Our Story
The Farm
Our farm landscape is a combination of wooded areas, tillable land, lakes, and wetlands. It lies on the prairie-forest border and is part of the Sauk River watershed. The land has been in Tyler’s family since the 1960s. It officially became Early Boots Farm in the spring of 2012, when we put up fence and a yurt, installed a watering system, seeded pasture, planted 5,000 new trees, and welcomed our herd of lowline angus cattle to the farm.
The Ruminants
Our herd of lowline angus has been born on pasture, rotationally-grazed on a diverse sward of forage plants, and fed free-choice organic minerals and grass and legume hay in the winter months. The lambs come to our farm each spring to graze and grow with us until autumn-time. Animal welfare is very important to us, and we believe in letting cows be cows and sheep be sheep, with their instincts and autonomy intact. We practice low-stress handling techniques, and our animals are never given sub-clinical antibiotics or kept in confinement conditions.
The Trees
We believe that having trees in areas we graze (in a system known as silvopasture) can bring lots of benefits to the farm, including carbon sequestration in the soil, habitat for wildlife, protection for livestock, and more consistent high-quality forage. That’s why we’ve planted (with help!) 5,000 trees and counting in parts of our pasture. We also practice prescribed grazing in our woodlands and have a nursery for future agroforestry projects like multipurpose windbreaks and alley cropping.
The Fruit
In the spring of 2016, we planted 150 honeyberry bushes and 75 sour cherry shrubs on our farm. Honeyberries are a new, blue fruit that look like an oddly-shaped, oblong blueberry (they are also known as haskaps and edible blue honeysuckle). Sour cherries are smaller in size than their sweet cherry cousins and are a beautiful, bright red in color. The honeyberries ripen in mid- to late June and the sour cherries follow a week or two after. We bring fresh fruit with us to our farmers markets when available and sell frozen fruit in the off-season if we have any left!