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The Catawba Chronicles
The Catawba Chronicles
True Cut Ranch: Cultivating Community and Quality Food
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What if a suburban family could transform a sprawling 147-acre farm into a hub of sustainable living? Join us on this episode of the Catawba Chronicles as we sit down with Melissa from True Cut Ranch in Claremont, North Carolina. Melissa shares her incredible journey from a modest suburban lot in Mecklenburg County to managing a diverse farm. From the initial resistance to the eventual embrace of rural life, Melissa walks us through the highs and lows of raising chickens, turkeys, ducks, and pigs while highlighting the importance of providing high-quality protein to their community.
Discover the true essence of real food and ethical farming as Melissa elaborates on the ethos of True Cut Ranch. Get an insider's look at their commitment to sustainable farming practices, ensuring both livestock and their feed are treated with the utmost care and respect. Learn why transparency and trust are critical in food sourcing, and why visiting local farms can make a significant difference. With a focus on educating themselves and their customers, Melissa and her team have cultivated a diverse clientele eager for authentic, responsibly-raised food.
Immerse yourself in the day-to-day life at True Cut Ranch, where sustainable practices and educational events create a harmonious environment. Hear about the joy of morning routines, the excitement of moving animals to fresh pastures, and innovative land management techniques. Melissa also shares her passion for teaching through classes and events, aiming to reconnect people with local farms and healthier food choices. Whether you're interested in practical tips for buying local produce affordably or the profound benefits of consuming locally-raised meat and vegetables, this episode promises an inspiring and informative conversation.
True Cut Ranch
Speaker 1Welcome to the Catawba Chronicles, where we connect you to amazing people and businesses from Catawba County past and present. Whether you're new or have been here for what feels like forever, this podcast is for you. We hope this podcast will help you get to know our community better and make you feel more comfortable joining in on the conversation. So find a comfy chair and grab a cup and get ready to hear some great stories about our little corner of North Carolina.
Speaker 2Welcome back to the Catawba Chronicles. My name is Oliver Connor and in this episode I am with Melissa from True Cut Ranch out in Claremont, north Carolina. If you're somebody that is interested in growing your own produce, raising your own meat and simply surviving off the land, as people have done forever and a day, this is one you're not going to want to miss. Some of our greatest episodes and most listened to episodes have been the farmers in the area and what they're doing, whether large scale or small scale. So I'm really excited to have another one on board, and without further ado, melissa from True Cut Ranch. Hey, melissa.
Speaker 3Hey there, nice to talk with you.
Speaker 2So you know, tell me a little bit about where you come from and how you got to where you are today.
Speaker 3I didn't get to True Cut Ranch on purpose. I never meant to buy 147 acres in. Claremont. I never meant to run a farm where we sell an egg to you and to our neighbors. I was really just looking for more land to feed our family.
Speaker 2So, everything.
Speaker 3You could say it was an accident. You could say it was God putting us here, whatever happened. Here I am sitting at our family's farm in Claremont here in Catawba County. In Claremont, here in Catawba County, raising animals to sell protein, to sell meat and eggs. We also sell vegetables and flowers, but protein is really what we focus on. So how did I get here? I don't know. It was definitely not a path that I planned on. I can tell you how I became open to the idea. It unfolded gradually.
Speaker 2Was it your?
Speaker 3idea and you said you wanted a place where you could feed your family. What does that mean? Yeah, so before we came here to this place that we called True Cut Ranch, we lived in Mecklenburg County on two thirds of of an acre and on that little spot we raised chickens, turkeys, ducks, pigs, so we were getting eggs and meat. We did it. It was a hard-working suburban lot. We had fruit trees and blueberry bushes and a vegetable garden and and we really loved being able to raise grow.
Speaker 2That was so cool. It might be one of the best origin stories I've heard so far, because you know a lot of people they hear and you had mentioned Teleforms, which was from season one and one of our most listened to episodes, and I thoroughly enjoyed learning about what they're doing over there. But you know most people, I think, expect rural areas. They expect you need a lot of land, which I'm sure you would agree. It helps not having your neighbors so close to these types of operations, but you did it on two thirds of an acre in Mecklenburg County.
Speaker 3We sure did. We raised a lot of our own food, but the limit was that my husband would always say no to cows, and he was right, of course, but clearly we couldn't raise beef. So we ate a lot of pork and a lot of chicken and it was very satisfying. I was very comfortable there. We sure did that was fun.
Speaker 3Yes, they're definitely the MVPs of a homestead or of a farm. They're so much fun, they're really easy to raise and you can turn your scraps from your kitchen into bacon, so that's always a perk. So, yeah, we raised a lot of food there. I felt very settled, thought that I would always live there, and then one day it just hit me that I needed to be open to the idea of moving. So my husband, fred, said about time he was so eager to find wide open bases.
Speaker 2So he wanted to go we could do more things.
Speaker 3Absolutely yeah, it was definitely not my idea. And all of a sudden one day I said you know what? Oh, so he wanted to go. This place where we are was at the top of our budget and the furthest distance from where we were, and I had to Google where Claremont was, because I'd never heard of it.
Speaker 2And.
Speaker 3Fred just said, this place is tugging at my heartstrings. This is where we are supposed to go, so I went along with it and I just love it here. Meant to be a farmer, where we would be opening our doors for strangers and neighbors that we haven't met yet to come in and see what we're doing and to buy meat from us, but it is just the most amazing life and our kids just are thriving in this environment, so we are extremely grateful for this opportunity.
Speaker 2Well, I am, you know, looking on a map. And for those of you that do have access to internet, of course there's a wonderful website that they have, truecutranchcom. But I want to say I Googled truecutranch, or you say Google, I guess that's a general term these days. I just plugged it in, right, I guess I'm on Bing. It came right up, which I can't say for everyone. So we've got great reviews on TripAdvisor, a few of them, but there's a map. So technically, the old timers would say you're kind of more local to Catfish than Claremont.
Speaker 3Catfish.
Speaker 2Yeah, most people don't say that much anymore, but it is really close to Bunker Hill High School and really close to the north end of the river up there. So yeah, I would say, geographically you're in a really cool spot.
Speaker 3It is a really ideal location, so we are definitely closer to downtown Conover than downtown Claremont. We just love our neighborhood and I have not gone on a Friday night night to a bunker hill bears football game yet so maybe I'm not officially a local yet, but uh, but saturday morning so early when we're going to farmer's market or opening up the farm store here so friday nights are pretty um quiet for us.
Speaker 2But maybe one day we'll.
Speaker 3We'll get to support the, the local uh football team. But yeah, the closest things to us are like right next to i-40. Our creek that divides the ranch half jumps into lake lookout, so catawba river is very close by as well. It's a great location. I'd say. We're probably halfway between statesville and Hickory.
Speaker 2Yeah, and you're right there off of Bullock Road. It looks like that area holds a very special place in my heart. My mother, my grandmother, lived up there. My mother went to Bunker Hill. All her brothers, all my cousins, you know it seemed like when we were kids we were down at this end of the county.
Speaker 3But whenever we did anything at all, we were headed your way. I had no idea, oliver. Yeah, very cool. Well, come down memory lane, come see all of the places that you remember. Yes, I can assure you that if you bring the kids when the farm store is open, that we will take them on a fun walk and wear them out. I can almost promise they will fall asleep in the car on the way home.
Speaker 2That's really cool. So tell me, tell me a little bit more about what you do for the general public, because this has come from. I mean, we could talk all day on on raising everything you did in Mecklenburg County.
Speaker 1Uh.
Real Food and Sustainable Farming
Speaker 2I've got a lot of questions on how the neighbors felt about you and all the things. But um, especially with pigs, but, um, but, but tell me, you know about all right. So your, your husband's always up into the idea. Now you're like okay, I think I need more land, I'm running out of room here Rightfully so. And you find a spot in Claremont, you set up shop and then it became something more than just room to feed you and yours. It became something bigger than that.
Speaker 3Absolutely, it sure did. So. True Cut Ranch is just what this place turned into. It just seemed like such an easy transition where we started raising food for our neighbors and for anyone else who's looking for a really clean, delicious meat that they can feel good about. But the whole idea, the whole reason that we care about this so much is we really think it matters what we eat and we think it matters what the livestock eats. I feel better now in my 40s than ever before, way more energy than I did when I was even a teenager. And diet is the big take the quality of the food and the amount of protein that we eat every day. So it's very satisfying to be able to share that with people.
Speaker 3And who are our customers. It's just all sorts of people. It's not all just fancy people. It's very normal people just like you and me who have lost trust with where they were getting their food. They might have seen a documentary like Food Inc or heard something in the news or just felt uneasy about the way most food is raised, and I get that. I see why I sympathize with that. So people who are searching for true food, real food, stuff they can feel good about eating. That makes them feel good.
Speaker 3people search for it and they find us. And it is just so cool to meet people who drove all the way from Asheville or from Rock Hill, South Carolina, and to meet people who live right around the corner and are just so glad to have a local source of food. We're doing more than farming here. Oh, go ahead, I'm sorry.
Speaker 2No, no, it's okay. I was just going to say, like yesterday we were speaking about the proximity to people. So if you listen to the prior episode and you hear that conversation, this is exactly what we're talking about. We're talking about your neighbors that are that not only are they doing it for themselves, but they're doing it for everyone else too, and I think that's what a lot of people that are coming in. They don't, they're not used to that.
Speaker 2Maybe, like yourself, they were in some more urban environments, or maybe they were up north or just something that where maybe there were people in the area that were raising food but didn't necessarily do it for other people. And I think it's a really common thing down here more common than most would realize that there's more than enough to go around and it's not that difficult to find. So if you haven't found it yet and we, I'm sure we'll get into farmer's markets and all the markets and all the things and all the shops, but it really, you know, you can go straight to the source. I imagine I may be speaking, you know, out of turn here, melissa, but they can. They can contact you on your website and you've got all the things.
Speaker 3Yes, absolutely. People can stop online. They can see pictures of our farm online, they can learn about our farming practices. But really the best way to know if what you're buying is the real deal if it's what it says it is, it's not something we can just trust a food label for.
Speaker 3You got to put eyes on it. So come to the farm. We've got lots of times we're open. If you can't do that, and if you're looking at True Cut Ranch or any farm, something you can do is just look on Google Maps and you should be able to see evidence of motion. Here's what I mean. You should be able to see areas that are green. The grass should be there.
Speaker 3We shouldn't be raising animals on just dirt, and that means you have to constantly be moving the animals to new locations. You can see that if you come here or look at a satellite image of our farm, you'll see areas where the animals just were and they used it so intensively, and then you'll see the areas where they were behind it, where the grass has rested and recovered, and it's just the greenest grass around. It's so interesting to see that. So you can really look up the address of any farm and without leaving you know your home. You can. You can see images that tell you how, how well managed the fields are, but coming here is a great way to know, to look your farmer in the eye. That's better than any food label.
Speaker 2And there you know, there are a few things I'd like to break down. I think, um, that people listening may or may not understand, and sometimes I even forget, um, you usually have two extremes. And then you've got the middle right. You've got people that don't care either way. And then you've got people on one end that think I've seen that documentary you speak of, I've seen how animals are raised in mass quantities and how they're treated, and that's just how everyone does it and therefore I'm not going to, you know, partake in anything. And then you've got the other extreme probably I fall more towards that where you grew up around this. You grew up around animals being raised well, treated well. It's just part of life and the consumption of those is also part of life.
Speaker 2And then sometimes you forget that the other side exists, like you just assume. You just assume that it's all being done the right way. Now, neither extreme is the truth. In the middle, further educate themselves. But for anyone that doesn't know what we're talking about, you're 100% right, and it's not just take a look at the grass or take a look at the animals or ask the right questions. I mean you go further than that. I mean even on your website to who you are sourcing your feed from. So it's like it's not only do we care about the animals that we have and the land that we have, we care about all of the things that even happened before here.
Speaker 3Yeah, absolutely. There's definitely a cycle and every piece of it matters, including, you're right, where we get the feed for our chickens and for our hogs. It matters, it matters a lot. So you can see all of that. You know we kind of overuse the word transparency, maybe in our culture, but really we try to just be very open about what's happening here and try to answer your questions online and when you come here for a farm tour. We're really proud of the practices that we use to farm and it's different. It's different than an industrial chicken house. It's different than sending beef to a fee bot.
Speaker 2It it's completely different and you can taste the difference yeah, and and you're not the first one that's that's uh, done this, that said this, that eats this way. It really is pretty common, a common thread amongst people that are in this sort of environment, that eat this sort of food, where it's raised clean, so to speak, that really talk about the health benefits.
Speaker 3Oh, absolutely yeah, we did not invent these methods. Our mentor is Joel Salatin. He's got a big farm up in Virginia and does a lot of speaking and writes great, great books about culture and food and farming. Of course see farms that are maybe switching from the more industrial commercial agriculture to a healthier way to do it. That is always very cool to see what we call a monoculture field maybe a giant soybean field turned into a regenerative farm where they're raising chickens and beef and produce and planting nut and fruit trees. I think that's so cool to witness that. But there's also a very large movement growing of people who say I know I'm not okay with industrial agriculture.
Speaker 3I know I'm not okay with the neat and eggs from the store and I'm just going to raise more of it myself. So my goal here what we feel like is our calling is to get people to eat real food, and that means either working with a farmer someone you can look in the eye and you build trust with, or growing and raising it yourself, or growing and raising it yourself, and we want to encourage all of those things so that our community is living well, eating great food that they feel good about and supporting their neighbors.
Speaker 2Yeah, and so you touch on the regular things like beef, chicken and pork We've said that, but there are a few things on the website at least and pork we've said that, but there are a few things on the website at least. One of the coolest things that I see is that maybe your eggs are available and you don't even have to, like I don't have to interact, Like I can just pull up. Am I reading this right?
Speaker 3Yeah, you're right. You can drive down Bullock Road and anytime buy eggs from a small stand outside of our farm gate. You can pay cash, check or Venmo and pick out your eggs and take them home anytime. That has been a lot of fun. I'm so glad you brought that up, because we have a different group of customers who use that, maybe people with different schedules, or maybe they they're coming by after church on Sunday and that's when they want their eggs and so we really don't get to meet a lot of those customers. But it's so fun how sometimes people will leave us notes or encouragement on Facebook and I will. Sometimes we'll be out working and the gardens at the at the farm gate and people will roll their window down and honk and yell something like your eggs are delicious. So that's really cool how we're able to serve our very close neighbors with that stand yeah, that's a lot of fun.
Speaker 2It again breaks the mold of like this has got to be complicated. You know it's not as easy as going to the store. Someone argued this might be easier. It's like a a drive up window for farm fresh eggs.
Speaker 3Yeah, we're glad to be able to do that with eggs. Hopefully we can expand that idea. But everything moves very slowly here, with it just being our family getting the work done, so hopefully we can make that better. Here's the big thing with farmers like me is we're telling you, hey, this food is better than that is true, but it's more expensive and less convenient, and so the price. I can't do a lot about that. That is unfortunately just what it is. But the convenience. I'm trying, and I love getting ideas from customers and other farmers and other industries so that we can make it easier for you to get the food that we think will really nourish you.
Speaker 2Yeah, that's a really cool concept and one I'm interested to follow. So what else do you have going on? I mean, I do see some other things here, like lumber, and there's syrup and honey. How many people do you have helping you out up there?
Speaker 3It's just our family. So there are four of us living here. We have three adult sons, so whenever they come to visit, we put them to work. Everyone works on the farm. Nobody gets a free lunch here.
Speaker 3That's right so it's just our family. There's three generations living here now, including my parents, who they help out with our drop-offs. They go to places like Newton and Hickory and people can order online and meet in a parking lot and pick up their meat. So mom and dad help with that. But it's just us.
Speaker 3So we have to have very efficient systems so that we're not breaking our backs every day and that farm chores take, during what we call chicken season, maybe three hours a day for my husband and then two to three hours a day for me in the garden, and a little bit less outside of chicken season, which is just the winter, because we really raise our chickens, our meat chickens, outside. They're different than the chickens that lay eggs. They just don't feather out as fully, they just can't take the cold. So we stopped raising meat chickens we call them broilers from about the middle of October until it starts to get warm here, and so it takes a little while every day. But then the rest of our time is spent on farm projects and doing things like teaching classes for free at our Catawba County Library system, which I know you and I both have some great mutual friends there. We're so impressed, aren't we, with their leadership and their programming.
Speaker 2Yeah, for sure. And for those of you that don't know what she's referring to, there are a couple episodes on the fun folks at the library as well, and you know the opportunities to volunteer with them. And, touching back on the chicken season, I found a wonderful blog, so I like your blog page. There is one labeled chicken has a season. There is one labeled chicken has a season, so I like this. If you want more information on any things that we talk about, you have recipes as well.
Speaker 3I try to. It's so interesting because we'll have people come to me and I am so inspired by the recipes they tell me they grew up with and I'm always trying to get in the kitchen with them and learn from them. But we also have customers to get here and say I've never cooked a whole chicken before. What do I do with it? I've only bought rotisserie chicken from the store, and so we're trying to make it easier for people to eat real food and share recipes that our family likes, which most of the food that we eat is really simple, with great ingredients.
Speaker 3So the ingredients are what make me look like a really good cook, and we just try to share what we eat with people. So if they want to try that as well that we've got it right there on the True Cut Ranch website.
Speaker 2That's really cool, so what yeah?
Speaker 3chicken season. Was that kind of a shock for you that we have something that we call chicken season, because that's a little different, right?
Speaker 2It is different. Yeah, I've never heard of chicken season, but it makes sense and I am very fascinated with all the different things that are done by so few people. It doesn't surprise me that you said it's just a few people, but it amazes me how a lot of us feel, like you know, our lives are busy, there's not enough time in the day, but it just seems like people that are raising animals and tending to them, managing the products that come out of these homesteading type farms. It just is unreal how much work goes into it by so few.
Sustainable Farming and Land Management
Speaker 3Yeah. What makes it easy, though, is basically, if you came here for morning chores, you would see we're not getting on a million dollar tractor and spreading chemicals everywhere. What we're doing is moving the animals to their new location, and, in the case of the chickens and the turkeys and the hogs, we're feeding them. Everybody gets fresh water, but what we get to do every morning is open up the new paddock for the cows.
Speaker 2So, the beef herd.
Speaker 3Every day they move to fresh grass and it is so exciting because they'll all gather where they think you'll open the gate to let them through. It's just a single strand of electric wire, so you literally just open it up and they move on to the next area and they're almost frolicking. They're very excited to get the new salad bar for the day, so that can make morning chores a lot more pleasant. And the same with the meat chickens. They live in something you're familiar with that we call a chicken tractor.
Speaker 3And it's just a mobile coop that they live in to keep them safe from predators that allow them access to the pasture, and so I'm not strong enough to do it. But if I have my 10-year-old helping I can do do it. But my husband or our older sons literally pulled forward to those chicken tractors, to fresh grass and the birds just start singing. They're so excited. You can just hear them. It gets very loud actually. They're so happy they get right to work pecking.
Speaker 3So how, how can you get upset about doing morning chores when they can really be so pleasant?
Speaker 2That's a good point and there are some great again on the blog of Chicken has the Season. There's some great photos at the bottom where it shows I believe this is your husband possibly pulling. They're not small these chicken tractors. They're quite sizable and it's really a cool concept that I've enjoyed learning about over the years. Um it, the meat looks great. Uh, I don't. I'm a bit sad that I missed the march madness meatballs you can have them any time of year, anytime you're watching sports you can have.
Speaker 3You can have meatballs, we'll call them something else okay yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2Tell me now, I saw some wood. Do you guys cut wood too?
Speaker 3So part of what we're doing here is managing the pastures by the way we move the animals, but also managing the woods. So we've got about 70 acres of wood. And one of the goals is to take the edges of the woods and thin them a little bit to create what's called silvopasture so silva is forest, I guess, in Latin and then pasture the grass.
Speaker 3So it's basically more like a savanna where there's a little bit of shade and then grass growing between the trees, which means that we're cutting down some trees typically the ones that are diseased or dying or bent or just, you know, not the most beautiful trees and letting the best trees grow to their full potential. So that means there's some lumber to deal with. So we'll make firewood for ourselves to sell, and then lumber that goes in the old hay barn that was here at the farm when we moved here and cure for a year so that we can sell them to people who want to build furniture or shelving or some cool things out of maple and the other types of lumber that we have. So it's really not just one thing that we grow here. When I meet people and I tell them I'm a farmer, they ask me what my crop is and I say, well, it's a very diverse farm.
Speaker 3There's protein as our main focus, but then there are other things that just naturally come with the processes that we have, and we sell those too, like the lumber.
Speaker 2Yeah, I mean it's back to the process of land management Actually working not just one piece of, or using one piece of the land that you're on, but actually managing all of it as a collective. I think that's probably more uncommon than just the simple act of raising your own food. It really is something unique.
Speaker 3Yeah, there's definitely an ecosystem here, and so the lumber that's part of what we deal with is having to thin trees, to make paths and to create the silvopasture that we covet so much, and so we just try to figure out any way we can use those resources to serve our community and to bring in revenue to help us pay this big farm mortgage, and at the same time it's not like we can just pull one lever and it doesn't affect something else. We could not suddenly increase our lumber by 10 times. That wouldn't make sense for the land that we're on. We also couldn't just quadruple the number of chicken or the number of beef cows that we sell.
Speaker 2It's all a balance the number of beef cows that we, that we sell. It's all balanced, yeah, if done right, you're right, it's it's delicate. Um, well, I mean those are great, but let's get into the events, because I'm interested in this how to grocery shop like a homesteader. This class looks like it's right up, isn't that a fun?
Speaker 3one. I think that's so cool. I'm just such a geek about these things.
Real Food and Ethical Farming
Speaker 3I had no idea that other people wanted to know these things. So that's what's so fun about working with different librarians to come up with programming to offer, because they see what people are reading and what needs need to be met, so I'm excited about that. We've also done so many classes about how to make bone broth or stock, which you can make so easily from things that you probably would otherwise throw away, and it's one of the most nourishing and delicious things that you can make in a kitchen and sourdough bread anything I can do to help people eat real food. I'm into to do that and grateful for the different libraries and church groups and places that have invited me to speak. I am just blown away that people want to hear these things.
Speaker 3And my kids are always like well, people come to hear you talk. You talk all the time. And then my husband will say when I get home from teaching a class, I'm always so excited, so encouraged by the people who come and fill these rooms. But he'll say you still have words when you get home. You still want to talk more. Are you the same?
Speaker 2way, you know, I probably doesn't sound like I've got as much energy as you. I'm pretty good at it when I need to be, but, man, when I'm off, I'm off. So I do not know what it's like to come back and just be still on and energized, and that I admire, but that's probably what makes you successful in what you do. I mean, if you've got that kind of drive and that kind of energy and it is infectious right. I mean you can hear it, your excitement for what you're doing and educating people on a better way of life, a better way of eating, and I think you know this world needs more of that.
Speaker 3Well, thank you for that encouragement. It's the same as with your podcast. You do this because you want to help us get to know other people in the community. I love listening to Top of Chronicles and love what you're doing here.
Speaker 2So thank, even through you know out into July, Is this something? That you're going to continue, because I know by the time this probably goes out. We're trying to space out our episodes a little more this season. Instead of front-loading the first half of the year, are you planning on doing more stuff towards the end of the year? Should people keep checking in on this?
Speaker 3Oh, definitely. Yeah, as long as people will let me talk, I will preach the benefits of eating real food and cooking and growing and raising what you can and getting to know local farmers. I absolutely love it. The best source for our calendar is the events page at TrueKiteRanchcom. You'll see where I'm teaching, but you'll also find out about events that we have here at the farm.
Speaker 3That can be free farm tours where we walk you walk around the farm with with a farmer, and also different animal interactions, like we have different days where you can come meet the goats and give them treats and milk a goat and give them treats and milk a goat, and then other experiences where you get to go and meet the flock of our laying hens and gather your own eggs and enjoy a small group farm tour there as well. So there's always a lot going on on our event stage.
Speaker 2That's really cool and for those that can't make it to an event or can't come directly, it looks like maybe there's a little bit of a store here that you've got where you can order things and purchase. I'm guessing it'll be shipped.
Speaker 3You can come here and get it at the farm, and so we do have. The hours will change seasonally. Currently right now our farm stores open on Saturdays, but check this site for the most current information. You can order online pick up here without even leaving your car. You can just go through the kind of like a drive-through or pick up at different meetup locations.
Speaker 3You can also find our meet near you in Sherrill's Ford. There's a really cool store called Lakeside Farmer's Market, right next to Lakeside Malt and Stone, just steps away from Lake Norman. You can get our meat there seven days a week and then in Hickory at Fresh Market Produce you can find our chicken.
Speaker 2That's really cool. Well, is there anything that we're missing, do you think?
Speaker 3Well, I'll tell you a little bit about how we came up with this name. True Cut, because typically most farms either are named after the family's last name or the location. Maybe or it could be something like a triple.
Speaker 3R or something like that ranch, and so our name is a weird name True Cut Ranch. So True Cut means the real deal, it comes from the construction world and it's a term to describe lumber. So what does that have to do with farming? Well, when you go to the home improvement store to buy dimensional lumber, say it's two by four. It's not really two by four. It is not what its name is. It's a little less than two inches by a little less than four inches. However, with true cut lumber, it is what it says truly two by four.
Speaker 3And so we think that phrase applies just as much to the food we eat as it does to construction. So is chicken really chicken when the animal lives indoors in a crowded industrial chicken factory?
Speaker 3with its beak trimmed. That bird never enjoys the Carolina blue sky, never feels the wind, never walks on real grass. Is that really chicken? I don't think so. Is pork really pork? A pig isn't allowed to root, so you growing up around farm animals know that the pig has a behavior called rooting, where it's digging with its snout. So, Fred, my husband says that God gave pigs a shovel for a nose. And when's raised on concrete, it can't express its, its pigginess sure so is pork really pork when it's raised inside?
Speaker 3I don't think so. So true, cut uh food is. Is the real deal, the way that? We think the animals should be raised in a way that mimics nature. So, for example, the beef herd and in nature, herbivores removing. They want the best grass. They're always moving, they don't stay in one spot. That's why we try to mimic that by moving them the state of fresh grass. So that's why we call ourselves true cut well, and there's.
Speaker 2You're right. There's a lot to be said about the happiness or quality of life for an individual and how that affects the meat. There is a difference, and you see it in all sorts of different industries. I mean, if you look at tuna fishing, if you don't do it the right way, you don't handle the meat the right way, then it does affect the quality. So it's not just this concept.
Speaker 3The structure of the color.
Speaker 2Yeah, it's not just a concept that people have, I mean, it's real and it's across the board, and so I think you're 100% right. There's something to be said for things that are done, true.
Speaker 3Absolutely.
Speaker 2That's really cool. What else you got Anything?
Speaker 3Would you believe that I was a vegetarian for a very long time?
Speaker 2And you've been hiding that the whole time.
Reconnecting With Food and Local Farms
Speaker 3I know I guess you should allege your story with this. Oh man, yeah, old friends from middle school or elementary school, high school, college, they see that we're ranching and they remind me that I was a vegetarian. Yes, I was. From about the age of 10 until right before I got married, I knew that industrial agriculture was not okay. And I did not want to eat meat that came from these environments. So, because I didn't know that there was a better way, I had no idea that you could find people raising protein in a better way it wasn't at the store.
Speaker 3Instead of finding a better source, I just gave up meat and I started eating all the fake stuff, all of the soy-based fake bacon, fake chicken, not realizing how backwards my thinking was, because that was even worse for my health and worse for the earth. And all of that food was coming from genetically excuse me, genetically modified plant seeds from one of the worst agricultural companies around, Monsanto, which is now Bayer. So I feel scammed because I thought I was doing better for the earth and for my health by not eating meat. But I'm glad now to know that there's a better way and that we can eat meat that really nourishes us, that's raised in a way that actually can improve the land instead of hurting it. So I'm grateful for that realization. Wish I'd known it a long time ago, but it's something that I live now. So, former vegetarian turned cattle rancher how?
Speaker 2about that. I mean, that's an amazing story and I think it's an important one. Thank you for sharing that, because there are probably a lot of people out there and I don't care either way. I mean, I'm not one of those. There are a lot of people around here I know that would give vegetarians a hard time or vegans, or pescatarians or all the things. I mean.
Speaker 2I've lived in many different places, I've met a lot of different people and I think this highlights the fact that you can't help where you grow up. That's not something you get to choose to do and, based upon where you grow up, you learn certain things and you learn certain things that are done a certain way, and you can only make the best decision for yourself with the information that you've been given and, um, a lot of people. I mean I think it speaks volumes of you and who you are and your character and intelligent you are. To challenge where you grew up again, not your fault, um, what you were exposed to, to say, okay, what? What does the other side see? And this goes both ways Um, what does the other side see or know that I don't? And then how can I take a decision that I made and and not let it define who I am forever.
Speaker 2Um, there's a there's a sort of you know growth to that, about like, hey, maybe this was right for me, then it's not right for me now. Let's reevaluate. And that's these volumes of who you are and I think it speaks to a lot of people that might be in a similar place is we could be talking about the same subject, coming at it from different angles, and one may be right and one may be wrong.
Speaker 3Yeah, so people might have other reasons for not eating meat. For me, I thought I would be healthier, I thought I was saving the earth, and I knew that I didn't like the way that animals were raised. So I'm glad I was open, because for a while I wasn't. I was just very set on not eating meat. And now I know there's a better way. Now I eat animal-based protein every day, plus lots of vegetables, a lot of them we grow here on the farm Sourdough, bread, all the good stuff. I want to eat the good stuff. You know I don't want to be on a boring diet. I want to eat well, eat food that makes my body feel good, makes me feel good about where I'm purchasing it or how I'm raising it, and I love meeting other people who want that too. So you can vote with your dollars.
Speaker 3You can vote for what you want by going and looking a farmer in the eye and buying from a Catawba County neighbor as much as you can, whether it's me or one of the other great farmers. And there are lots of ways to find us. The farmer's market is one way, but in the age we live in, it's just so easy to find farmers online. There are sites like Local Harvest, where it's like a database of different farmers that sell direct to consumers, and the Extension Office is a great resource as well. And just Googling you know local turkey or fresh eggs, you know, just trying to define that. So there's good food here. And if you start to get to know farmers, you can. You can say I can't afford this, what? What ideas do you have? So if you're trying to eat local vegetables, you can say I can't afford this, what ideas do you have?
Speaker 3So if you're trying to eat local vegetables, you're trying to buy vegetables from a farmer. You can look in the eye and you can see the field and decide that you trust it. But those tomatoes are very expensive. You can start to get to know opportunities from the farmers, like buying what we call seconds, buying the tomatoes that don't look as perfect but are still absolutely delicious and nourishing Getting those at a discount.
Speaker 3Just talking to farmers about when the best time is to buy things and what we have too much of that we're willing to sell at a lower price, and how to cook it.
Speaker 2Yeah, there's that educational piece that comes with knowing where your food comes from and knowing who is is helping you get that food. And, like you said, you don't. I mean, you can ask someone at the grocery store, but they're probably going to know very little about each thing, whereas if you ask your local farmer, they're going to be able to help you in more ways than one and and they can really help you figure out what is best for you and your family and how you get what you want and what you need.
Speaker 3and, um, there's more to it than just picking up absolutely yeah, and this is the food that we actually eat. I would definitely not trust a farmer who go, who raises meat and then goes and buys theirs at the grocery store but this is the food that we really eat every single day.
Speaker 3So I love to talk about food. I love anything to do with good food, eating it, cooking it, sharing it with friends, talking about it, reading about it. I just love everything to do with great food, and it's a lot of fun for us to teach people about our family recipes and to learn about their. You might be surprised about this. One of our most popular items like the item that if you don't get it when we restock it, you're gonna have to wait another month or two is beef liver oh, very nice yeah, the liver doesn't lie.
Speaker 3you can really tell about how healthy animal isall is by the liver. So we have diehard liver customers who will try to snatch it up as soon as it's available, isn't? That funny you probably thought it'd be the rib eyes, right. But, the liver is definitely like right, this minute we're out of stock on liver and won't have more so till next month, because people love it and want to make sure their freezer is stocked with it so that they don't run out because liver. So it's absolutely not my favorite part of a beef?
Speaker 3uh, it is. It's like it's like choking down a vitamin for me. I know it's so good for me, but I just don't enjoy it. But uh, it's one of the most nourishing foods that we can eat. So I always think it's funny that liver is one of the most coveted items that we sell.
Speaker 2That is interesting. Well, melissa, I can't thank you enough for coming on. I want to be respectful of your time. I know you're busy. I know you got animals. I know you got all the things. Um, if, if somebody wants to get in touch with you I mean, I know we spoke about where you can get the food and you got it online, your website you can see all the places that sold all across the county and and I saw a place you know, even down in Charlotte. So check out the website, um, if you're looking for a lot of the produce or products that are being done out of True Cut Ranch, but if they're looking for you, what's the best way for them to get in touch with you if they've got any questions?
Speaker 3So people can contact me through a form on the contact page at truecutranchcom, but also through Facebook Messenger and sending direct messages through Instagram. So it's me that's writing you back there, and I just love interacting with people who have questions or people who want to share pictures of the food that they made. So those are three great places to find me, and whenever the farm stores open. If I'm not at a farmer's market, then I'll be here when the farm stores open. If I'm not at a farmer's market, then I'll be here when the farm stores open.
Speaker 2Awesome. Well, thank you so much for being here. It really is my pleasure. I think our listeners are better for it, especially when they hear stories from the heart, where you know people are really getting their hands dirty. I know Charlotte is coming at us fast. It's swallowing up little towns, lots of land, such as progress but there are still people out there who are doing what you're doing and I hope that Catawba County never loses that. So, thank you.
Speaker 3Thank you, Oliver. I love what you're doing at Catawba Chronicles. I appreciate the chance to chat with you. You, Oliver.
Speaker 1I love what you're doing at Catawba Chronicles and appreciate the chance to chat with you. Thanks so much for tuning in to this episode of the Catawba Chronicles. If you're enjoying this show, please feel free to rate, subscribe and leave a review wherever you listen to your podcasts. That helps others find the show and we greatly appreciate it. Once again, we really appreciate you taking the time to listen and getting more acquainted with all of the wonderful things Catawba County has to offer. We hope you'll join us again in the next episode of the Catawba Chronicles.