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GOURMET NEWS JUNE 2019 www.gourmetnews.com NEWS & NOTES 1 0 Belcampo Continued from PAGE 1 of the cost to pump water to them and re- ducing some of the risks of drought. "It fo- cused the irrigation on the fields where it was going to be efficient," Rickert said. "If your books are red, you can't be green.... I want us to be very careful in a drought sit- uation." His responsibilities also include oversee- ing the Meat Camp programs that are part of the company's strategy for educating the public about its humane meat production, its regenerative agri- culture practices, and in general, where their meat comes from. For the past four years or so, Belcampo Farms has accommodated up to 24 people at a time in June and September for three days of feasting on open fire-grilled meats, learning butchery and prac- ticing their knife skills with Belcampo chefs, collecting eggs from the free-range laying hens, harvesting their own vegeta- bles in the organic garden and fruit from the orchards and touring the farm to get a close look at the farm's sustainable farming practices. "We look at this as a core part of our production here," Rickert said. "Con- sumer education is key.... I want to connect people with agriculture. I want them to know where their food comes from.... So- ciety used to embrace agriculture because more people were connected to it." The farm's philosophy, posted on signs here and there around the property, is that Belcampo Farms delivers "great taste and quality in every cut, from every animal, every time," through transparency and by working together to care for their animals with compassion, patience and the best food. The point of the meat camps is to give visitors a chance to see how that works on the ground. "We've found that getting peo- ple out to agriculture and having experiences like this – people leave c h a n g e d , " Rickert said. "The type of c o n s u m e r who shows up here re- ally wants to learn and is just excited by this. That's the kind of person we want. They tour the farm, learn about farrowing pigs, how the cattle are raised." The farm's 180 sows are a mixture of Duroc, Chester White, Ossabaw and Berk- shire breeds. They breed naturally and then birth their piglets in farrowing barns that provide them with room to move around, root through straw bedding to make their nest and nurse their babies in peace. Two or three weeks after farrowing, the porcine families are moved to group lactation pens where eight sows and their piglets live to- gether for a few weeks, with piglets nursing from whichever mom is convenient and will- ing. At eight weeks, the young swine are weaned and separated into market groups and turned out to pas- ture. "Pigs are really good at tearing up a field," Rickert said. "Pigs we really look at not just as a commod- ity but as a land man- agement tool." Swine are harvested and processed at about nine months. As the spring piglets are being born, newly hatched chicks, ducklings and turkeys ar- rive from a third party hatchery and go into warm brooder houses, where they live for about the next month. "As soon as they can thermo-regulate, they go out to pasture," Rickert said. The laying hens will already be out in the pastures, laying their eggs in mobile nest boxes mounted on trailers and pecking their way around a fenced paddock that's moved along with their trailer every few days so they have fresh grass and bugs to peck at along with their laying ration. The eggs are used in Belcampo's restaurants and wholesaled to grocers, and the byproduct manure stays where it falls to nourish the grass. "It just makes these fields explode with fertility," Rickert said. The farm also has 1,200 ewes and about 1,200 mother cows, born, bred and pastured on the three neighbor- ing ranches that belong to Bel- campo Farm be- fore they're herded quietly into trailers and trucked about 20 miles to the com- pany's U.S. De- partment of Agriculture-certi- fied and Certified Humane processing plant in Yreka. The facility was designed by Temple Grandin to ensure that the animals suffer as little stress as possible during their one bad day. The meat is sold in Belcampo's restaurants and butcher shops, and it's tracked all the way from birth to the butchery to its end consumer through a fully traceable coding system. "We're fully vertically integrated from farm to table," Rickert said. "It's not a factory that produces widgets." GN

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