About Us

We're Neil, Justina, Lars, and Ebba. We raise healthy meat animals naturally and humanely on pasture and in the mixed forest of our family farm near Scio, Oregon. 

To find out more about our farm and what we do, check out Pasture Raised. 

To find out about the pasture-raised products we have available and how to place an order, check out How to Buy. 

For tips on cooking pasture-raised meat, check under Cooking. 

To find out more about life on the farm and other topics, visit our Farm Blog.

If you would like us to let you know when we have additional farm products for sale, or to give us feedback, send us a note and please sign up for our newsletter.

About the Name

Anchor Ranch was previously part of a multi-generational family ranch and farm dating back to before Oregon was even a state!  A previous owner named it "Anchor Ranch" in homage to the United States Coast Guard.  When we bought it from his children, we liked the name so much that we kept it.  When an anchor is fulfilling its purpose, we don't see it.  It lies underwater, beneath the ship which it keeps safe.  Like the roots of the quintessential oak tree in the middle of our farm, it's the things underneath, which we don't always see, that make healthy soil and a healthy community, and thus a good farm and good food.

About Our Regenerative Agriculture Practices and Plans

Crop farming is almost unbelievably extractive. It takes a lot of resources to grow tomatoes from dirt, and when the tomatoes are picked and trucked off somewhere else, very few of those resources make it back into the local soil, even with the best composting program. Conventional farming might be reasonably compared to strip-mining the soil. Some methods of organic farming can be less extractive, but others are not. We don’t have anything against conventional farmers or miners: these are choices they make with the information and resources they have, and we are in solidarity with American working families regardless of their livelihood, so long as it’s legal and ethical. But we don’t have any interest in strip-mining the soil on our family farm.

Animals are always a vital part of any natural ecosystem and are fundamentally necessary for regenerative agriculture. In nature, animal manure returns resources to the soil. In addition, grazing and foraging prompt plants to make better use of the available resources to regrow even stronger before animals return to graze again. And, in nature, animals almost never stay in one place for long. They graze some, and then are chased off by predators or move on to “greener pastures”, allowing the places they have been to rest and recover. Mirroring this natural animal behavior as much as possible helps farmers and ranchers regenerate soil fertility.

Regenerative Agriculture is a holistic process of managing a farm in a way that adds rather than extracts. Plant two trees for every one you harvest. Add natural nutrients to the soil, not poisonous chemicals. In place of a tractor, use animals, doing what they want to do anyways, to combat weeds and pests and deposit fertilizer. Support and invest in the local community, rather than paying the lowest wages possible to ship a product to consumers who will never even know where it comes from.

What We Are Doing to Regenerate Our Land

Anchor Ranch Farm had previously been farmed in conventional cereal grains for over thirty years. The people who farmed it took good care of it but nevertheless the soils were much depleted of organic matter. Thomas Creek flows past the farm, so there is a real risk that any agricultural chemicals used could run off into the local watershed. We choose to use natural animal behavior to help us revitalize the soil. With no chemical spraying, we don’t risk endangering the local watershed. With no mechanical tilling, we lose less topsoil to runoff in the rainy season. Over time, animal manure helps build soil fertility as we convert conventional cropland to no-spray grazing pasture. Perhaps future generations at Anchor Ranch Farm will choose to go back to plowing and planting crops and thus make use of our investment in building healthy, natural soil today. We’re investing for the future; our investment is in healthy, natural soil and a healthy, natural farm ecology.

Our animals live outdoors all day every day, except for poultry chicks which live in a heated brooder for a few weeks until their feathers grow out enough to spend the night outdoors. We do not use a barn for the livestock. Our forest-pastured sows and piglets have 3-sided shelters but normally choose to sleep in the woods; our lambs are born outdoors on the spring grass and live on the pasture their whole lives. Our chickens, once they are old enough, free range every day in the pasture and we move their coops regularly to fresh grass.

Many people mistakenly believe that regenerative agriculture is a “newfangled” and unproven concept. This is the opposite of the truth. In fact, “Big Ag” agricultural methods were forced on American farmers starting in the mid-20th century, have never been tried before, and have no proven track record of success. Every bit of industrial agriculture “progress” has been an unmitigated disaster, from the wanton waste of resources needed to bring in a crop, to the poisoning of soil and water, to the soul-destroying jobs and dependence on welfare which have replaced honest farm labor. Nothing about regenerative agriculture is at all new; it is simply a return to traditional farming methods used for hundreds if not thousands of years. Combined with prudent use of modern technologies working in service to a holistic agriculture system, these traditional farming practices work even better today than in the past.

By “regenerate our land” we mean that: activity which makes the farm land yield more per input, not just per acre. What used to be a popular American belief in conserving our natural resources and national beauty has turned into a deliberately divisive demand for token support for millenarian environmental alarmism combined with the occasional grudging purchase of an indulgence for the perceived sin of driving to work. All we are doing is working to make our farm and soil more productive without using extraneous inputs like chemicals or gas-powered machinery. Whether you believe or disbelieve whatever the latest research says, it is always going to be beneficial to produce more food with fewer inputs while improving local ecosystems. Preserving the beauty of our natural areas and not wasting natural resources for no additional yield are goals that don’t require us to agree on anything else.

We Sell Directly to the Community of People and Families who Directly Support our Farm and Eat our Food

We have nothing against restaurants, but we do not sell to restaurants. We sell only to individual bulk order customers who purchase meat for their own use, to CSA members, and to individuals whom we meet at farmers markets or at our farm stand.

Note to Aspiring Farm Workers

We are not hiring. We will not be hiring in the foreseeable future. While we do invest in improving the livestock and capital stock of the farm, we do not have the steady profit required to pay an employee. Also, this is a family farm. We do not even have an EIN. If you like what we are doing and you want some experience, and you don’t have farm land of your own, go borrow someone’s agriculture-zoned backyard, fence off a garden area for them, and pasture-raise chickens on it to add free fertilizer to their soil. There’s far more demand for real pasture-raised chicken than there is supply. All inquiries about employment at the farm get deleted. You will learn much better by trying it out on your own, even if you fail.