Grassway Organics
Grocery Store · Health Food Store · Farm
About
Chaz and Megan Self followed a dream and took over Grassway Organics on March 21st, 2016. Neither Chaz nor Megan grew up on a farm, but they both have a passion for farming and sustainable agriculture. Raising their three young sons — Otik, Oscoda, and Xasion —on a farm was the only option they considered for raising a family.
With no concrete background of "that's how grandpa did it" farming, the couple pledged from the start that Organic and grazing was the only way they would farm. This kind of farming is called "managed rotational grazing." It involves getting the cows out of the barn and onto the green pastures in the fresh air and sunshine.
We milk about 40 Jersey cows and graze all their calves on 210 acres of pasture. We focus on bloodlines and milk only A2A2 cows. Because we value diversity, we also pasture-raise chickens for eggs and meat, dairy steers for meat, turkeys for Thanksgiving, and finish to farrow hogs.
The power and benefits of fresh air, sunshine, and exercise cannot be emphasized enough. Healthy, happy animals are our goal to ultimately produce milk, cheese, and meats that are natural and clean.
We would be honored to be your Farmers.
The Self Family.
DAIRY AND BEEF
All our cattle graze on an intense rotational system. All 390 acres are boarded with high tensile wire with automatic waters in all paddocks.
We move our milking cows four times a day and our beef animals twice.
All our cows raise their own babies for three months.
Regenerative agriculture is the only sustainable way to raise animals in a healthy lifestyle that also builds a healthy ecosystem in the soil.
We will never feed grain! We put up almost all of our own balage and hay for the wintertime. We have two large sheds that allow us to keep the cows on a deep-bedded pack. This allows us to compost for two years with a static air ration system.
PASTURED PORK.
We offer some of the healthiest pork we’ve ever found Raised at Golden Bear Farm out of Kiel, WI— Golden Bear Farm never feeds CORN, SOY, GMO’s, antibiotics, hormones or any processed foods. Their pork is processed by Beck’s Meats who uses only natural ingredients (no gluten, either) in our sausages, and smokes our bacon and hams using no nitrates (hence, the label “uncured”), no nitrites, no MSG and no funny business.
Steve, the head farmer, has spent years researching nutrition to ensure their pigs have a nutrient dense diet on which they thrive thereby ensuring that WE thrive. In the summertime, the pigs rotationally graze on lush pastures. In the fall, they have their own salad bar. They plant a garden just for them that contains a variety of vegetables, like squashes, melons, and turnips. In the winter, we feed them apples, pumpkins, other squashes along with barley, field peas and hay.
Golden Bears pigs live in a very low-stress environment with ample space even in the winter. We never dock their tails or ring their noses. Piglets stay with their siblings until they are full grown. You should see how playful they are !
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CHICKEN AND EGGS
First, we'll start off with our hard-working ladies. Our 600 laying hens are always hard at work on pasture at our farm. We rotate our chickens three days behind our milking cows. This allows ample time for bugs and grubs to grow in the fields, providing food for the chickens and creating a sustainable management system for manure. This is the true meaning of 'free-range and pasture-raised.' All our coops are mobile and moved every day. The eggs are collected from outside of the coop.
All of our meat chickens spend three weeks in a warm mobile brooder before being put on pasture. We have a perimeter electric poultry fence that keeps the ground predators at bay and our trusty guard dog Mocha is always with them. We raise them truly free-range with a mobile shade structure that protects them from the elements.
THANKSGIVING TURKEYS
We raise Organic Turkeys for Thanksgiving. Our turkeys spend their first three weeks getting used to freedom in a warm mobile brooder. They then hit the pasture running with a mobile roost that is moved every day. They have electric poultry netting around the perimeter and are always protected by our guard dog.