Real Food Resolutions

You know what I love about January on the farm? The quiet. These crisp winter mornings give me a chance to pause, sip my coffee, and dream up what the year ahead might hold. While I've never been much for New Year's resolutions, I do believe in the power of getting crystal clear about where you're headed.

Around here, that means sketching out our dreams in the dirt – literally!

We're mapping spring plantings, plotting new pasture rotations, and I'm personally committing to more family time in both the garden and kitchen. There's something magical about watching Sam and Eliza transform from reluctant taste-testers to competent young cooks who understand exactly where their food comes from.

Honey, Smoke and Kit in tow before the snow starts coming down.

Speaking of food wisdom, I've been revisiting Michael Pollan's brilliantly simple eating rules lately. Not because they're revolutionary – honestly, they're just good old-fashioned common sense – but because they remind me why we started farming this way in the first place.

Take his rule about eating food your grandmother or great-grandmother would recognize. My grandma would've gotten a good laugh out of some of the things that pass for "food" these days. She knew that real food – the kind that grows in soil and eventually spoils – is what keeps us healthy and connected to the land.

Or take his advice about avoiding foods with ingredients you can't pronounce. You know what's in our pasture-raised chicken? Chicken. Plus whatever bugs, grasses, and natural goodies they forage while strutting around the pasture. No PhD required to understand that ingredient list!

It's a beautiful thing, really – watching our animals convert simple, natural inputs into incredibly nutritious food. Our whole approach to raising meat fits right into this philosophy: let animals be animals, keep things simple, and trust that nature knows what she's doing. The result? Food that's meant to be cooked with love in your kitchen, not created in a lab!

Straight from the oven: homemade bread, Eliza crafting a cake, and the most amazing scratch-made pizza!

As we kick off this new year, I'm recommitting to these fundamentals – both in how we farm and how we eat. Because at the end of the day, good food isn't complicated. It's just real.

Here's to a year of simple, wholesome living.

Your farmer,

Cody

P.S. If you're looking to stock your freezer with some honest-to-goodness meat to start your year off right, our Fresh Start Meal Kit has everything you need to cook up some simple, nourishing meals.