Grey Barn Farm
The Grey Barn Farm is a pasture-based family farm where livestock, land, and forage are managed as interconnected systems. Daily practices are shaped by careful observation of animal behavior, seasonal change, and landscape response, rather than fixed schedules or production targets. Livestock are maintained with ample space and stable social groupings, supporting calm movement, predictable routines, and the expression of species-typical behaviors such as grazing, browsing, rooting, flocking, and resting.
Those same observational priorities extend across the farm as a whole. Livestock movement and stocking levels are paced by forage growth, soil condition, and weather, allowing animals and pastures to settle into consistent patterns over time rather than being pushed to perform. Scale is intentionally limited so that individual animals, social groups, and pasture areas can be monitored closely, and adjustments can be made gradually in response to what is actually occurring on the ground.
Field use follows a similarly restrained approach. Crops are grown primarily to support livestock, and fields are rotated or rested when conditions call for it rather than kept in constant production. Some ground is worked lightly, some left undisturbed, and some shifted between forage and grain depending on observed response and accumulated field history. Recovery is treated as a necessary part of long-term function, with soil structure, plant communities, and water movement allowed time to reestablish between periods of use.
For more detailed notes on our day-to-day animal care, this farm also maintains a separate site focused primarily on goats, with additional pages covering the other livestock species raised here.