A grass fed and finished beef farm and pastured pork farm
The Johnston's Farm beginnings
Hello, folks, my name is Allen Johnston. In September of 2012. I returned home to Bradenton from a two-year deployment serving our country as a pilot in Afghanistan. While serving overseas, when I was not flying I had idle time. I decided to use this time to study and learn everything I could about producing a healthy alternative to the unhealthy foods. When I returned from serving my country I wanted to offer these healthy foods not only my family but my extended family, the folks in my local community. By October this same year, Johnston's Farm formed and our grass fed beef and pork operation began.
Guiding Principals
TRANSPARENCY: Anyone is welcome to visit the farm anytime. No trade secrets, no locked doors, every corner is camera-accessible. GRASS-BASED:(Grass fed and finished Beef) and Pastured Pork and poultry, frequently moved to new “salad bars,” offer landscape healing and nutritional superiority. INDIVIDUALITY: Plants and animals provided a habitat that allows them to express their physiological distinctiveness. Respecting and honoring the pigness of the pig is a foundation for societal health. COMMUNITY: We should all seek food closer to home, in our foodshed, our bioregion. In turn, to enjoy seasonality and reacquainting ourselves with our home kitchens. NATURE’S TEMPLATE: Mimicking natural patterns on a domestic commercial-scale insures moral and ethical boundaries to human cleverness. Cows are herbivores, not omnivores. EARTHWORMS: We’re really in the earthworm enhancement business. Stimulating soil biota is our priority. Soil health creates healthy food. We attempt to model our farm after Polyface Farm as such these are the principals we adopted from them. The farm is located in Northern Florida (Suwannee County) and all products are customer picked up at our central Florida home in Bradenton, Florida Florida.
Scaling up without selling your soul
Many successful entrepreneurial start-ups morph into Wall-Streetified empires that lose their distinctiveness. And in the process, the business chews up and spits out its workers and founders in a mad scramble to dominate something. Does middle ground exist between the calm talking-stick consensus circle of indigenous eastern tribal cultures and the mad scramble frenzy of western capitalism? Or perhaps more to the point in light of recent Wall Street and economic developments, what values are more important than growth? Especially since cancer is growing. At this juncture of our culture’s reality, I would like us to immerse ourselves for a few minutes in an alternative innovative business philosophy. by Joel Salatin
We are not so much about raising our different animals as we are about raising grass from management intensive grazing. This is something that Joel Salatin has always stressed in his talks and books. Maybe others are starting to listen. Check out the latest as of this date from the director of Ted Talks.
To find out more about our principles and beliefs, we encourage you to visit the Polyface Farm. These folks have been the leader in the natural, sustainable farm business. Johnston's Farm agrees with their business model and have adapted it to best suit the needs of our geographic location In Bradenton, Fl