FoodLove 13: Will Harris of White Oak Pastures

Meet Will Harris of White Oak Pastures. He’s a cowboy and regenerative, intergenerational farmer. Long ago, he became an observer of the health of the animals on his farm. Then, he became a listener to the health of the soil. In the process of growing White Oak Pastures, Will has created a dynamic, agrarian ecosystem that has also brought to life a thriving community in rural Bluffton, Georgia. With steer, cows, sheep, turkeys, lamb, pigs (for Iberico ham), and abbatoirs (slaughterhouses on property), Will has achieved a gastronomical Noah’s Ark on land.

Built up by a larger-than-life personality that beams under that all-American cowboy hat with a new vision for farming, Will talks straightforwardly about how every farmer can commit to a method of farming that is beyond sustainable—one that adds value to the soil and can make the agrarian food supply systems more resilient at scale. As he speaks, he talks about natural cycles. Everything he says about his understanding of these cycles is the Tao of Food, the connectedness between all things, that oneness in that agrarian ecosystem that promotes health and longevity.

What he does at White Oak Pastures is phenomenal and could cure what ails us in American farming today. He has even started a nonprofit that helps to educate others about regenerative farming.

In fact, Will has a message for Bill Gates who is buying up farmland, people today don’t know how to farm the land to keep it healthy. So, if we care about the quality of our food in this country or the resiliency we need in our national food system, then please spread the word and share this podcast until it reaches him. There is an invitation in this podcast for Bill Gates to start a dialogue with Will about being a steward of the land. Cultivating the abundance of land might result in the most positive of unintended consequences, if a genuine relationship with it is built instead of a transactional, extractive one. The hope is that rich dialogue like that could become the core of better policy-making and legislation related to farmland and related to food in schools.

I met Will Harris after I graduated from New England Culinary Institute when I worked as a Whole Foods demo chef. I knew from the flavor of the beef he produced that he was doing something special with the quality and health of the steer. I’m amazed by how much White Oak Pastures has expanded the food grown on its 3,200 acres in the time since. He was only offering beef back then.

I would encourage you to taste the quality and the “qi” force and vitality of what White Oak Pastures offers. You can order direct from the farm and have the White Oak Pastures experience shipped to you within ground ship distances for frozen foods.

If you are in the South, you can find White Oak Pastures grassfed ground beef at all Publix supermarkets, Kroger stores in Atlanta.Whole Foods offers White Oak Pastures grassfed steaks, roasts, offal, ground beef, and chickens in the Mid-Atlantic and South Regions. Pastured eggs from White Oak Pastures can be found in Whole Foods Market locations in Atlanta and select restaurants.

Will is a model for farmers across the country and his conviction to a right relationship with animals and the soil makes sense. In the Pacific Northwest, we have a number of farmers doing the same. In my immediate region of the Pacific Northwest on the Olympic Peninsula, that work is being done on a different scale and with some varying methods. Locally, however, our cattle farmers can’t get the U.S.D.A. slaughterhouse they need to serve the number of them. That is another podcast in itself.

I hope that the more these regenerative farms and other farms that care about the soil and environment are networked, the more they will share what they have learned from observing and working the soil. That network could lead to an opportunity to shift how we grow food in America. Who doesn’t want to have better holistic health for our environment, the livestock and food supply, and our bodies that are nourished by all of it together? With less commoditization and a greater focus on natural cycles, we’ll have greater quality and flavor in what we grow and eat. From listening to Will’s story, you’ll learn that we’ll also get stronger communities as a byproduct. If you are a farmer and want to learn more, see the workshops offered by White Oak Pastures here.