First-generation graziers build a farm

Turner Road Farm is revitalizing a worn-out farm with multi-species grazing

By Martha Hoffman Kerestes

Bayfield, Wisconsin — Far north in Wisconsin, just a few miles from Lake Superior, is a diversified farm built by two first-generation graziers.

Esme Martinson grew up on a blueberry farm with some hobby animals, and Josh Pearson grew up in town. Together they, with their daughter Nori, are producing grassfed beef, grass-finished lamb, and other products while rejuvenating old buildings and low-fertility land.

Josh and Esme manage 80 owned and 80 leased acres that include some wooded non-grazed portions. It started in 2012 on a small parcel when they had half a dozen sheep and roughly 3.5 acres to graze, and they stumbled onto rotational grazing by accident.

“In trying to make the grass last longer, we would set up small pens and move them every day,” Esme says. “We were just trying to keep them happy. We didn’t even know what it was called.”

They were dipping a toe into pastured eggs, raising a few hogs, and raising turkeys for meat.

It wasn’t planned this way, but this set the stage perfectly for when the opportunity came to buy the land across the road. Esme and Josh could show the USDA loan officer that they had the experience in farming and rotational grazing to qualify for a loan.

January 28, 2026

A no-records method for ewe flock selection

A niche of beef, lamb, and pizza

By Janet McNally

A flock needs continual pruning to keep it at optimum productivity. There are many ways to go about identifying unproductive animals depending on the size of the flock and whether or not you are keeping records.

This month I am going to address strategies you can use with a commercial flock without keeping records.

Assessing the flock

Every flock should be brought through the chute within a month after weaning to evaluate body condition, FAMACHA score, teeth, udder health, and production status.

It is best to do this shortly after weaning, as it is important to be able to establish whether the ewe is dry or has been lactating.

Make sure all the teeth are present on older ewes and that the teeth are solid, not loose. Tooth status is especially important going into winter as a ewe with poor teeth will have more difficulty pulling hay out of tight bales or grazing stubble on pasture when winter grazing.

December 30, 2025

Building a diversified grassfed farm

A niche of beef, lamb, and pizza

By Martha Hoffman Kerestes

Decorah, Iowa — Tom and Maren Beard are building community around their grazing farm in the rolling Driftless hills of northeastern Iowa.

That includes direct marketing grassfed lamb and beef raised on the farm, and it includes welcoming hundreds of folks onto their farm each weekend during warm weather for wood-fired pizza made with local and regional ingredients.

The Beards manage around 250 acres of land, about half of it rented. Tom does about 50 acres of organic row crops, and the rest is permanent pasture and hay ground. Only half of the land is tillable, given the slope and tree cover of some parts of the acreage.

Managing both species

Tom and Maren keep about 150 hair sheep ewes and 20 cow-calf pairs and finish 6-10 head of beef a year slaughtered at 20-30 months (the rest of the calves are kept as replacement heifers).

Both species are moved once a day with 30-day rest periods for pastures when the grass is growing fast, and lengthening when growth slows.

June 10, 2025

Raising triplet lambs on pasture

Using management and selection to make triplets an asset in grassfed production

By Janet McNally

Triplets have never been regarded as an asset in an all-grass system. I have within my flock a line of ewes with the prolific booroola, or B, gene. This is a line of sheep I started before I switched to grazing.

A ewe with one copy of the B gene typically gives birth to 2.47 to 2.78 lambs. Suffice to say I have had to address how to raise triplets in the context of a grass-based system.

Over time my method of raising triplets has evolved.

Barn-feeding bust

Initially only one in three ewes had enough milk to feed all three lambs.

So I did what everyone does. I pulled the third lamb off, raised it in the barn on milk replacer and creep feed, then returned it to pasture after weaning.

They invariably crashed no matter how good they looked at weaning. The weight loss was inevitable, and they would not recover by market time.

November 8, 2024

Processor values grassfed demand

Nordik Meats finds success serving a variety of alternative meat producers

By Joel McNair

Viroqua, Wisconsin — “If there was no such thing as grassfed beef,” says Joel Morrison, “We wouldn’t be as successful as we are.”

Lots of grass farmers might make such a statement, but Joel is not one of them. Instead he is the general manager for Nordik Meats, an unusual meat processor with an uncommon ownership structure that produces some interesting end products in addition to the usual sides, quarters, and retail cuts.

Beef tallow, pork lard, bone broth — these and other products often associated with micro-processing ventures are a growing part of Nordik Meats, a USDA-inspected plant with 25 employees serving a handful of grassfed/alternative meat marketing organizations in addition to much smaller producers having processing done for their own consumption and direct-market sales.

Certainly the traditional cuts account for the bulk of Nordik’s business. Grassfed beef and lamb, plus pastured pigs, are by no means everything the plant does: Joel says that grassfed accounts for roughly half of the total volume here.

But Joel sees grassfed meats and the associated added-value products as important to Nordik’s future as “cornerstone” customers such as 99 Counties (Graze January 2023) and Wisconsin Meadows innovate and grow, and smaller, often direct-to-market ventures tap rising interest in grass-finished, organic, and local meats.

August 1, 2022August 10, 2022

Helmicks’ change places family first

Switch to multi-species grazing providing a better quality of life

By Martha Hoffman Kerestes

Greenville, West Virginia — Starting their own grass dairy from scratch was a dream come true for Aaron and Tara Helmick. But the dairy became a burden despite a decade of economic success.

The problem was a lack of quality of life. Aaron says he has very few memories of his second and third children before they were four years old because he was working so much that he was barely in the house.

Aaron and Tara started the low-input dairy as newlyweds in 2010 with an FSA loan and a 10-year lease on 470 acres. At first, prices were good and their seasonal management allowed a two-week vacation every year to recharge.

Then they were offered an organic contract at a good price that required a switch to year-round milking, so they made the transition in 2015. Milk prices dropped soon after, and the continuous milking made it hard to get away and even harder to maintain a healthy day-to-day life. They had doubled the herd in 2016, and were getting ready to double it again in 2018 when they realized something needed to change.