Greenway Farms

What happens when a sheriff and an attorney retire?  Maybe loll in the florida sunshine, drive an RV across America,  or put their feet up and catch up on all the books they promised themselves they would read but never had the time. For this sheriff, Kerry Dunaway and his attorney wife Robin it was  none of these.  They built a farm - Greenway Farms, in Roberta GA.  Both from farming stock they returned to their roots.  Interesting how that happens! For me I suppose I too have returned to my roots.  My dad was a butcher and a slaughter man and his father was the same and raised a few pigs on the side.  I might not be slaughtering and butchering my own pigs but my heart is in farming.  Add to this my passion, from a very young age, for animal welfare and you have The Activist half of Vital Awareness, dedicated to improving the lot of factory farmed livestock through awareness, and supporting the movement to return to real farming practices (the 'old' ways I guess).  This is exactly what I experienced at Greenway Farms, the 'old ways'.  A small farm devoted to sustainable and humane methods of raising animals and crops - the Dunaways know that you only get out what you are prepared to put in  - that's why they are a zero waste farm, what comes from the land goes back into the land with a lot of help from their vermiculture - the worms.  The Dunaways make a wholesome compost, with a Canadian peat starter, worm fodder, fruit and vegetable snacks, and some scraps of newspaper for a worm treat (kinda like the equivalent of worm twinkies)...and of course lots of worms and patience.  It will take about 12 months for the worms to eat their way through the organic matter in their bed and poop it out (I think thats how worms make compost!)

So what do they do with their compost  - grow a wonderful array of vegetables which the Dunaways eat, sell, and 'can'.  The runts of the veggies go to the livestock and...you guessed it to the worms too (a picture perfect cycle).  

Even the local Piggly Wiggly is on board  - instead of throwing the over-ripe un-sellable fruits  and vegetables in the dumpster they donate to The Worms of Greenway Farms. In fact such is the contribution that the Dunaways have a page on their website in honour of Piggly Wiggly.  The Dunaways are in the process of building up their livestock.  They have poultry and laying hens, meat goats, and pork. Unfortunately I didn't get to see the pigs as they were already in Greenway customer freezers - however I did get to see the three acre woodland that these pigs had had all to themselves to forage root and do whatever it is that pigs should be doing.  The hens have plenty of pasture and are the perfect definition of what it means to be free range.  We have touched on labeling and how misleading it is (deliberately so)  - we will cover it in more detail in a later blog.  So back to the free range chickens, as Kerry put it "these hens could catch a bus up to Atlanta for food if they wanted to" - but as I said they know which side their bread is buttered and have no intention of moving to Atlanta.

Currently the Dunaways are building what is for them the perfect herd of goats - how are they doing this? The old-fashioned way of true animal husbandry.  They are breeding from the does and selling on the bucks, and through selective breeding are creating the characteristics for a herd that will suit their needs, farm, customers and geographical position.  When I say this is a no waste farm I truly mean it, there is usually milk left over by the breeding does after they have fed their young - I am  sure a good deal of it makes its way to the Dunaways table but the superfluous gets made into handcrafted soap.  Oh and one more thing, the farm has a sawmill operation (the office and mobile hen house were built from the lumber on Greenway Farms) and the left over odds and ends of lumber are burned and the ash spread on the farmland and pasture as a potash fertilizer.  

The Dunaways are working with other small farmers to get a chicken processing facility built, so that as a co-operative they can share the costs of building and the over-heads of running a processing plant.  This means that chickens will be raised, slaughtered and processed within just a few square miles - this is very exciting for the small poultry farmers in middle GA.  This leads me to the topic of the BIG poultry producers of N Georgia - we know who they are! The Dunaways are keen not to head-butt with the industrialized chicken producers because in any head-on fight there will only be one winner and it won't be the small farmers eking out a living from the land.  

As we at Vital Awareness contend (and I believe that the Dunaways are in agreement) the only way to change the supply is through demand; we have to get consumers to vote with their food dollar as to how they want their food to be produced, so that we can move away from factory farming and get the animals off the concrete and onto the pasture.  How do we do this? We can do it through awareness on four fronts thereby harnessing most consumers (depending on their concerns) - one: pasture raised meat tastes better, two: its better for one's health, three: it is better for the environment, and four: (in particular for me The Activist) from an animal welfare point of view it's the only humane method of raising livestock destined for the food chain.  

TOGETHER - the real farmers and the consumers can make a difference; collectively we can change the face of the food industry - but ultimately the buck literally ends with the consumer, without our help the real small famers of the U.S.A. don't stand a chance.