Growing organic meat business has lofty goals

By Sara Bredesen
Regional Editor

RIPON - Cody Fulwider and his mother, Wendy, are still in the early stages of their organic, direct-market meat business, but they put their goals out there for everybody to see when they named the enterprise Pinnacle Pastures.

"It's the top - that's what we want. All pasture. Organic. Top quality," Cody Fulwider said.

The Fulwiders are in the first of three years required to transition their Fond du Lac County farm into certified organic production. They are directly marketing retail cuts and carcass portions of pork and beef, with more products planned for the future.

The transition from conventional production has been a learning experience, Fulwider said.

"I tried dairy farming, but the way conventional dairy farming is these days, it's hard for small families to survive. I figured I wasn't headed down the right path," he said, "so my mom sold the cows and (we both) started back to school."

Fulwider enrolled in a dairy farm management short course, and his mother studied animal husbandry and landed a job at Organic Valley in La Farge. She traveled home for weekends while her son ran the farm.

"We knew right away that we wanted to try something different," Fulwider said. "My mom kind of opened my eyes to a whole different aspect of farming, with the whole organic farming, different practices and different cropping."

To support his new interest, Fulwider attended grazing and organic conferences, joined a local grazing network and gleaned information from anyone he could find.

"We were starting out kind of blind," he said. "(Mom) sees lots of farmers and sees what they do, and she has so much experience just from being around animals all her life. That helps a lot."

They started with nine beef cows and a goal of increasing to 20 in a cow-calf grazing system.

"Beef, obviously, is the biggest thing. You don't have to beg anybody to buy your beef," he said.

It was his mother's idea to raise hogs.

"All I knew about hogs is that we had had three once when we had dairy cattle," Fulwider said. "I didn't know anything about pigs."

The first two were crossbred sows that were farrowed and raised on grass. Fulwider said he found he really liked the pigs and chose to build the herd with Chester White, Duroc and Berkshire breeds. He now has 20 sows.

"We'd like to farrow a couple sows a month so we have pigs all the time. If someone wants a pig, we want to have the supply," he said.

Katahdin sheep were added to the mix because they could be pastured with the cows.

"You don't have the labor involved with them," Fulwider said. "You don't have to dock tails or all that crazy stuff. We don't do anything with the pigs either. We don't dock tails or cut needle teeth. In the summertime, you don't have to give them iron because they are on dirt. They practically raise themselves if you have good mothers."

Fulwider has had free-range chickens for about two years but will shift over to movable pens for his meat birds this summer.

The farm needed modifications to transition from row crops and dairy animals to pasture production.

Stall dividers and barn cleaner were pulled out of the stanchion barn, the floor was leveled, fencing was put up with help of the Natural Resources Conservation Service and water was trenched to nearby buildings.

Fulwider built A-frame hutches for the summer pigs and indoor farrowing hutches for winter. Cattle handling corrals are in the works, and a summer water system is planned for outlying fields.

Family issues intervened when Fulwider's grandfather went through a lengthy illness and died this past fall.

"He hadn't protected the farm," Fulwider said. "There was actually a time when we thought we would have to sell the farm to pay for everything."

They sold 80 acres and moved forward with the remaining 115. The plan was to transition to organic production while maintaining an off-farm job.

"The whole (idea) was growing crops organically and not having much time, so we went to the small grains," Fulwider said. "We could have planted soybeans and managed them organically, but that would have been terrible right out of the box."

He planted turnips, oats and rape in the pig pastures and is slowly transitioning other fields to a perennial pasture mix for the cattle. Forty-six acres went to organic barley, which is used in the hog finishing mix and provides straw for the livestock. He rents another 150 acres for forage.

"It's working," Fulwider said. "I know a lot of my friends who are conventional farmers who were amazed by the barley yield that we had and that it worked so well."

Moving from conventional farming also means moving from conventional marketing. Fulwider said selling directly to customers is a way farmers can get a fair price for a quality product. It's also a way customers can get what they want, like pasture-raised meat and nitrate-free hams and bacon.

"It tastes so much better than what you buy in the store," he said.

He added that consumers need more education about what they eat, how their food is grown and who is growing it.

"I think it's really important. People will go by here, and it's quite a change from what it was before," Fulwider said about the farm. "They're wondering what we're doing. People stop and look."

More changes are in the cards.

Fulwider's mom is moving back home in the next month and will work long-distance with Organic Valley while taking a bigger role in managing Pinnacle Pastures. Fulwider said he hopes to leave an off-farm job in a few years and put his efforts into building markets for their products.

Pork from the farm is already being distributed through a buyer to Madison and Chicago customers, and a Fox Valley restaurant is talking about becoming a regular customer. Fulwider said he wants to sell more farm products through area community-supported agriculture operations and directly to consumers.

"I want to be able to have an on-farm store," Fulwider said. "How soon, I don't know. How nice, I don't know. It just depends on how the market goes for us."

Sara Bredesen can be reached at 715-360-7253 or stbrede@gmail.com.

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