Know your farmer

Stan, Jean and Eileen

Our Story

Our farm began with the idea of providing our family with clean, healthy meat to put on our table. We wanted to raise animals in a natural setting, free from the chemicals and environmental harms that are associated with the industrial food chain.

We started by converting our conventional 2-acre yard into a pasture, ripping up turf grass and planting diverse plant species for our animals to graze. Our first livestock were poultry, and we rotated enough chickens around that property to start a small pastured poultry business.

From that humble beginning, we grew to a 240-acre farm in the beautiful Pend Oreille valley in NE Washington State.

Our mission:

Heal the broken food system by offering our customers a transparent look at how their healthy, pasture-raised meats were raised with kindness, in harmony with nature. 

We believe everyone deserves food that nourishes their body and heals the planet.

We strive to create a pasture-based ecosystem that works with nature and honors its abundance. We provide the most natural, stress free, pasture based life possible for our livestock so they live happy lives, just as nature intended.

We Offer

Meats- We offer you the healthiest meats we know how to raise. You can shop online to purchase 100% Grassfed/Grassfinished beef and lamb, pasture-raised Berkshire pork, and pasture-raised poultry including meat chickens and turkeys. We deliver our meats direct to our customers in the Pacific Northwest via a growing number of pickup locations. Find locations and delivery schedule online or contact us to start a pickup location in your area.

Fiber- Our Romney and Romney-cross sheep not only produce tender lamb, but they also grow incredible fleeces for handspinners and fiber artists. Two out of three farmers here at Ramstead are handspinners who take care to raise beautifully clean fleeces that are a dream to handle. Find available fleeces here. Not a spinner? You can enjoy the beauty and feel of a natural, grassfed sheep skin, great for a baby's blanket, a sitting mat or a unique throw for a couch. 

Classes and Events- Learn with us as we offer classes on everything from bone broth making to animal husbandry to hand-spinning raw wool into beautiful yarn. We invite you to farm tours and our annual Sheep Shearing Day. Our updated schedule is listed on our events page. To hear about events and news from the farm, sign up to receive our newsletter below.

Connect

The missing link in today's broken food system is you! We offer our customers a direct connection to the animals and the land that their food comes from. We invite you to come visit the ranch to see how our animals live. Take a walk in the pastures and learn how our farming practices work in harmony with nature. We offer on-farm events such as our Hands-on Shearing Day and farm tours that give you the opportunity to come experience life on the farm. There is no better way for us to provide transparency and accountability than to have you come to the farm that raises your food. 

Nourish

We believe that each individuals’ health is their own responsibility. The human body is an amazing machine with the inherent ability to fight disease and to provide us with a means to experience this amazing adventure of life. There is no better way to facilitate your body's optimal functioning than by providing yourself with the best nutrition possible. We offer you the healthiest meats we know how to raise. We believe human health is inextricably linked to environmental and animal health. By providing our animals clean water and by keeping our soils healthy and free from chemicals, we nourish the plants and animals living on the land. Those animals in turn provide optimal nutrition for us.

Regenerate

It is no secret that industrial agricultural practices harm the environment in countless ways. By employing out-of-the-box approaches and non-conventional techniques for pasture management, we seek to improve the health of the land that we farm. We build organic matter in the soil. We facilitate healthy microbial activity, and we promote a diverse eco-system in our pastures and in the surrounding wild areas. We honor nature through our stewardship and foresee a healthier future.

Thrive

We promote abundant health using natural means. Modern agriculture is flush with short cuts that reduce animal well-being and health. By contrast, we want our animals to thrive in a natural environment.                                  We use regenerative farming practices like managing weeds by grazing them rather than using harmful chemicals. We fertilize our pastures using the animals' natural and well-balanced waste instead of synthetic fertilizers. These farming practices may sound old fashioned but are incredibly effective and allow us to work with nature rather than fight against it.

Educate

There is a gathering tide of everyday folks who want to know more about the simple act of raising food and providing sustenance for themselves. The lost traditions of our ancestors are becoming the subject of our curiosity, and we are finding ways to weave the old wisdom back into our modern lives.  Join us for a class or event here at the farm, get hands on with the animals, and learn while doing.  Experience is the best teacher, and we love to learn along with you.