Strengthening connections, the Grass Roots Farmers’ Co-op way

It’s still dark at Freckle Face Farm in McRae, but owner Mitchell Lat­ture is used to beat­ing the sun­rise, as he has every day since he and his wife Jami began farm­ing his great-grandfather’s land. As usual, his first chore is to feed and water the chick­ens. Latture’s farm has become a pop­u­lar sup­plier of […]

It’s still dark at Freckle Face Farm in McRae, but owner Mitchell Lat­ture is used to beat­ing the sun­rise, as he has every day since he and his wife Jami began farm­ing his great-grandfather’s land. As usual, his first chore is to feed and water the chick­ens. Latture’s farm has become a pop­u­lar sup­plier of meat and poul­try to butcher shops like Hill­crest Arti­san Meats and restau­rants like Mylo Cof­fee Co., which means work at Freckle Face is never done.

Latture’s broil­ers live inside airy, open-bottomed shel­ters called schooners, which are moved daily to fresh pas­ture. These struc­tures pro­tect the birds from prey ani­mals while giv­ing them plenty of room to run around and “just be chick­ens,” Lat­ture says.

Later today, Lat­ture will move the schooners, a task usu­ally shared with the youngest two of his seven chil­dren. “The older ones don’t fall for the line, ‘You’re the best chicken movers ever!’ any­more,” he jokes. But they all help tend to the forested pigs on their prop­erty, as well as the dairy cat­tle and lay­ing hens that pro­vide his family’s milk and eggs.

Tak­ing care of ani­mals is hard work, even for a fam­ily of nine. For this rea­son, just over a year ago, Freckle Face and seven other live­stock farms across Arkansas formed the Grass Roots Farm­ers’ Coop­er­a­tive, a group ded­i­cated to help­ing small farms thrive while prac­tic­ing eth­i­cal ani­mal hus­bandry and envi­ron­men­tal stewardship.

Lat­ture says that Freckle Face Farm became a found­ing mem­ber of the Grass Roots Farm­ers’ Coop­er­a­tive because he saw the ben­e­fits of farm­ers work­ing together. “You can grow all you can and be great at it, but if you don’t have abil­ity to sell, it’s just not enough,” he says. “Through Grass Roots, we all have a statewide mar­ket and oper­a­tional sup­port that goes way beyond what we could pos­si­bly accom­plish individually.”

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Grass Roots gen­eral man­ager Cody Hopkins—who also co-owns Falling Sky Farm in Leslie with his wife, Andrea Todt—said the co-op began as an infor­mal net­work of farm­ers who real­ized they could make farm­ing more sus­tain­able by join­ing together. They already shared agri­cul­tural val­ues, so shar­ing value-chain ser­vices such as account­ing, pro­cess­ing, pur­chas­ing, and mar­ket­ing was a nat­ural next step.

When the farm­ers for­mally orga­nized the coop­er­a­tive in 2014, one of their first orders of busi­ness was to set stan­dards of oper­a­tion for all its members.

“When our pro­duc­tion stan­dards are used, you really can taste the dif­fer­ence in what ends up on your plate,” Hop­kins says. “That’s why we don’t use hor­mones, main­te­nance antibi­otics, or GMO feed. And we believe in treat­ing the ani­mals with respect and in the impor­tance of car­ing for the envi­ron­ment with our meth­ods of farming.”

Though they have been oper­at­ing for a few years, the Lat­ture fam­ily still strug­gles to make a liv­ing farm­ing. To help off­set the dif­fi­cul­ties com­mon to small-scale farms, Heifer Inter­na­tional has part­nered with the co-op to over­come some of the bar­ri­ers for begin­ning and minor­ity farm­ers. This rela­tion­ship with Heifer helps Grass Roots farms get access to infra­struc­ture, cap­i­tal, men­tor­ship, and markets.

Lat­ture said that the coop­er­a­tive has been instru­men­tal in help­ing him not only make a liv­ing, but prac­tice agri­cul­ture in the way he and his fam­ily orig­i­nally intended.

“We were always so busy try­ing to keep up with hav­ing prod­uct available—doing the farm­ers’ mar­kets, going to the proces­sor, get­ting feed—that we had lost some of our orig­i­nal focus on how we really wanted to farm,” Lat­ture says.

“I might say, ‘I’ll put up those fences tomor­row.’ Then it’s tomor­row, tomor­row, tomor­row. The co-op enables us to focus on the farm­ing, just tak­ing care of the animals.”

Food from Freckle Face—and all mem­bers farms—is avail­able through Grass Roots’ CSA share. This pro­gram, known as Herds to Homes, deliv­ers pas­tured pork, chicken, beef, and lamb to the doorsteps of its sub­scribers. Grass Roots meat is also served in sev­eral restau­rants, includ­ing South on Main and The Root Café in Lit­tle Rock as well as The Hive in Bentonville

Each Fri­day, Lat­ture trav­els to cen­tral Arkansas to make Herds to Homes deliv­er­ies, putting the fruits of his labor—as well as that of Grass Roots farm­ers across the state—directly into the hands of customers.

With each deliv­ery, Lat­ture sees the ful­fill­ment of the co-op’s early com­mit­ment to fos­ter­ing farmer-customer relationships.

“The cus­tomers are absolutely excited, like it’s Christ­mas,” he says. “Deliv­ery is the part that reas­sures me that we’re on the right track.”

For More Infor­ma­tion:

Grass Roots Farm­ers’ Coop­er­a­tive

Herds to Homes Pro­gram

www.grassrootscoop.com

info@grassrootscoop.com

Grass Roots Farm­ers’ Coop­er­a­tive Mem­ber Farms:

Arroyo Fam­ily Farm, Charleston

Cedar Creek Farm, Cedarville

Det­tel­bach Farms, Wynne

Falling Sky Farm, Leslie

Freckle Face Farm, McRae

Lawrence Farms, For­rest City

Onyek­welu Farms, Jack­sonville

The Other Side Farm, Marshall