West Wind Farms
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Products Offered
100% Grassfed Beef, dry-aged
100% Berkshire Pork
Pasture-raised Chicken and Turkey
Katahdin Lamb
Huge selection of Bratwursts, Smoked Bacons, sliced Deli Meats, Grassfed Beef Jerky (no sodium nitrite added)
Smoked, boneless, spiral-sliced Hams
Pasture-ranged Eggs
Unpasteurized Cow and Goat Milk
Homemade Whole Wheat Egg Noodles
Market Days
Weekly
Contact Information
155 Shekinah Way
Deer Lodge, Tennessee 37726
(423) 442-9768
customerservice@westwindfarms.com
Visit us and buy our products online at www.westwindfarms.com
Follow us on Facebook
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West Wind Farms offers the very best certified organic and grassfed meats and poultry, as well as other fine quality and artisan foods. Wholesome, healthy, handcrafted, slow foods are our specialty. All of our meats and poultry are produced and processed on our farm under our attentive care, so you can be sure of the integrity of West Wind Farms' products. Organic certification gives you 3rd party verification of the products' integrity.
Community Supported Agriculture (Our CSAs)
Community Supported Agriculture (Our CSAs )In addition to a vast assortment of products available to purchase a lacarte, West Wind Farms also offers a number of CSAs including a Vegetable & Fruit CSA, several Meat CSAs, and a Group CSA that includes a little ofeverything the farm has to offer!
Our Farm
West Wind Farms is a certified organic farm offering the very best grassfed meats and poultry, as well as other fine quality and artisan foods.Wholesome, healthy, handcrafted, slow foods are our specialty.
Ralph and Kimberlie Cole's Story
Serving as environmental professionals in Oak Ridge for decades, we developed a common drive to do more with our knowledge of environmental protection and sustainability. With little more than a dream and a prayer, we started West Wind Farms over 16 years ago. Six years later, West Wind
Farms became one of the first meat and poultry farms in the U.S. to be certified organic, exceeding the then-new USDA organic standards. After many years of both farming and working full-time off-farm to self-finance our dream, we now finally farm, full-time. Over those years, West Wind
Farms has grown to be one of the most successful and well-known meat and poultry farms in the southeastern U.S. We have an unwavering commitment to high quality, organics, local food systems, animal welfare, and the environment. Our customers are adamant supporters, and we attribute our
farm’s success to our customers’ commitment to these same values. West Wind Farms’ delicious meats and poultry certainly make it easy too!
Our Farm
We are a small family-owned farm located in rural Morgan County, Tennessee. The closest town, Deer Lodge, is situated about 1½ hours west of Knoxville and 2 hours east of Nashville. Located at the end of a small country road,
West Wind Farms is a peaceful, pleasant place to be, where you can kick up your feet and let your cares go. The farm has gently sloping green ridges leading down to a large perennial stream, White Creek. The White Creek valley offers a cool retreat on warm summer days, with hemlocks and laurel bordering the trail along the trickling creek. Rock bluffs reveal the telltale signs of ancient sand dunes derived from weathering of the ancient mountains that became the present Great Smoky Mountains. The overhangs of
the rock bluffs shelter arrowheads and other signs of earlier inhabitants. Sweet spring wildflowers, laurel, and ferns are abundant, as are a rich diversity of fungi and lichens. This area of the farm is like a hidden treasure.
Besides the natural diversity of woodland and creek bottoms, our farm pastures contain diverse grasses, herbs, and legumes. The health of the soil, and the plants supported by it, are dependent on a variety of grazing
animals such as cattle and sheep. West Wind Farms cares for a mix of animal species to utilize the array of pasture plants and improve the soil under attentive, organic management. When you visit West Wind Farms, you are greeted by our soil improvement crew: chickens, turkeys, sheep, pigs, and cattle.
Visitors to the farm are also frequently rewarded by wildlife sightings. White tail deer live in our farmstead's woodland. Bobcat and coyote feast on rabbit and squirrel. Beaver occasionally forage for tree bark along the
creek. Pastures are frequented by large flocks of turkey, coveys of quail, killdeer, doves and meadowlark. Hawks and kestrel hunt during the day, while the hoots of many species of owl can be heard from the night sky. Water birds include varieties of duck, herons, kingfisher and a rare group of great egrets. We welcome this wildlife and provide oases on the farm for it to thrive and flourish.
Environmental Stewardship & Humane Husbandry Give You Healthy Food - a Holistic Approach
We believe good organic livestock husbandry is holistic in nature, striving to promote and enhance the health of our whole environment. This would include not only the animals’ health, but also the health of people, their land, and their water. Good health relies on respect for individual differences and the complexity of nature. To this end, keen observation and monitoring of environmental conditions is an important part of what we do on the farm. We accept that we cannot control our environment (if we ever start believing that, we’re making a big mistake!), but we simply strive to work with it for better. Leaving it better and richer than when we received it is our goal.
Being environmentalists at heart, we have made our farm a working example of green, sustainable living. Rainwater collection is the sole source for all farm and personal water needs. Livestock are rotationally grazed to distribute manure evenly on the fields and prevent erosion and runoff. A wooded riparian buffer is maintained around the mile-long frontage of White Creek which feeds Clear Creek, one of the most pristine waterways in the U.S. We converted our delivery truck to run on clean-burning compressed natural gas in order to reduce carbon emissions on our delivery routes. The farm produces its own clean electricity with a 30kW solar array (3000 square feet of solar panels) which supplies enough solar power to sell excess to the grid. Of course, the farm also produces nearly all of our food, as well as food for our customers, volunteers, interns and employees, with enough food leftover to contribute nearly 10% annually to the food
bank. We are achieving our goal to live our lives in a way that ever-increases production over consumption, and serves the needs of our community in a very real and lasting way. You can feel good purchasing from West Wind Farms – it’s so much more than dinner.
Strength In Diversity
We believe a diversity of species in the landscape is natural and healthy. When that diversity is removed, problems will arise. Research has shown that the effect of producing vast quantities of one crop in the same field year in and year out will leach nutrients, destroy the soil structure, and result in a poor, nutritionally deficient food. The natural sugar content of the produce of these monoculture fields has been found to be measurably lower than that of organic fields. In contrast, West Wind Farms organic fields yield a sweet and varied mix of grasses, herbs, and produce. This sweet bounty nourishes a diversity of animal species - domestic and wild – which, in turn, nourish it.
Natural Balance
Instead of ridding our farm of pests using synthetic chemicals and poisons that can harm domestic animals and wildlife, pests are held at bay by our barn kitty and other natural predators living in the trees, hedges, and
wild patches of West Wind Farms. On West Wind Farms, we select our breeding stock for natural parasite resistance. Then we graze our stock in rotation on our pastures, breaking the life cycles of parasitic organisms. Gently
working with, not against, our animals’ environment in this way, and closely monitoring them for their health and parasite resistance, we’ve had success overcoming parasite burdens in our livestock. Our animals are not injected or dosed with synthetic parasiticides, or wormers. Our animals are never reared in crowded unhealthy conditions, so they do not suffer from many of the ailments commonly associated with intensive livestock units. Thus, we avoid the need for sub-therapeutic medication, insecticidal ear tags, sprays and dips. If an animal does become sick (a very rare occasion), it is treated by herbal, homeopathic, or other natural methods first. We never withhold treatment from a sick animal. If synthetic treatments are necessary for the welfare of the animal, the animal is never sold for meat.
Organic Inputs
The inclusion of growth promoting substances such as hormones, antibiotics, and heavy metals in livestock feed rations and the use of all kinds of strange and unnatural feed items (newspaper, sawdust, poultry litter) have
become acceptable practices for some farmers. Other farmers may simply not realize the livestock feeds they purchase contain these, and other, unnatural feedstuffs. Studies indicate even the best grass fed animals may be compromised if they are grazed on pastures laden with pesticides, herbicides, and chemical fertilizers. Because genetically modified organisms (GMOs) occur in the innoculated seed of nearly ALL commercially available alfalfa, clover, and other legumes, even the grass grazed by non-organic grass fed livestock may contain GMOs! What a shame! As organic farmers, we at West Wind Farms do not allow our animals access to these synthetic growth enhancers, medications, or chemicals, or any unnatural feedstuffs. West Wind Farms' livestock thrive on a rich variety of certified organic grasses and forbes, free of chemical residues and GMOs.
When certain species of livestock such as poultry and pigs require, by nature, grain in addition to grass to be healthy, their rations are milled on our farm from organically grown grain and never include animal-by-products, GMOs, or herbicide- or pesticide-laden grain. And they always have access to certified organic grass pastures as well. Because we do not use concentrated commercial rations or growth enhancers, our animals have a natural, slower rate of growth. For example, where conventionally grown chickens take only 5 ½ weeks to grow to harvest size, ours take between 9 and 12 weeks, depending on the time of year and the weather.
Humane Handling
Rest assured, we never buy in animals from the sale barn. Your meat comes only from animals raised on our certified organic farm. We never use electrical wands to frighten the animals into moving, nor do we withhold food or water. Knowledge of the animals’ origin, and attention to the animals’ well-being, assures you of the integrity, quality, and purity of the meat you eat. Our animals are able to indulge their natural instincts, to stretch wings, dust bathe, build nests, and give birth unrestrained. They are reared outdoors in small groups, with airy shelter for protection and plenty of dry bedding, and are provided with reasonable protection frompredators. They are able to peck in the hedges and holes for insects and seeds, to nibble browse, and to farrow in freedom. In these conditions they do not suffer from aggressive behavior, so there is no need for tail clipping, beak snipping, or other physical mutilations to protect them from each other. They commune together in harmony.
Summary
Soil quality, animal husbandry, water protection, co-habitation withwildlife, woodland management, grass production, respect for diversity, community strength, and healthy food are inseparable elements of West Wind Farms. All of our endeavors must be aligned with these guiding principles, or we will not continue to pursue them. Our objective is to produce & sell high quality meat and other healthy foods in ways that are good for the land we farm, good for the animals we raise, and good for people, like you!
If you are looking for the purest, highest quality food you can buy, West Wind Farms is for you!