United Kingdom
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United States
Old Time Farm
Shelly Oswald
1919 Harrisville Rd
Stoneboro, PA 161537
24-316-0148 (cell)8
14-786-7687 (landline)
OldTimeFlavor@gmail.com
Old Time Farm is a 113-acre farm in Mercer County, PA focused on the preservation of rare, endangered, heritage livestock and poultry.
Twitter: https://twitter.com/OldTimeFarm
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Shelly.OldTimeFarm
Videos
https://www.facebook.com/Shelly.OldTimeFarm/videos
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THIS IS MY “WHY” – WHAT’S YOURS?
You know how grocery shelves emptied of food during the pandemic?
I want to do everything I can to make sure that local farms & local food exist in the future to come to our rescue when we need them – again.
You see, small local farms, local animal & seed genetics, food production skills, food processing capacity & cooking skills are all in danger of going extinct.
Choices made in the past impact us now. Our choices now create change for the future. That is some incredible power when you think about it.
Every time we buy something, we make a choice to spend dollars to support (or not support) something.
Intentional or not, we make a choice with those dollars and the “big boys” try to give us what we want – that is some incredible power when you consider it.
For me, I want to support food I feel good about eating. I want home-made goodness with deep meaning, purposefully raised by people I know, along with the lost flavors of slow-grown heirloom foods from yesteryear. I want real, authentic food with all of its variation and imperfections that makes me think about each bite, but is still simple to prepare and needs little embellishment.
Raising mass quantities of food to “feed the world” was never my goal. Conserving endangered breeds of poultry and livestock enjoying those amazing flavors of yesteryear on our plate and sharing it was others was important.
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RAISING HERITAGE BREEDs
Heritage breeds of livestock were created to solve a historical agricultural problem, production need or developed in a specific region – just like heirloom seeds. Also like heirloom seeds, they are rare and in danger of going extinct, which leaves our regional food reproduction and food security in remote corporate hands.
TRADITIONAL & NATURAL
Traditional agricultural values focused on animals being vigorous and healthy, able to thrive in the local region and forage on local pasture, natural reproduction and maternal instincts, and, most of all, reasonable production expectations that favored a healthy long-lived animal.
Modern industrial agricultural production arose in the 1950’s when the creation of highly specialized animals to produce the maximum amount of “protein” in the least amount of time, with the least amount of inputs, in the least amount of space no matter the cost became the focus.
SMALL-SCALE LOCAL FOOD SECURITY
Historically, our food reproduction and genetics were in the hands of many small-scale farmers across the world, which provided immense genetic diversity for animals and plants as well as regional isolation in case of a disease outbreak or natural disaster which can easily impact the entire nation’s food supply today.
A mere handful of corporations in the entire world own the modern parent stock or “genetics” for specialized industrial food production animals. In essence, our food production and reproduction is in remote corporate hands where results to shareholders and corporate profit are the main goals, not regional food security or animal welfare.
Lost along the way to maximizing corporate profits and reducing the cost of food was the genetic diversity, natural reproduction, strong immune systems, ability to thrive on pasture, basic maternal and survival instincts, intelligence, unique quality meat/eggs/fiber/feathers and trainability offered by the old fashioned, multi-purpose locally reproducible heritage breeds.
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HERITAGE BREEDS AT OLD TIME FARM
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