Our Story

Our Story

"Every decision we make attempts to takes the entire ecosystem into account for the next 7 generations" - Farmer Sue
Ozark Akerz Regenerative Farm is a woman owned and family run farm located on Lumbee, Occaneechi and Skaruhreh/Tuscarora Land. We farm with respect for the gifts that wild and domestic plants and animals provide and the soil on which they thrive. Heritage breed Pineywoods Cattle, Cotton Patch Geese, Bourbon Red and Blue Slate Turkeys and a variety of of heritage chickens are some of the animals that call Ozark Akerz home.

We are on a journey to follow Honorable Harvest and 7th Generation, ancient indigenous wisdom that ground our approach to regenerative farming.  We take slow and deliberate steps in our adoption of these principles, honoring the wisdom through understanding, practice and unlearning of other practices.

As the most recent feet to fall upon this Lumbee, Occaneechi and /Skaruhreh/Tuscarora land, we must discover our responsibilities in its complex natural web, a web that includes both native and immigrant species. By sharing responsibilities with Nature, we learn from our partnership with Hazelnut, Sumac, Wild Plum, Pineywoods, Cotton Patch, Bourbon Red and the 540+ other species that inhabit this land. We accept that this partnership is the only way to a truly healthy environment, an environment that will reciprocate with health for us and our community.

In the longer term, we hope our humble work at Ozark Akerz Regenerative Farm provides an ecological basis for Lumbee, Occaneechi and Skaruhreh/Tuscarora communities to improve upon and restore connections to their homeland.

Graze Against the Machine is how we farm and live

The practices farmers choose to manage their farm are very personal. We have heard from other regenerative farmers that, like ours, their voices are consistently drowned out. Corporate noise and big-budget special interests, what we collectively call “the machine”, are hard to compete with. Inspired by one of farmer Mike's favorite bands, Rage Against The Machine who's lyrics express revolutionary political views, Graze Against The Machine® is an effort to make our voices heard and start a conversation about regenerative farming.

Our farm is an ecosystem that includes soil, plants, insects, birds, reptiles, fungi and mammals. All are interwoven and the decisions we make for one affects the others. Listening and learning from nature guides our decisions. Here are a few examples:
  • When we choose to buy organic straw from Cohen Farm to put in the chicken coop, we do so with the knowledge that the when the straw is cleaned out of the coop, we will compost it for use as a natural fertilizer in our garden. If we purchase straw that has not been grown with organic practices, we don't know what kind of chemicals are found in the straw, chemicals that could end up in our garden, affecting or preventing the growth of our plants. That, along with supplementing our birds diet with non-soy, organic feed means we get the best fertilizer around!
  • We decided to raise Heritage Pineywoods Cattle because they are much more heat tolerant to conditions in North Carolina, they are disease and pest resistant and will eat and thrive on forages that many commercial breeds such as Angus, do not. They eat wild herbs, shrubs, vines and trees as well as grass, a varied diet that they have been used to eating for centuries. The Pineywoods keep the under-story of our woods cleaned out and allow the trees to grow stronger. They also help control kudzu which is an invasive vine that can choke out native plants. In fact they love kudzu so much that they will eat it before they browse other forages.
  • Our soil is filled with a living array of diverse microbes that we call the soil microbiome. When spraying herbicides or pesticides on plants,  it leaches into the soil and disrupts and can kill these microbes. We think of the soil as a living-being that needs to be nurtured, not poisoned. Just like humans, soil, and the plants that grow in it, thrive when they have a healthy microbiome. As part of feeding our soil, we amend it with our own concoction of probiotics - that we ferment with ingredients on the farm - and add to the organic compost that we spread in the garden.

Current projects to improve ecological health at Ozark Akerz include but are not limited to:
Learn more about our animal welfare and regenerative farming practices or how the Pineywoods herd's appetite is helping us meet some of our regenerative farming goals.
Farmer Sue
"I have always been interested in how nutrition affects health, doubly so since my fight with cancer. I'm very disheartened by the lack of flavor and nutrition in today's food and have struggled to find flavorful food like I ate as a kid on the farm in Missouri. That is what drove me to start Ozark Akerz. The positive feedback we're getting about the amazing flavor of our wild-foraged Heritage Pineywoods Beef is so encouraging! I want to make it less of a struggle for people to find flavor and it looks like we're starting to make that happen!"
Farmer Mike
"I could never have imagined how much our personal concept of sustainable farming would evolve. It's all about establishing an understanding of 'local', and that includes the soil, the animals (wild and domestic), the plants (native or immigrant), the insects, the weather and their relationship to each other. Our practices have evolved from sustainable (maintaining) into regenerative (improving) farming, based on the understanding of these relationships, they comprise our local ecosystem."
Learn more
Learn more about our regenerative farming practices on our blog or YouTube channel or view beautiful photographs of the farm. Have fun and enjoy Grazing Against the Machine with us!
iNaturalist.org
View our biodiversity.
Over 500 birds, mammals, plants,
reptiles, insects, fungi and amphibians
have been identified at Ozark Akerz.
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