sales pitch; it’s the truth. Our food is healing and my journey has been proof of that. I’m grateful to have such an abundance of clean, nutritious food all in one place. I’m grateful, and I’m not ashamed to say it: I’m proud. I’m proud to be a part of this farm because anyone who comes to us knows we care. We only get one body. What we put in can damage or heal, and we have chosen to be part of the healing. If you’re one of the folks who buys food from our Caboose, thank you for being a part of our mission to heal our land, our soil, and our bodies at the same time.

Read more