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If you’ve read anything on our website or social media you’ve surely seen me say that every chicken we raise is raised on pasture, moved to fresh grass everyday.  I say that for a reason. I say that because that explains what pasture based livestock farming is. Animals in nature move. Whether it be a herd of buffalo or a flock of birds, they do not remain stationary or confined.  Movement is relative to their size and ability to move (walk, slither, fly, etc) but they all do it. This is because a stationary animal would exhaust its resources and live in a world overflowing with feces. To achieve optimal animal health, therefore soil health and people health too, we mimic nature.

On our farm, all of our poultry live on grass, and move to fresh grass.  Every morning I get up and move our broiler (meat) chickens to fresh grass, then I refill their water, then their GMO free feed.  Chickens must receive some grain to thrive but we do that last in the process because that allows them to forage through the grass, snacking on some clover or bugs, before I bring the grain in and they belly up to the bar.  This daily movement to fresh grass is what allows our chicken to have the superior quality, taste, and texture that our customers have come to expect.

I have written in the past about the misleading nature of food labeling.  These shortcomings exist when it comes to pasture raised meats too. A major grocery store chain, that is well thought of in health conscious circles, has a six tier grading scale that it uses.  They even use the term pastured. There is one term that, unfortunately, you won’t find in any of those descriptions, movement or move or rotate.  You get the idea, none of these truly define what pastured poultry really is.  Very few large producers truly define and use pastured poultry correctly. Instead they carefully manipulate terms to fit these very narrow definitions; they charge a premium while selling a sub par product.

In my next blog post I will go through what you should know about the meat you’re buying, the questions you should be asking to ensure you get the quality you are paying for.  Until then, you have our word that everything we produce is raised on grass, moved to fresh grass daily. To learn more about what we do, sign up for our email list or shoot me a message.  I’d love to have a conversation with you.

Chlorinated chicken is bad; it is gross. Do you ever wonder why the chicken from the supermarket is smelly, slimy, and discolored? What is that liquid in the package, much of it absorbed into that plastic diaper between your meat and the styrofoam package? That is chlorine and fecal water, fecal soup. While the practice is illegal in Europe, 97% of American chicken is soaked in chlorine during the chilling process. The reasons why is more gross than the practice itself.

The reason chlorine is “necessary” is because of poor living conditions and poor butchering practices. Diseases run rampant in the world of factory farming, where birds live in filth, crammed into rooms with thousands of other birds. When these chickens are brought to slaughter they are covered in fecal matter and the bedding they’ve been wading in for their whole existence. Now, when it’s time for the evisceration, the conveyor belt style processing is mechanized and imprecise. It is common for intestines to not be fully removed during evisceration or to be nicked. This is where the fecal component of fecal soup originates. These chickens are eventually dumped into a large vat of cold water, with chlorine in it to “sterilize” the meat. Studies have shown that this is not even effective though. What does happen is this mixture of chlorine and fecal matter and water is absorbed into the chicken. But this isn’t the way it has to be.

How we do it

We raise our chickens in a humane manner. They live on pasture, moving to fresh grass everyday. While factory chickens wade through their own manure, ours are moved out of it before it even begins to build up. What’s left behind is some of the best fertilizer you can imagine, rejuvenating the soil. Once it’s time for our chickens to be processed, they are butchered by hand, no stray intestines are left hanging from birds, no fecal matter being thrown about. Whereas the factory bird is soaked in the nasty chlorine mix, our birds are quickly dipped in an organic hydrogen peroxide and vinegar mix before being air dried.

When you cut open a Bailey Family Farm chicken, you won’t smell any of the nastiness you grow accustomed to smelling with supermarket chicken. You won’t get that slimy,sticky feeling either. What you will get is real, authentic meat unadulterated by chemicals or human negligence. Another benefit of air chilling is you won’t lose near as much weight while cooking the chicken, as little as 4% weight loss from evaporation. Your instincts know the difference between good food and bad food. When you’re grossed out by the meat you are about to cook, it is probably for good reason. No amount of chlorine can undo this.

Please stay in touch with us to learn more about how you can support local, humane farming. To learn how to buy, click here.

We are thrilled to announce our partnership with Smok’d Meats to produce beyond organic chicken stock! Our friends at Smok’d are simmering some of our chicken backs along with a mix of veggies and seasonings to create a stock that you have to try. This rich stock is cooked down to offer an even more deep, rich flavor. You can cut it down with water or use it more concentrated, we’ll leave that for you to decide. This stock is sold ready to use and is made from beyond organic, pasture raised chickens to deliver only the highest quality product.

Why chicken stock

Consuming bone broths and stocks is a key to human health. This is not hyperbole, bones really do hold so many nutrients within them that we dearly need to thrive. Some of these nutrients are calcium, magnesium, phosphorous, just to name a few. Bone marrow contains vitamins A & K, iron,fatty acids, selenium, etc. All of the above listed nutrients and minerals can help reduce inflammation, control or stave off osteoporosis, or even aid in sleep and weight loss.

The problem is, if you haven’t noticed, it’s kind of difficult to ingest bones. Humans can’t chew and digest them the way some animals do and the modern American diet contains less and less meat with the bone still attached. This is where the magic of stocks and broths come in. By cooking down bones with a mix of vegetables and seasonings you concentrate all of these benefits into liquid form that can be consumed in so many ways.

How do I use this

At one point I remember thinking chicken stock is great but how do I use it? I knew that it could be used in soups and chicken and dumplings but that’s a pretty small list. Then I started playing around with stock, like using it instead of water to cook rice, make sauces (think alfredo, marinara, and curry sauces), and even steaming vegetables. Of course don’t forget making gravy. The uses of chicken stock are only limited by your imagination.

However you choose to use it, we really do recommend that you try a quart. At $8.00/qt we believe it is priced very affordably for the premium product that it is. We will have it every week at the Bartlett Farmers Market or you can always come by the farm, just give us a call at 901-340-2849.

If you haven’t already, sign up for our email list to get all of our latest updates and product announcements.

When I tell people I raise beyond organic chickens on grass on my small farm just outside of Memphis, TN I get a lot of questions. Some of these are really simple, some are very deep. Today I would like to take a moment to address some of those questions you might have and ask for more questions. I would love to keep doing these every couple of months.

Question 1: How do the chickens come? Are the feathers still on?

No the feathers are not still on, nor are the chickens alive or still have the guts inside of them. The chicken we produce are packaged in vacuum sealed bags and look every bit as professional as something you would purchase in a store. The birds are sold frozen, all you have to do is thaw them out, season however you like, and cook them.

Question 2: Are they always frozen? Can I buy them fresh?

The answer is yes and yes. If you just purchase them from us at a market, at our farm, or delivered to your house they will be frozen. The one exception to this is when we bring birds home from the processor, we always offer fresh birds that weekend for delivery or pickup at the farm.

Question 3: Are you certified organic?

No, we are not USDA certified organic. We are better than that though. An organic chicken can live it’s days in a confinement chicken house as long as there is “access” to outdoors (a hole every 75 feet). Our birds are hormone, antibiotic, and GMO free just like an organic chicken. The difference is our’s are raised on pasture. Learn more here about misleading labeling.

Question 4: What is pastured poultry and why should I care?

Pastured poultry is simply chicken (or other poultry) raised on grass, moved daily in a way that both benefits the animal and the land. The benefits of this are numerous, too long to list here but I’ll name a few. Pastured chickens get fresh grass, bugs, sunshine, and nutrients from being outdoors. They live a happy and humane life. When a chicken lives in a factory chicken house, it is crammed in there with thousands of other chickens. The air is unsanitary, fecal matter is everywhere, and the chickens are constantly stressed. When a chicken is stressed there is adrenaline and stress hormones pumping through the chicken. How hormone free can that chicken really be? It cant. More on this to come in a future article.

Question 5: How do I cook a whole chicken? I’ve never done that before.

Check out our recipe page. We have a few ideas on there and will continue to add to it.

Question 6: Is there any way to get a discount? Is there a bulk program?

Once again, yes and yes. We offer 10% off your next purchase when you leave us a review on Facebook, Google business, or wherever else you think would help us get exposure. We also offer 10% off for referrals. Refer somebody and you will receive a discount on your next purchase and the person you referred will receive that same discount on their purchase. As far as the bulk program and bulk discount goes, we will have more news about that next week. To make sure you know all about it, sign up for our email list.

As we near the halfway point of our first farming season, I’d like to take a moment to look back and say thank you. Thank you to each and every one of you who has supported us on this journey. We have done some great things along the way. We’ve produced some amazing chicken and met some amazing people that have become customers.

In the beginning, we imagined how this would all go, how it would play out. What I don’t think we envisioned was how satisfying it would be. It’s a great feeling when a customer tells you how much they enjoyed your product. It’s humbling when they tell you that they feel good feeding this to their kids because they know it was raised the right way.

In the fight against garbage food we must not only support each other but embrace the joy that comes along with it. Knowing your farmers is knowing the people who put food into your body everyday. There is happiness and responsibility that comes with that role. I’m sure you value your relationship with your doctor, or maybe your tax accountant or attorney, they’re very important. But combine the time you spend with each of them all year and it pales in comparison to the time you spend eating. We eat everyday. We feel the ramifications for what we eat constantly. A person of that much importance shouldn’t be just a label from a factory farm.

To bring this full circle, I believe what we are doing is truly important stuff. For those of you buying from us, we are providing you the quality food you long to consume. It’s extremely satisfying when somebody is going to cook our product and I just know they will be blown away. I humbly ask that each of you great people share us with your friends, leave a review on Google or Facebook, and most importantly continue to support local food. If you do this we’ll continue to produce it for you.

Health benefits are wonderful, they are the main reason, directly or indirectly, that most of us get into sustainable farming.  By its very definition, sustainable farming is healthier for the microbes and soil and the earth all around us, it has to be to be sustainable.  But with all of that said there is a side of all of us that really cares about taste. It’s not hard to eat healthy when the food we desire is healthy.  When healthy and nutritious foods look like something from a nightmare that’s a different story. For a minute, let’s all indulge our more selfish side and talk about something delicious.

There are many reasons our beyond organic chicken tastes better.  Pasture raised chickens get fresh grass everyday along with the bugs and grubs and worms that are in the soil.  They eat the forage they want, and they really love clover! This is a taste completely foreign to anything you get in the supermarket, even chicken labeled as “free range” or “organic.”  The key is the daily movement, that is something we will get into further in a future blog post, but suffice it to say that no matter what label is on a chicken at the grocery store, it is extremely unlikely that the chicken is truly moved to fresh grass daily the way they are on our farm.

As much as these chickens benefit from the goodies they do receive, they also benefit from what they don’t get.  Confinement house poultry lives in a sea of fecal particulates floating through the air. People who work in these confinement operations have to wear masks when they work in the chicken houses and that’s only a couple hours a day.  Imagine spending your whole existence in these conditions.

The fresh air is a component of a stress free life.  Whether it be a cow, a chicken, or a pig, there is no doubt that an animal that is not stressed tastes better when it is eventually butchered.  This is absolutely evident with a Bailey Family Farm chicken. When a chicken is not stressed and isn’t releasing adrenaline and stress hormones, the difference is evident in the taste and the texture of the chicken.

When you raise livestock the right way the benefits are numerous and all intertwined.  When our chickens are humanely raised they also taste better. The fact that they are living a better life means they are better in every aspect.  We believe that when you try one of our chickens, the difference will be evident to you as well.

You will see it frequently said, by our farm and others, but do you understand what beyond organic really means and why it is different?  In my last post I discussed why labels can be problematic at best. At the end of the day that’s what beyond organic means, it means better than the label that is on meat and veggies at the grocery store; but why is it better?

The first problem with labels is that somebody has to be the deciding party.  When consumers abdicate the responsibility of learning about what goes into their body to a third party, they instantly become less connected with their food.  When you add in the fact that the ever inefficient and inept government is making and enforcing the standards you wind up with a product that isn’t what you, the consumer, expects or desires.

Another problem with labels and standards is inherent and unavoidable.  If you are allowed to be 12% bad and still get the gold star, what incentive is there to only be 2% bad?  This problem is certainly not limited to the realm of food but I do not know where it could be more important.  The old adage “you are what you eat” still and will always ring true. On one hand you have lobbyist in Washington spending big dollars to be able to write loophole after loophole into law to benefit the big producers at the expense of all of us.  On the other hand you have local farmers who do it right and want you to come see for yourself.

If you live in Memphis or the surrounding areas, let us show you what our beyond organic products are really like.  Come out to the farm and bring your children. We want to meet your standards because at the end of the day, those are the standards that really matter.

So you want to eat healthy? You go to the grocery store and you buy organic meat because that is the best, right? Well, not necessarily. Did you know that an organic chicken can be raised in a confinement chicken house? Even “free range” chicken is often raised in confinement houses. According to USDA regulations, a couple of access doors can qualify the chicken in an operation as free range even though the house is 24,000 square feet and the area outside the house is a fraction of that. By simply giving the birds “access” to the outdoors the big guys skate around common sense and decency.

Let’s compare what we’re doing to the way 99.9% of the chicken in the supermarket are raised. First of all, our chickens will be raised on fresh grass, moved daily from the time they come out of the brooder until they are processed.  There are so many reasons, too many to list them all, why this is key. They will ingest grass and bugs and eat a more natural diet than chickens raised in a confinement house.  Because the chickens are moved daily, their manure is spread out across the pasture allowing it to be a great fertilizer and cause even more grass to grow. Alternatively, when birds are housed in a confinement facility, they don’t see sunlight or grass or eat bugs or get to express the chickenness of a chicken in any meaningful way. In fact these “free range” or “organic” chickens are debeaked because there is such a problem with cannibalism in these facilities.

Below is a cheat sheet for the terms that are often thrown around:

Conventional Chicken = grow houses, antibiotics & vaccines, gmo feed

Organic Chicken = grow houses, antibiotics & vaccines, organic feed

Free Range Chicken = grow houses with a door, antibiotics & vaccines, any feed

Pasture Raised = no legal definition (unregulated living conditions, may include antibiotics, vaccines, gmo feed)

Bailey Farm Chicken = 24/7 outside, NO antibiotics, NO vaccines, foraging for bugs, grubs, seeds & worms + supplemental non-gmo feed

With all of that said, I hope it is abundantly clear why you can’t trust a label. What’s the solution? To get to know your farmer, look him in the eye. Pick up some product at the farm. You should know where your food is raised and who is raising it. The fact that nobody does says a lot about how far we have fallen. But there is hope, by supporting local farmers you can rest assured that you aren’t feeding your family and yourself the garbage that is all around us. If you’re in the greater Memphis area, give our chicken a try. I promise you it will be raised to the highest standard. And at the end of the day, what is more important to our health than the food we eat?