Triple B Farm: Sustainable Farming in Bullock

Posted by Jenni Field on 26 July 2011 | 2 Comments

I'm a pastry chef, so I guess I'm expected to write about desserts and caramel sauce and pie. And pudding. But I have a confession to make. Although I love baking — the chemistry of it, the way I can manipulate ingredients to make them behave the way that I want them to, the sweet richness of it — I have slowly been moving closer and closer to a local-vore, vegetarian lifestyle. (Not that being a vegetarian gets in the way of being a pastry chef, mind you. Unless you love bacon ice cream. In which case, too bad.)

I am also coming to the conclusion that the closer to "live" food is, the less processed it is, the less altered from the way it looked before it was harvested it is, the better for me it is. So, while I love caramel sauce, I am fully aware that it is made from a super-refined product (white cane sugar) that is allowed to caramelize by heating it to ridiculously high temperatures. I guess that's why I've never seen a caramel tree. And, while there's not much that I love more than an ethereal genoise, I am fully aware that genoise are not harvested out of well-tended rows by wee genoise-harvesting elves.

So, while I am still passionate about sharing my knowledge of baking and pastry with anyone who is interested, I also am becoming more and more passionate about sustainable, healthy food. I take as truth that we are what we eat. So, it follows that pigs are what they eat, and cows are what they eat, and even chickens are what they eat. And plants are what they eat, too. If I try to eat in as healthy a way as possible, I make sure to get plenty of lean proteins and an abundance of fresh fruits and vegetables. But, if the chicken I eat has been pumped full of so much growth hormone that it is ready to come to my table before that chicken is 6 weeks old, and if I make my salad out of greens, fruits and vegetables that have been frequently sprayed with a toxic cocktail of pesticides and fungicides, and if my occasional splurge on beef or pork means that the cow or pig was forced to eat something that it was never meant to be able to digest (grains, especially corn), then all of those pesticides, fungicides, growth hormones and unhappiness are passed on to me.

I said we are getting closer and closer to being vegetarians, but we still eat some meat. Lots less than we used to, and when we do buy meat, we want to know that is was humanely and sustainably raised and, as much of an oxymoron as this might be, humanely slaughtered. And that is why my husband bought me the book Farm Fresh North Carolina for our anniversary last month. And that is how we ended up at Triple B Farm on a Saturday in June.

We poured through our shiny new copy of Farm Fresh North Carolina to find a nearby farm to visit — a farm in the business of letting their animals live the way animals were meant to live. Behind fences?  Maybe, but grazing in green pastures, not bulked up on corn in feed lots. We were drawn to Triple B Farm in Bullock, NC, because it raises free range turkeys. We host a party every July — Thanksgiving in July — and we like to feature a happy, healthy turkey as the centerpiece of our meal. 

So, I called up Mr. Newton, the owner of Triple B Farm, to see if (a) we could come visit and (b) if we could buy a turkey from him for our party. Well, he only raises turkeys seasonally, so we're out of luck on that count, but he welcomed us to come and visit. So we did. 

And we are very glad that we did. Not only did we have a great tour, we also could hear the passion in his voice as he talked about how and why he raises his animals sustainably. I'll let him tell you in his own words:

And here are some images from the farm:

Wanna go? (And you really should!) Give Mr. Newton a call at 919-693-4246 (home) or 919-691-0013. You can also check out his farm's page on the NC Choices website.

For more from Jenni Field, check out her website, her blog, and the Pastry Chef Online fan page.