Episode #267
StarWalker Organic Farm: Pasture Raised Organic Beef For All

Jason and Kristina Walker of StarWalker Farms, a third-generation organic farm in far Northern California, have out their all into certified organic, pasture-raised organic beef and pork. Learn why they brought livestock back to the family farm, how they raise cattle and pigs on pasture, what nutrient testing has shown them about their beef and pork, and why processing may be one of the biggest bottlenecks in growing local organic meat. They also explain what it took to acquire a USDA facility close to home, how they think about feed, labels, and direct sales, and why they want other farmers to know this model can work.

Our StarWalker Organic Farm interview with Jason and Kristina Walker has been edited and condensed for clarity:

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Linley Dixon interviewed Jason and Kristina Walker via Zoom, January 2026:

Linley Dixon
Hi, Jason and Kristina. Welcome to the Real Organic Podcast.

Kristina Walker
Hi. Thank you so much for having us.

Jason Walker
Good to be here.

Linley Dixon
It’s so great to get you all in the middle of winter, when maybe things are a little less crazy, although does it just go year-round?

Kristina Walker
Yes, absolutely.

Jason Walker
There was a time when it seemed like we had a little bit of winter off, but now it’s pretty much year-round.

Linley Dixon
Tell us about StarWalker Organic Farm. That’s a tongue twister for me. I have a bit of a list.

Kristina Walker
Yes, definitely. I’ll kind of let Jason talk a little bit first, and then I’ll fill in.

Jason Walker
I’m a third-generation farmer, and we’ve been certified organic with CCOF for nearly 40 years here. All I know, my whole life, is living on an organic farm and growing up around it. When we came back and basically took over the farm about 12 years ago, my parents were ready to retire.

Jason Walker
We came back, and we didn’t want to change anything. We just wanted to do more of what we’d been doing for a lot of years, more organic. One thing that we’d gotten away from, or my parents had gotten away from previously, was livestock. They had sold the cows, and so we knew that we wanted to bring livestock back in.

Jason Walker
I think they got rid of them before just for management wise, and there were a few reasons. I think they took advantage of a high market and used that money for other things. But we knew that animals were important. We started off with Scottish Highlands, and we’ve grown from there. We have Angus and other breeds now.

Jason Walker
Then we started raising pigs too. I’ve always been a super big fan of bacon, and I figured the best way to have good bacon is to raise your own pigs. We’ve been raising pigs for about 10 years now, and cattle for over 10 years on the farm.

Jason Walker
We’ve been growing pretty rapidly. The last few years, we’ve been acquiring more land and have also acquired a processing facility, so we have our own USDA processing facility. Kristina is pivotal in bringing the brand into the spotlight.

Jason Walker
Around 2020, her previous occupation wasn’t able to go to work, so she went to work on building a website and starting our e-commerce, and it’s grown leaps and bounds. We’re having a really good time growing the business and having animals, beautiful crop ground, a processing plant, and a brand is kind of a full plate, but we keep adding more and more all the time.

Linley Dixon
Kristina, you have a background, if I remember right from EcoFarm, in dance. Is that right?

Kristina Walker
Yes, that’s right. I’ve been a dancer and an instructor my whole life. I’ve had dance studios since I was 18 years old, and fitness centers and dance companies that have toured across the country. That’s definitely where my passion still lies, of course, but now it’s multi-faceted.

Kristina Walker
I have lots of different loves, and one of them is obviously the soil, the land, the animals, and the people that we interact with. That all shifted.

Kristina Walker
I had a different background growing up than Jason, and we were actually high school sweethearts, but when we moved back to the ranch to expand the ranch in 2012, I wasn’t quite sure that I actually wanted to move back to where we grew up and live on a ranch.

Kristina Walker
But I would not want to be anywhere else now. This is exactly where we are both so happy to be and have our children raised here on the land.

Linley Dixon
To me, it makes a ton of sense. To be an athlete and care about your food and how it’s raised, it all just adds up. I have a daughter who we raised on our farm. She’s now 15, and she’s incredibly into swimming. She really didn’t want to have anything to do with the farm growing up, until she realized how nutritious and how healthy she can be if she ate products from our farm.

Linley Dixon
That just kind of came full circle for her. I’m just curious, how much do you use your idea of health in your communications, and how much does it feel like the same thing to you?

Kristina Walker
It totally resonates, because I’ve always spoken highly of, obviously, what you’re putting into your body. That’s why I’m so passionate about the nutrients in the soil, and making this food that is so nutrient-dense, and actually, food is medicine, and talking about that. I’ve always talked about that with my dancers and our kids.

Kristina Walker
But now it’s such a passion that we get to share it with so many more people, and so many people are interested in that as well. But our daughter, she’s actually 19, and she went to culinary school, and she’s just so eager to learn as well. She’s been around all of this that we’ve been doing. She’s seeing it. We talk about the nutrient density and food all of the time.

Kristina Walker
We talk about why it’s so important to know what is in your food, where it comes from, the land it comes from, and all of those different things, and to really just ask questions and explore where that food comes from, and is it good for your body, and then, why is it good for your body.

Linley Dixon
Even the choice of Highland cattle – don’t they have less fat or something like that? Could you explain a little bit why you’ve chosen that breed? Because I think it takes a lot longer to raise them than it does Angus.

Jason Walker
It does. It’s kind of a funny story. I just wanted to be different. We were surrounded by… I’m sure that has some play into it too, but we didn’t fully vet it out, because you’re right, it does take longer. Our Highlands are typically about three years to finish them out, versus Angus. We’re getting them 30 months and sometimes younger, so there’s a little bit more…

Jason Walker
But the cool thing is, because they wear such a heavy coat, they don’t carry a lot of fat, so the meat is super nutrient-dense. I always tell people it’s similar to what you would find with buffalo or maybe elk or something like that, but still no gamy flavor, anything like that. It’s just super nutrient-dense meat.

Jason Walker
But we started out just thinking, “Okay, we’ve got some nice cattle,” but then we realized the economy of scale with them was really tough with their horns, processing, and other things. Then we started dabbling around in other breeds of cattle that didn’t have horns.

Jason Walker
But we still love them. We’ve got about 100 breeding mothers right now, and so we’re still pumping out a ton of Highlands, and we love them. They’re kind of like little mascots for us. Yeah, the meat is far above, and everybody that ever tries it, it’s always like, “Oh, okay, now I know what you’re talking about. It’s just superior to other meat.” It’s fun.

Kristina Walker
I remember the first time that we ate the Scottish Highland meat, and I was like, “This is the most…” It just tasted so pure. You could almost taste the nutrient density. I know that sounds funny, like, “How do you even do that?” But it was. It was just so good on the palate. I can go back to that first time that I tasted it, and it was just a good experience.

Linley Dixon
Sometimes it’s just a matter of what you get used to, too. If you’ve been eating pastured and grass-fed, and you go back to taste something just raised in confinement, you don’t like it. You’re just not used to it.

Linley Dixon
The Highlands are leaner, which is an amazing thing, but it also just depends on how you raise them. Your Angus are on pasture all the time. They’re going to have a different nutrient density as well.

Jason Walker
A hundred percent. Yeah. We’re pasture-raised, pasture-finished. There’s no grain in any of our system at all. I wouldn’t say the meat is a ton different from the Angus to Highlands. You can definitely tell there’s a deeper, darker red with the Highlands, and there’s probably, if you broke down the nutrient density, maybe more nutrients. But because of the way we raise our Angus, they’re definitely similar.

Jason Walker
There’s genetics that come into play with Angus, and they’re meant to grow a little bit faster, and they just kind of have some attributes that the Highlands are purebred. All of the stuff that makes them hardy: they’re good mothers. They can forage around on big areas and be self-sufficient.

Jason Walker
Whereas the Angus are a little bit more like… you’ve got to make sure you have fresh grass in front of them, otherwise they’re going to start being a little bit more cumbersome. There are just some attributes that are really different with the two. But as far as the meat quality, they’re far superior just because of the way we raise them.

Kristina Walker
I was going to say we test our meat, and we’ve done some third-party testing for that nutrient density in our meat to really see what it was or what it is, and get that data. We’re able to share that with people. I think that not only for the people who want to taste it and taste the difference, but then they can actually see the data.

Kristina Walker
There’s seven times more omega-3 than conventional beef. That is just something that people are so excited about. It’s fun to be able to show that. We use Edacious to do all of our nutrient density testing. We do it on the pork as well, so it’s the beef and the pork side of things.

Linley Dixon
Oh, that’s so cool. I know that that’s just getting started. They’ve done a little bit of testing with milk and been able to see higher omega-3s and linoleic acids and those things with milk that comes from cows on pasture. That’s exciting that you’re doing that.

Linley Dixon
Does it depend on time of year? Maybe describe a little bit of the climate that you’re dealing with way up there in Northern California. How much rain do you get? How does the season vary in terms of when you would probably test the meat at slaughter?

Linley Dixon
But with dairy, it’s a totally different nutrient profile in the spring than it would be in the fall with the milk. I guess you don’t have to worry about that too much. Just describe a little bit how the farm is in terms of how often you have to rotate, how much rain you get, and the varying times of year, how it shifts.

Jason Walker
We’re obviously in far Northern California. We’re right by the Oregon border. I always tell people we’ve got all four seasons here. We’ve got very nice summers. It gets a little warm towards the end of the season, and we get some 100-degree days, but then the falls and springs are just beautiful, like today, even though we’re in wintertime.

Jason Walker
But wintertime, depending on the year, sometimes we’ll get snow on the valley floor here. It might stick around for a week or so. It usually melts off pretty quickly. But we’re 3,000 feet in elevation, so we typically, on a good year, get about 30 inches of precipitation, and that sustains us pretty well. We’ve got good water, good aquifers, and a good river.

Linley Dixon
Just like Southwest Colorado, where we get…

Jason Walker
Yeah, exactly. We’re not too bad. Obviously, you get about three hours towards the coast, and they’re up around 60 inches. But it starts petering off when it gets to us. We still do really well on that. So summer pastures are… and I shouldn’t even say summer.

Jason Walker
Our animals are actually out on pasture almost nine months out of the year. By April at the latest, we’re back on the pasture. Then they go all the way through December. Usually into December it’s more aftermath, stuff that had grown up in the hay fields and stuff.

Jason Walker
But the only few months that they’re not on pasture, they’re getting hay that we produce right on our own farm, and we do some silage and some dry hay. That combination pretty much makes them… it’s almost like they’re never missing a beat, like they never came off pasture.

Jason Walker
They maintain good weight and good nutrients. Like I say, it’s just that small window, usually January, February, and March, where we’re having to supplement.

Linley Dixon
You’ve got pigs, so you’ve got to figure out feed? Somehow do you have grain for them, or alfalfa, or something like that?

Jason Walker
We do rotational grain. On our alfalfa and grass fields, most of that hay goes to the cattle. We do rotational grain about every year. We’re producing peas, wheat, or triticale. It depends on the year. We try to mix it up a little bit. This year I’m even doing some barley. But that goes into our pig rations, so we make our own pig rations.

Jason Walker
We don’t do 100 percent of our pig stuff on the farm yet, but the goal is to be pretty much self-sustained with our pig food coming off the farm, all of our cattle food coming off the farm, and then the pigs are out on, I call them pastures, but depending on the time of year, they beat them up pretty good.

Jason Walker
They get a little rough during the winter, but during the summer, we’ve got grass growing, and they’re out there living their best life. But the funny part about the pigs is that it doesn’t matter if it’s snowing, raining, or whatever. They just love being outside.

Jason Walker
They’re rooting in the soil, they’re tromping up and down the hillsides, and they’re hanging out under trees. There’s hardly any time where I see them just packed into the huts. Maybe at night, or if it’s howling. But they just love exploring and being out.

Jason Walker
It’s kind of fun just seeing how happy they are. They’re not as happy when it’s 100 degrees out, but nobody really is. The rest of the year, they’re just happy being outside, frolicking and digging in the dirt.

Linley Dixon
I think I heard you at EcoFarm say there’s nothing regenerative about pigs. But at the same time, just because they root and they just destroy, I’ve heard people will put them in just to get rid of bindweed, which will go 12 feet down, and the pigs will figure out how to get it. How often are you moving them? How do the pigs work?

Jason Walker
Yeah, that’s the trick. We try to move them in and out of paddocks. They’ll get into one, they’ll beat it up, they’ll do their thing, spread the manure and the straw everywhere, because we use straw for bedding. Then we’ll come in there and do some light tillage, and then plant a cover crop, a grain crop, or something. Then it has a rest for a period of time, and then we come back and do it again.

Jason Walker
Obviously, the goal is to continue to recycle all of their manure and straw and put all that stuff back in the soil, but there’s just nothing we can do about the fact that they love to root. You could have beautiful grass growing somewhere, and if you leave them in there long enough, all that grass is gone, and they’re just having at it. They’re down there eating roots, grubs, and who knows what else in the soil.

Jason Walker
But I always like to tell people that’s a happy pig. What we’re trying to do is grow a happy pig. We’re trying to take care of the soil at the same time, because the soil is valuable, and there are some management practices that we can do there. But we’re raising happy, healthy, nutrient-dense, amazing pigs. The byproduct of that is sometimes the fields get a little messed up, but we do the best we can.

Linley Dixon
Well, it sounds like there’s a rotation there, and that’s probably followed by a crop after that. Even if it’s compacted, there’s a lot of nutrients there. So the crop probably looks pretty good following the pigs, I’m guessing.

Jason Walker
Yep, crops do well. Granted, in a perfect world, we’d keep them off there for years, but a lot of times they end up back in the same paddock after a cover crop or some other grain transitional crop. But they love to come in there and eat all the leftover seeds and everything that’s on the ground. It’s kind of a fun process.

Jason Walker
We also have some ground that’s more hill ground, rocky ground, tree ground, so we have pigs on that ground too, which we can’t grow crops in anyway. It’s just unfarmable. But they seem to do just fine up there, and the grass grows back in spots that they rooted every spring. It’s a cycle.

Jason Walker
They’re in nature doing the same thing, and they like to find little spots and make a wallow, or a little bedding area, or whatever. That spot gets kind of a whole dug, but everywhere else they graze. The funny part is, I see them out there with grass, just grazing like a cow. They love all the little weeds they get.

Linley Dixon
I know the slaughterhouse issue was a big concern for you all, like how far you had to drive before. Could you tell that story a little bit about how you got into processing? Because that’s unbelievable to take on.

Kristina Walker
Yeah, definitely, it was. When I came on board in 2020 and we actually launched our jerky line, one of the first things I noticed was that here we were making jerky, and it wasn’t able to be labeled as anything other than just jerky. We couldn’t put our organic seal on it or any other seal on it. That was really frustrating to us because we knew that we had a different product that wasn’t out on the market.

Kristina Walker
One of the issues was we were taking animals six hours in one direction, seven hours in another direction, just to get processed. Then on top of it, here we had a value-added product that we wanted to be able to label and say, “Hey, this is what it is,” and we couldn’t do that.

Kristina Walker
Right away, we knew we had to start looking at having our own USDA facility nearby, where we could keep control of all of these different things and really showcase the products that we were making. We kind of went hunting for that, and we found and acquired a USDA facility that’s about 20 miles from the farm, so the animals don’t have to travel far.

Kristina Walker
They get to go straight to the processing plant. We’re able to do all of our harvest there, our processing, packaging, and then our value-added products as well. Now we’ve got our meat sticks and our jerky, and we have other value-added products that are coming out.

Kristina Walker
That was a huge lift and lots of problems and walls that we ran up against, but we knew that it was necessary for our growth and our scale. We acquired the processing plant in 2024, and it’s just been amazing. When we first got it, we thought, “This is going to be challenging,” and yes, the challenges have been there, but it’s also thriving.

Kristina Walker
We have other farmers that have their animals processed there, and we’re able to build our brand how we want to build our brand. Now we’re able to help others do the same thing. We have this fully integrated model that’s really working for us, and we can give the blueprint to other farmers to say, “Hey, we want to help you do the same thing because we do recognize how important it is.”

Linley Dixon
Was it an organic processing facility? Was it even functioning when you found it?

Jason Walker
It had been closed down for almost two years, but it was certified previously. It was fairly easy for us to get it all certified and get everything back and going. There was a lot of deep cleaning and a lot of equipment that didn’t work. There were some issues right out of the gate, but once we got all those issues solved, we were able to get certified real quick.

Jason Walker
We were able to start processing within less than a month. After getting in the door, we were able to start processing animals, and we’ve just been steadily growing since then. The funny part about the story is that we just thought, “This place is too big. How are we going to fill enough animals in here to keep this thing going?” It seemed like such a big lift, like Kristina said.

Jason Walker
Now we might need to find another processing plant. We might need to sub some of this stuff out. But we’re so happy that we have that control. If we want to pivot and say, “Hey, you know what? All we’re doing this week is working on ground beef, or snack sticks, or whatever,” we have the ability to do that. We just put all the people on the tasks that we determine.

Jason Walker
It’s kind of nice having that control, because usually when you go to a normal processing plant, they might say, “Yeah, we can get you in six months from now, and we can only fit so many head.” The logistics and the planning have to get really dialed in if you’re trying to build a significant-size business, which we were in.

Jason Walker
Now, to be able to have that control really just makes life a lot easier. We’ve got an amazing crew over there at the plant, and they do a really good job, and we’re just so happy that we made the purchase.

Linley Dixon
Just having an organic processing facility makes it so that people can actually convert to organic farming all around it. That’s one of the bottlenecks. It’s like, “Well, I can farm organically and then not get the credit for it at the end, or have to travel so far that it’s really not economically viable to get certified.”

Linley Dixon
It really just incentivizes organic production. It’s really such an important piece, I think, of the story of how we get a whole organic landscape going. Congratulations on that. That’s a huge undertaking.

Linley Dixon
What makes it organic? I know there are probably different disinfectants, and what else is different for organic processing?

Jason Walker
Yeah. It’s actually super simple. There are some cleaning agents that have to be certified through the certifier to make sure that we’re not using anything that doesn’t meet the specs and isn’t approved by the certifier. That’s lower-level stuff.

Jason Walker
Then after that, it’s really just about accountability. So making sure that organic animals run through the system first, after everything’s cleaned at the end of the day and sanitized. The first animals that come through there are always going to be the organic, and then if conventional animals come through, they’re always coming through afterwards. There are just some processes like that.

Jason Walker
There’s some segregation. When you hang animals in the cooler, there’s space allowed in between the carcasses, whether it’s organic or conventional. Then the same in the freezer. You’ve got to make sure you have organic and conventional separated.

Jason Walker
But other than that, the materials you use are very simple, and then after that, it’s processes and record-keeping.

Linley Dixon
I think you can tout that, though. Those materials are so much more beneficial for the environment in terms of their breakdown and everything. I would brag about that.

Kristina Walker
The other thing that is very interesting to me is that we see it as a simple, more beneficial thing. It’s definitely not as simple, but it’s so important that we do it this way. We were going to different plants and saying, “Would you please transition to organic so we can use you?” They weren’t willing to because they were already so booked. So why would they do that?

Kristina Walker
The same thing was happening with our value-added products, and actually continues to as we’re growing and expanding. We are actually growing out of our value-added section of our processing plant. We’re looking for co-packers, and we can’t find them for what we want that are organic co-packers.

Kristina Walker
So we’ve gone specifically to different co-packers, saying, “Please, will you transition to organic? This is what you have to do, and it’s so much better. The challenges aren’t that… we can overcome those challenges very simply.”

Kristina Walker
It’s a little bit confusing why there are not more. I think that’s one of the messages that we like to spread: let’s help other people put organic processing in place so that these kinds of things we’ve built here can happen all across the country with different farmers, and they have access to that.

Linley Dixon
I think a lot of people don’t really understand, aside from the production, how much of the supply chain has to be certified organic, and how that really just puts up barriers to the growth of organic in general. I guess maybe explain a little bit more about the co-packing issue, what you’re looking for, and the challenges there a little further.

Jason Walker
I think the biggest challenge is, like Kristina mentioned, a lot of these co-packers are already busy. For them to then take on the extra paperwork, the extra cleaning, and all that sort of stuff, we have to offer a ton of volume for them to even look at us.

Jason Walker
Then on top of that, they have to ask, “Does it make sense for us to change some of our practices and maybe kick somebody else out of the rotation to put you in?” I think the problem we’re finding is most co-packers aren’t willing to do that. They just aren’t willing because they’re already busy.

Jason Walker
The ones that are, this is the next step, because we have one that’s working on it. It’s been three or four months for them to get certification. It’s pretty simple, like I said – the practices and record-keeping – but just for them to get an inspector to show up and do the inspections so that they can start running our stuff has been a process.

Jason Walker
Our number-one goal is we want to show people that it’s possible. We want to show people that you can do it. We want to show people that you can make money at it. We want other people to either come on board and be part of what we’re doing.

Jason Walker
Or at least just know that, “Hey, this can be done. You can make money at it. Build your own processing plant if you can, or figure out how you can become part of a co-op or something, because the demand is out there.”

Jason Walker
We know; we see it every day. The problem is we just need more people to go through the hard knocks of figuring it out and getting to the stage where they can actually have a good organic product to give people.

Jason Walker
I think that as long as the demand continues, more and more people will see it, and then they’ll continue to either come on board with what we’re doing, or they’re going to create it themselves somewhere else.

Kristina Walker
That’s like when Jason is saying, come on board with what we’re doing. We created a partner program so that we can help farmers. If they don’t want to open another processing plant, then we kind of step in and help do that. If they don’t want to build a brand, they can actually sell.

Kristina Walker
We’ll put them in contract for their animals to sell into our brand, and we’ll say, “Here’s your contract, so you know what you’re getting into right away. Please raise these animals regenerative and organic so that we can purchase your animals from you and put them into our brand.”

Kristina Walker
That’s kind of what we’ve started to do locally, then regionally, and now, in other areas as well. It’s kind of giving people the blueprint to be able to say, “We’ll help you do this, and there are a lot of different levels at which you could do this.”

Kristina Walker
I think it’s funny too, because we keep saying, “Oh, it’s simple.” Sometimes I wonder if we think that because we’ve been doing it for so long, or because that’s how Jason was raised, or because I know that people don’t think it’s simple. And it’s not. You’re going to have challenges, and we’ve had so many challenges, and there’ve been times when we’ve wondered, “Do we keep going, or do we turn around? Are we going to fail at this?” Definitely, that happens all of the time.

Kristina Walker
But we just kind of keep moving forward. Now, I guess some of the process seems simple. It seems simple to be organic, I would say. But I know that there are challenges around that as well.

Linley Dixon
Let’s talk about the other end. You’re having to direct-market a lot of stuff, but you also are wholesaling. What’s the percentage there?

Kristina Walker
Right now, we have our direct-to-consumer outlet, which is very, very strong, and it’s grown a lot. We’re really only meeting about 10% of the demand that we’re seeing. We’re out of stock a lot in our products. The 10% of the demand is across the board on retail, wholesale, food service, and even private label.

Kristina Walker
We have a lot of people coming who would like to private-label our products, and then also our direct-to-consumer. That’s where we’re seeing the demand come from. We would like to be at kind of 60%.

Kristina Walker
Of course, we would rather sell direct to consumer. That’s what we would like to do. We’d like to be 100% selling direct to consumer. But right now, we’re about 50/50. We think that’ll shift in the next quarter and increase the direct-to-consumer demand that we’re seeing. It’s all about getting out there in the marketing, getting eyeballs on what we’re doing, and spreading the word of the practices that we use.

Kristina Walker
One of my favorite things is to have conversations with the consumers and the customers. We get hundreds of emails a day, and when we get those emails, answering the questions is one of my favorite things.

Kristina Walker
I used to do it all myself. Now we have a team of people that help us, but it’s so great to interact with the customer, because I think it’s so important that questions are being asked.

Linley Dixon
Wow, that’s incredible that you get that many questions, and you enjoy answering. What’s your team? You said you have a whole team. How many people do you have, I guess, at all the different stages? I’m curious.

Kristina Walker
We have multiple different entities, and so we’ve kind of set up things where we have Starwalker Farms, which is a separate entity. That’s where we raise our animals, our cows and our pigs, and we have our acreage there. We have a good 10 people, farmhands, and livestock managers, and all of that.

Kristina Walker
Then we have our brand. Our brand is where we have all of our direct-to-consumer, and all of our shipping happens. We buy all of our animals from the farm and put them through our brand. On our brand side of things, we have probably 12 people. Then we have our processing plant, which is totally different. We have about 45 staff members at our processing plant.

Linley Dixon
There’s so much to ask. Jason, are you moving fence every day? What does your day look like?

Jason Walker
I would say during our grazing season, so from about April through October, we do daily moves on most of our cattle. We have a few that we only move maybe once a week, but the majority of the grower herd, we’re moving them daily in the growing season.

Jason Walker
I don’t spend a lot of my time moving cows. I have people that do that, even though I do enjoy it every time I’m out there. We call our cows, so they basically answer to a call, and then they all come to wherever you’re opening the gate. Then they come through, and they go to the next paddock, and that’s just kind of fun to be part of. I enjoy doing it.

Jason Walker
On the pig side, there are daily chores, feeding all the sows, keeping piglets happy, doing the breeding, and all that sort of stuff. But my day is really kind of more that I’m the big organizer. I’m pointing people in the right direction. I’m making sure that everything is moving the way it should. We also have the farm side of it, so we produce a lot of hay, produce a lot of grain, and we have a lot of farming practices that happen pretty much throughout the year.

Jason Walker
I’m kind of the big organizer, even though I like just sitting on the tractor sometimes and just listening to a podcast and enjoying it. But most of the time I’m talking on the phone or driving around, checking on people, organizing trucks, and all the other good stuff. But I like it. I love what I do. I love being outside. I love being on the farm. I love being in the fields.

Jason Walker
Literally, I love picking up and smelling dirt and being out there when the crops are growing in the spring, seeing all the bugs, the birds, and just the wildlife. That gets me excited. It’s, I guess, a plus in what I get to do. Most people might be stuck inside, and I’m stuck outside every day.

Linley Dixon
Do you have a combination of permanent fencing and then moving electric wire, or how’s it working?

Jason Walker
Most of our fields have outside permanent fencing on the perimeter, and then we move the hot wire inside the perimeter. We’ve got like seven different properties, so depending on where we’re at, there are some that have high-tensile wire all the way around the perimeter. Then we’re able to use the poly wire in between that and move paddocks all the way around.

Jason Walker
Our normal rotation is we try to stay about 30 to 45 days before we come back to the same pasture again, sometimes longer. Sometimes we might start in an area and never come back there the rest of the year, just depending on how much grass is growing and how many cattle we have, and certain things like that.

Jason Walker
Then we have other areas that are just fixed paddocks. They have good fencing. It might be 20- or 30-acre paddocks. They are in there for two or three days, then move to the next one, but we do use a lot of poly wire.

Jason Walker
I love having cattle that are trained to poly wire, because you can do so much manipulation. If you need to bring them in for some reason, you can set up an alleyway with poly wire. It’s amazing. You could be running 500 head, and there’s just one little string on both sides of them. Once they’re trained, they don’t mess with it.

Jason Walker
The only time they ever mess with it is if somebody starts pushing and they go into another one. But the majority of the time, if you call them and your hot wire is good, they’re pretty well maintained.

Linley Dixon
Is it all on the ranch? There’s no grazing land anywhere.

Jason Walker
We do have some hillside grazing. A lot of that happens in either late winter or early spring. Some of our grazing ground, I’d say about late March or early April, we just let them loose up there, and they eat all the mountain grass and kind of work those valleys where the grass is all popping up. Usually it only lasts for about a month or two.

Jason Walker
A lot of my breeding animals spend more time up there. All my finished animals, my feeders, I really try to keep them on the best grass all the time or with feed in front of them, just because I want to keep them gaining.

Jason Walker
All the hill ground usually gets my breeding animals, or maybe some younger yearlings or something like that that I’m not as concerned about at that moment. They kind of just go off into the hills, and we’ll spend a month or so hitting all the good spots up there.

Linley Dixon
You’ve got animals out on pasture, and you said you’ve got three months when they’re not. What do those three months look like?

Jason Walker
Those three months, usually we’re feeding hay or silage. We fill that hay into feeders, take them out into the fields, and they basically just eat off that hay. They still can roam around in the fields and be there. There’s just no grass growing, unfortunately. It’s all gone at that point in time.

Jason Walker
Most of our areas, we have live water, so we have ditches and stuff where the cattle can drink. But some other areas don’t have live water. We’ve got to have water troughs. We fill those feeders and move them every day so that way it spreads the impact out, spreads the manure around.

Jason Walker
Then usually we come back in the spring on that same field and we’ll drag it and sometimes interseed some grain or something, or cover crop, depending on the situation. I call it a dry lot, but they’re just kind of out in a field during the winter getting fed hay.

Linley Dixon
Could either of you contrast that? I don’t even know. I think people might think that this is just how it’s done, but contrast it to the vast majority of how meat is produced conventionally in this country.

Jason Walker
I would say probably 90-plus percent of beef is, at about a year of age, when yearlings, let’s say anywhere from 600 to 700 pounds, usually get sold off of a farm and go straight to a feedlot. The feedlot is obviously just confinement. They’re fed a mixed ration of usually grain, corn, maybe a little bit of alfalfa or roughage mixed in there. A lot of times they’re just mixing in straw, which is just because cattle need that roughage, not because there are any nutrients in it.

Jason Walker
They spend the next year in that feedlot, never seeing grass, never seeing what they would consider a natural environment. They’re just getting fed. By industry standards, they should be finishing out on that ration in under 24 months. Twenty-four months would probably be a long time, depending on the feedlot and the ration and all that. That’s what 95% of people are eating when they’re eating conventional raised beef.

Jason Walker
There are very few people out there who are actually raising grass-fed, grass-finished beef. There are even fewer that are doing it organically. Even the good grass-fed, grass-finished producers are still spraying their crops, spraying their fields, and fertilizing them with chemicals.

Jason Walker
Even though they’re doing it better, there are still some things that, as organic producers, we don’t do. Obviously we can’t do them, but we also don’t do them because there are downsides to all that.

Jason Walker
When you’re putting all the chemicals and fertilizers on that soil, you’re essentially killing the life underneath it. There are millions of organisms under the soil, and those are the ones you want to keep happy.

Jason Walker
Granted, we’re trying to grow grass and we’re trying to grow animals so we can feed ourselves, but if we’re not taking care of everything below the soil, then nothing happens above it. That’s the big contrast in what we do.

Jason Walker
I understand, I don’t want to dog any other farmer. Certain people have certain reasons why they do certain things. There’s a reason feedlots are there. That’s efficiency and things like that. But those just aren’t the conditions that cattle should be raised in.

Jason Walker
The same goes with pigs, too. I think it’s even higher. We’re talking like 98% of pigs that are raised in the US are raised indoors. They never see dirt or sunlight. They’re basically in a little pen their whole life. I think just the fact that our pigs are raised outside, even though sometimes they tear up the soil a little bit, that’s just a happy pig. We all want to eat a happy pig, not a confined pig. I think the same goes for cattle.

Jason Walker
But everybody’s got a different situation. They’ve got to do what they’ve got to do. We’re just so happy that we get the luxury of doing it the way we do, and we’ve been doing it a long time, and we feel like we’re pretty good at it.

Linley Dixon
The pig situation is, I think, if everybody could see it, they wouldn’t support it because the sows are even restrained so that they don’t roll over on the piglets. There’s nothing humane or okay about the way most pigs are raised. I think people wouldn’t stand for it if it were transparent.

Linley Dixon
There are some things in the marketplace and just how things are marketed that really get under your skin. People should be more aware of what they’re seeing when they see term “X”, what is it really or how they’re being misled.

Kristina Walker
There are so many different things that I feel like we could say on this. Even going back to just the pig thing for a second, that’s one of the things where it’s like, obviously, seeing organic… we’ve actually had so many people come to us and say they haven’t had pork in so long. They haven’t eaten it in 10 years, or they haven’t had bacon in so long because of the way it’s raised.

Kristina Walker
People are actually starting to say, “I won’t eat pork the way it’s raised.” When they find our pork, we’ve had people actually come here and taste our pork in front of us for the first time, and they’re like, “I haven’t eaten bacon in so long.” That is definitely happening.

Kristina Walker
Now they’re like, “Oh, this is how the pigs are meant to be raised. I see them out there, so I’m going to try it again.” That is definitely to your point when you said that. I kind of wanted to share that story because we see people doing that.

Kristina Walker
But yeah, there are a lot of label things out there, or people that just really don’t understand what questions to ask. They go and get their grass-finished beef, and what does that really mean? That’s a big part of what Jason just explained. But that could mean that the cow ate grass one time in its whole entire life.

Kristina Walker
The conversations and the education, and people don’t realize – even when we’re talking about regenerative, what does that mean? When we’re talking about organic, all of these different labels – people want to know more about their food, and then they feel like they’re being poisoned, or it’s not honest.

Kristina Walker
That’s one of the reasons why we like to put our labels on our food to say, “This is what we’re doing.” We’re always striving to be that gold standard and have the different labels so people can trust the product and where it’s coming from.

Jason Walker
I think one of the big ones for me is non-GMO, or GMO-free. I kind of laugh at that one a little bit, because basically what you’re saying is, “We don’t have GMOs, but we do everything else. We nuke it, we do all this stuff. We just happen to not have GMOs.”

Jason Walker
I feel like the consumer is really getting tricked, because they think, “Oh, no GMOs,” but you’re still getting all the same chemicals – herbicides, pesticides, fungicides, and everything. It just happens to not be a GMO plant or GMO variety of product.

Linley Dixon
I’m really glad you said that, Jason, because there’s kind of a trend now of more “non” labels. The latest thing that I saw is non ultra-processed. Again, it’s like, if that’s all you’re going for, you’re missing so much else.

Linley Dixon
The glyphosate-free one’s a great example, because it’s like, “Do you know how many herbicides there are? So many more than glyphosate.” Those things just drive me crazy. They make so much money, honestly.

Linley Dixon
That program that has the glyphosate-free and the non-GMO, because they charge everybody for that. It’s working; the consumers are looking for that over organic. They’re just breaking it in and laughing all the way to the bank. It’s really hard on the farmers that are actually doing so much under the Organic seal. I’m glad you brought that one up.

Kristina Walker
On the consumer side of things, even so many of the customers that we’ve had will reach out to us and be like, “Oh, hey, what about this company?” Then I’ll have to point out, “Well, they say this, but what about this?” As soon as you see that it’s one thing, I think the consumer goes, “Oh, well, that means it’s good for me.” But they haven’t actually thought about all of the other things. So that’s frustrating.

Kristina Walker
But at the same time, we also see so much of the demand picking up. So many more people are asking those questions, so many people saying, “I want this, this, and this, and it has to be all these things if I’m going to eat it.” There’s definitely this movement toward that as well.

Jason Walker
Education.

Linley Dixon
You all are the real deal. It’s almost frustrating that I feel like you’ve had to do every single part of it yourself, because the system is so broken, even growing the grain. There’s so much fraudulent, organic grain coming in. The fact is, I know you said you can’t grow all of it, or you’re even growing a portion of that yourself.

Linley Dixon
I heard from a farmer that it’s cheaper to buy organic grain than it is to produce your own grain. That seems insane to me, that it’s like you might as well not even try growing it, because it’s cheaper to just buy it. Are you finding that to be true, and you’re just doing it because you believe in it? It’s a good way to clean them up after the pigs or something.

Jason Walker
It really depends on your location. Our location, I think we can definitely grow it for less than we can buy it. But if you’re in some locations, especially close to ports, near Canada, or a couple of other places, they’re bringing in stuff that might not even be organic, or if it’s organic, it’s under different standards.

Jason Walker
There are different standards in Canada, and there are different standards in South America. I think the big thing is just understanding that you might be getting a cheaper product, but it might not actually truly be organic or it might meet lesser standards. That’s the tough part.

Jason Walker
Even on the beef side right now, the only other regenerative organic certified beef comes from Australia. I don’t have anything against Australia, and I don’t have anything against the beef that comes from there, but they can theoretically raise the animals cheaper, process them, and ship them over here for cheaper than we can produce it.

Jason Walker
The tough part for me is, number one, who really wants meat that’s been on a ship for however long that is? Number two, we’re not supporting local if we’re buying meat that’s produced in Australia. If people really care about farmers and want good products, support local.

Jason Walker
You might pay just a touch more, but the more you do that, the more people are going to produce it, and then maybe the prices will get better. That stuff just bothers me, because people are like, “Oh, I really want to take care of the soil and regenerative organic.” That’s awesome, but they’re buying meat from Australia instead of a local producer.

Linley Dixon
It isn’t part of regenerative. You’re sequestering carbon, and then you’re going to throw the meat on a ship? That’s definitely not looking at the full picture.

Kristina Walker
No.

Linley Dixon
I’ve got maybe a tougher one to answer. Have you heard of Michael Grunwald? His first book criticized the ethanol industry, and I totally agree with it. His latest book says we need pesticides and fertilizers, because the less land we have in agriculture, the more we can rewild. The pesticides and fertilizers minimize the role of the land that agriculture is on, and then we can put all the rest back to rewilding.

Linley Dixon
I’m hoping that you can think a little bit about your ranch and all of these ecosystem services. Just even name a few; there are probably millions that we don’t even know about. But imagine there are migrating birds, and maybe share some of the things that you’re seeing on your ranch that would show that farmers can improve the wildlife on their land through careful stewardship.

Jason Walker
I 100% agree with that. All we see is life around here. Like you say, whether it’s with birds, bugs, or even bigger animals, like deer and elk. I like to say they seek out our ground. We know it tastes better, we know it’s better for you, we know it’s growing a nutrient-dense crop, so we see nothing but life. I think the biggest hang-up for people isn’t the fact that.

Jason Walker
Because when you say more and more farm ground, if you just use the pesticides and stuff, what I think is people are scared because it takes a little extra work to do it the right way. They want to hit an easy button. They just want to, on the 15th of the month, go spray this on whatever plant. They want the easy button.

Jason Walker
You can make money in organic. We’ve proved it. There are multiple other companies out there that aren’t even in the meat sector that are proving you can do it organic. You can do it regenerative. The trouble is that so many people are hardwired to do it a certain way, to do it with chemicals, to do it with herbicides, pesticides, everything, and they can’t get their mind out of switching to go the other way.

Jason Walker
The more we show people that it can be done, the more that, I shouldn’t say generationally, but there is a generation that’s kind of stuck in their way. As the younger generation comes in, who cares about the food that they’re putting in their body and cares about how the soil is being taken care of, as soon as they start coming into play and putting their money behind the right practices, I think more and more ground is going to be transitioned, and more and more people are going to start doing it right.

Jason Walker
Everybody’s not going to go organic, but if everybody does, that’s rewilding, in my opinion. You’re going to have plenty of life, and plenty of birds, bugs, and everything living their best life. Bugs are fun for me, because you need the good ones and you need the bad ones.

Jason Walker
Sometimes the bad ones get a little overzealous and eat your crop. But there are good ones there doing their thing as well. It’s just a nature thing that’s fun to watch and fun to be part of. And it happens on all levels – birds and everything.

Jason Walker
I just think the more people get used to it being the way it’s supposed to be, the more they’ll accept the practices that make it so.

Linley Dixon
You, Kristina, what’s one of the beautiful things that you notice on your farm?

Kristina Walker
Jason, I love hearing him talk about it, because one of the things that I’ve watched too is him outside, enjoying that for so long, and now I’m such a big part of this, being outside and enjoying it and seeing it all around – the bees and the dragonflies – and you’re out in the field and everything is swarming around you, and that life that’s being created.

Kristina Walker
I kind of joke around a lot, because we grew up on opposite sides of our valley, and I didn’t grow up on a ranch. I kind of grew up in the woods on this other side, looking over to the east side, which is where we’re at now. It was like a different view from where I was growing up.

Kristina Walker
That’s why I didn’t know that I wanted to come back here, and now being on the east side, and not on the west side, and living in this area, and then where we’ve created life, we can see it, we can feel it, we can hear it: the birds, the bees, and all the buzzing, and the animals.

Kristina Walker
It’s silent in a way, because we can just hear nature. That piece of it is so calming, I would say, and the soil is just such a big piece of that.

Linley Dixon
That was beautiful. Why did you all decide to join the Real Organic Project?

Jason Walker
I have this funny thing. We could be one of those people. There are a few companies out there, bigger, well-known companies that say, “Oh, we’re going against all the labels and everything.” I want everybody to know that we check all the boxes.

Jason Walker
Granted, we’ve been organic for years, and regenerative organic, but we are doing the practices, using the inputs, and doing all that that applies to organic. We want to make sure that we’re supporting all the groups and everything that are supporting us.

Jason Walker
I think the biggest push to be a part of the Real Organic Project was like, we knew, “Okay, this is what we want to be associated with. They know what we’re doing. We want them to support us.” I’m happy with having more certifications. It doesn’t bother me one bit, because we’re not doing anything wrong. We got nothing to hide.

Jason Walker
We just talked about the life teeming on our farm and that’s all because of the support of, obviously, all the certifiers and everything that we’re supported by. We’re happy to have a bunch of little bugs on all of our meat and everything that show that we’re doing things right.

Kristina Walker
I also think we talk about all the time on our team, like surrounding ourselves with people who are out there spreading the word and what we believe in, and just teaming up with those people. That’s another reason we so believe in the Real Organic Project, and we want to be part of it. We love partnering and just surrounding ourselves with people that think the same way we do.

Linley Dixon
We’re appreciative of your efforts to spread the word as well. It’s incredible to see farmers come together because we have zero time. We’re all just obsessed with making our farms work. It’s been such an inspirational movement for me to be a part of it, just to see the farmers get politically active in standing up for the original principles of organic.

Linley Dixon
We’re grateful that you’re part of it, too. It sounds like you’re really new to this processing thing. I know you all are trying to show that it’s profitable. I really hope that you don’t just completely wear yourselves out with your activism, too.

Linley Dixon
I’m very grateful for you giving me an hour today and spending the time to spread the word. But I also hope that you find some time for self-care so that you can keep doing this, because we need models like this, like you said.

Linley Dixon
You’re probably going to even be stuck with interning and helping replicate more farmers so that they can go out and do it too, because every community should be surrounded by these local farms that are feeding their communities. We just need more of us. So thank you for your part.

Kristina Walker
Thank you so much. We’re really happy to be here. Self-care is this, too – sitting outside on this beautiful day and talking about what we all love, so we really appreciate it.

Linley Dixon
I enjoyed it too. Thanks so much.

Kristina Walker
Yeah, thank you.