Sustainability

sustainable agriculture: farming systems that are "capable of maintaining their productivity and usefulness to society indefinitely. Such systems...must be resource-conserving, socially supportive, commercially competitive, and environmentally sound.

Source: USDA

forest raised

Raising livestock in the forest (silvopasture) lowers the heavy ecological footprint of agriculture by implementing ecological and ethical practices that go beyond those of barn or even pasture-raised livestock. Raising animals in their natural environment produces healthier, happier animals, where the end result is tastier, healthier food that you can feel good about eating and feeding to your family. Explore what Chestnut Hill Farm is doing to meet sustainable agriculture goals…

Resource-conserving

• Supplementing Non-GMO feed with native food such as nuts, shrubs, grubs and leafy greens we plant from seed, such as kale, radish and mustard.

  • Why did we cut down trees? This is called thinning and is common in forestry. Thinning allows stonger trees to grow better and, in our case, produce more nuts. It also opens up the canopy to let in sun and help understory plants grow.

• Water conservation

  • Command-based water source vs. open troughs conserves water from evaporation, while ensuring clean drinking water.

• Forests keep nutrients in the soil — Erosion control

  • With too few or no plants, rainfall can wash away soil that is packed with nutrients from animal waste. This nutrient rich run-off often pollutes waterways such as streams and lakes and starves waterways of oxygen (eutrophication). This disrupts aquatic ecosystems and can kill animals such as fish. In forest pastures, excessive nutrients are used to help plants grow instead of being washed away.

  • We’ve also designed our fencing to minimize tractor passes, which cause soil compaction and can lead to erosion.

Socially supportive

Today, society looks for products that anyone can get behind. At Chestnut Hill Farm, this means ethical animal welfare and promoting local, family farms.

• Stress Tastes Bad

  • We had to look no further than habitat of wild relatives to know that the forest is the place where our animals can exhibit their instinctual behavior and social interactions. In turn, our animals live with less stress and are more active, healthier and, from what we can tell, a whole lot happier. The end result is tastier, more tender meat with a rich red marbling.

• Frequent Rotation

  • We monitor the impact on the land by looking to the soil, rain and plant growth as clues to help us decide when to move our animals to a fresh area of the forest. Not only does this allow the land to recover, it also keeps our animals healthy with fresh food and reduced parasite risk.

• Shelter as needed

  • We’ve built half-dome shelters that lend an open invitation to our hogs to protect themselves against the elements, and are large enough to huddle for warmth on cold or wet days.

• Local, Family Farm

  • Two families join together to provide individuals, families and restaurants in the greater Buffalo area with local and sustainable quality meat from farmers you can get to know and trust.

Commercially competitive

• Price Reflects Quality

  • Raising pigs in the forest takes a lot of work and resources! From purchasing top-breed piglets, rotating their pens, twice daily welfare check-ups, feeding, and transporting to spreading the word about our farm and putting up lots of infrastructure such as fencing, shelters and freezers.

  • Giving ample space to roam with minimal impact on the land puts limits on the number of animals we can raise. The animals and us prefer it this way, as packing animals tight isn’t a feel-good savings.

  • Our prices are set on-par with other top-quality pork producers. We try and limit our costs by taking actions like investing in more efficient feed systems in order to keep prices affordable for you.

• Pork Quality Assurance® Plus Certified

  • The education and certification program called Pork Quality Assurance® Plus (PQA® Plus) is a clear demonstration of our commitment to improve how we farm. Introduced in 1989, Pork Quality Assurance® (PQA®) was designed to help pig farmers and their employees use best practices to promote food safety.

environmentally sound

We’v e already mentioned some good things that we’re doing for sustainable agriculture. Here are a few more neat features of our farm that keep our environmental a bit healthier than conventional farming:

• Carbon Capture

  • Globally, forests consume roughly a quarter of human-related carbon emissions. By keeping our pastureland forested, we can all benefit from the trees sequestering carbon.

• Biodiversity: the total variety of life on earth

  • Forest contain a wider variety of organims than other farming systems. The rich boidiversity of forests makes ecosystems more resilient to changes — keeping the forest stable and able to recover from any impact on the land.

• Conservation of Farmland

  • With your support, we are able to utilize the forest to produce sustainable, quality meat. This keeps precious farmland from development, while being able to feed our community in the best way we know how.