In the News
Our recent article in the Gloucester-Mathews Gazette Journal:
In the Harcum area of Gloucester, family homes now overlay the area where once small and large farms covered the acres.
One family in Harcum is operating a farm. Set back from Harcum Road on a plot of land inherited from an aunt is the home of Buddy and Angie Dunston and their new family business, Harcum Pastured Proteins.
“A little over six months ago our daughter came up with this idea,” Angie explained. “The idea was for the family to become more self-sufficient with a goal to heal our bodies and our land through regenerative agriculture.”
To reach their goal, the family has worked as a team although Angie, a mental health therapist, has maintained her profession with an office at White Marsh Shopping Center.
They now have on the farm both meat and laying chickens, lambs and rabbits. Each species has separate living quarters which were built by Buddy and daughter Amelia, mostly with wood harvested from trees that once stood on the farm. This way they have created a much larger pasture as the feeding ground for the chickens and lambs. “Each day the dwellings are moved to new grass while at the same time the rabbits get to exercise and move around. The results are the animals are fed naturally by a grass-based diet and the land is being fertilized at the same time. It’s the way our grandparents and great-grandparents used to do it.”
There are two types of chickens on this Harcum farm, the meat chickens which do not lay eggs and the chickens that do. Angie, picking up a meat chicken, said with a smile, “See how docile they are. They do not lay eggs. They are bred and raised for meat only. They were two days old when we got them and are now ready for processing.” Their weight will range from 3 to 5 pounds dressed. “The other chickens are harder to hold like this but that’s where we get all of our good eggs.”
The two lambs now ranging the fields will become the parents of future lambs and will remain on the farm their whole lives, as will the parents of other rabbits. Everything is handled at the farm from the development of protein to its processing.
There is a very efficient processing station where once ready for packaging, the meat is professionally wrapped ready for the freezer. Everything is retailed right at the farm. More information may be obtained on Harcum Pastured Proteins’ Facebook page.
Buddy and Angie have been married 36 years. “Every five years since we have been here, we have made improvements to the property.” Perhaps this year Harcum Pastured Proteins is one of their biggest improvements. Recently, the group of 26 meat hens, all sold beforehand to only eight people were processed. But Amelia added, “In a couple of weeks we will be getting 26 more chickens.”