Our Humble Beginnings

Hi Y'all,

Welcome to Falling Creek Farms, home of Eden Pure Beef.

Our Family has been in farming for more generations than I can trace, we have raised beef and we have had dairy farms. We have always conserved land and we continue to do so today. Our beef eats only grass, hay, and minerals raised on our farm with zero herbicides or pesticides. We are proud of our weeds. But I did not always farm this way.

In the 1990s I began farming and played the game of "better living through chemistry". I sprayed the fields with herbicides to kill weeds, used pesticides to kill army worms and other bugs I deemed a threat to my pasture. I fed the cattle lots of corn byproducts, whole cottonseed, expired cereal, rejected candy and gum, and even chicken litter (yep, that's just a polite word for chicken poop). I gave them lots of vaccines, antibiotics, wormed them twice a year and threw everything in the book at them to get the cheapest cost of gain per pound.

Then we shipped these cattle all across the United States, which often required even more injections to make sure the cows were "healthy" enough for the trip and would not pose an infectious risk to other livestock during their journey. One morning I was re-vaccinating a group of steers to prepare them for shipping as was required by the buyer when several collapsed with "hot" reactions to the vaccines. The next day these steers had not recovered and were eventually euthanized. It was discouraging, to say the least. Tending these cattle was my life and to see so many of them felled by our industry's "best practices" was heartbreaking.

And then, I had an epiphany. Was all of this chemical intervention even necessary? Could I simply stop using vaccines and routine antibiotics and raise cattle like my forefathers did generations ago? Could my cattle be healthy living off the feed God provided, living as close to a natural lifestyle as I could arrange? It was during this time that my mother was fighting breast cancer, and she fought not only against the threat to her life and health, but also against what she saw as a danger to her family. She was already insisting that I pay someone else to spray the pastures. Taking my cue from her, I decided to discontinue spraying them altogether. I allowed the weeds to take over my pastures, providing a wide variety of hardy plant life for my cattle to browse. I began to research the more natural cattle farming practices, and I stopped using vaccines and antibiotics. I began developing a herd of cattle that could thrive naturally. I made the decision to keep my cattle in the pasture rather than finishing them in a feed lot.

The land grew lush with weeds that survive all kinds of weather. The cattle thrive and grew stronger with each generation. And now, 15 years later, we are able to provide Eden Pure Beef to your families.

At Falling Creek Farms, we are proud of our weeds.