A little bit about Gehrke Farm. It just kinda happened! We set a goal to raise 40 head on 40 acres including pasture and winter hay. So when we reached that goal my wife and I hi-fived and then immediately I thought what we do if we have a drought. So I started to read about soil and learned a lot. We stopped tilling and we move our cattle to a new pasture daily, this process is called Mob Grazing. This allows the grass to regrow after the cattle get off of it. Mob Grazing also stimulates the grass to grow. We have different pastures for different times of the year. For instance we have pastures that have cool season and warm season forages so that they are productive all year long. We are building soil through sequestering carbon into the ground. I talked with a company that gives carbon credits and told them what we were doing and they said with the farming practices we have implemented we could be gaining 3 tons of carbon per acre per year! The forage that we raise is healthier for the cattle to consume and of higher quality allowing for more plant protein to put pounds of meat on our cattle quicker. Our first and arguably most important job is to raise a healthy forage. The cattle are the fruits of our labor and basically our “harvest”.

People can buy our meat at the Blue Goose Grocery Store in St. Charles and can buy quarters and halves by calling me on my cell. We always have ground beef on hand and that can be picked up frozen. Check out our website for more information www.gehrkebeef.com

We are looking forward to the possibility of selling our grass fed / grass finished beef at the Food Shed!  Contact Matt at [email protected] or 815-739-6293 for more information.