Conscious Farming Practices Yield Better Pork At Winddrift Farms

“It has that malty, graham cracker smell,” he says, holding a handful of dark brown feed. “This is what makes our pork taste so good.” George Rosenbaum, along with his parents, Jan and Dave, operate Winddrift Farms in Olathe, Colorado, where corn, barley and soybeans are grown to build the feed needed for the 600-700 fat hogs they sell to their customers each year. The dark feed made of roasted soybeans and barley is just one of the details that make Winddrift Farms’ pork so special. From no-till farming and regenerative farming practices to the genetics of the sows, and their dedication to just pricing, the Rosenbaums’ focus on every aspect of the operation is what makes their product one-of-a-kind.

Jan, Dave and George Rosenbaum. Photos by Gus Jarvis.

“We treat our entire operation as one organism,” George Rosenbaum says. “Our first thought in anything we do is how will it affect our soil health? Everything we grow from that soil is going into our feed. Higher quality soil means higher quality crops which means higher quality feed and bedding. In the end, you are getting higher quality pork.”

Over the last 20 years, the Rosenbaums have cultivated relationships with their customers based on just pricing, rather than relying on a traditional supply-and-demand model. The diversity in their consumers, along with the operation’s reliance on its own-grown crops for feed, provides stability for both pork pricing and the demand of their product. Their focus on being insulated from the national pork and commodities markets is the result of some tough times in the early 1980s.

In and Out of the Penalty Box

After working at the nearby Grett Dairy and realizing running a dairy farm of their own was untenable due to expense, Jan and Dave Rosenbaum first launched Winddrift Farms in 1978. With the help of a friend, they took the leap into a pig operation selling hogs on the national market.

“We decided to jump in with a 100-sow operation. It was a big jump,” Dave Rosenbaum recalls. “At that time, we were sending semi-truck loads of hogs out to Modesto, California. We were pretty good at it.”

In order to take that leap into the business, they utilized a loan to purchase property to operate on, as well as a production credit loan. Both loans had variable interest rates. During the recession of 1980, the interest rate on their loans climbed from 4% to 16%. Meanwhile, the national price of pork crashed from 55 cents a pound to 24 cents.

“We had no bargaining power,” he admits, adding that the hogs their sows were producing were going almost too well, and that came at a cost. “We had great production, but every additional pig a sow kicked out cost us more than the hogs we were selling.”

Working to make some sort of profit, Dave Rosenbaum had the pork USDA inspected in Cedaredge in order to sell hogs wholesale closer to home. While selling to a small handful of independent markets didn’t pull the couple from their debt, it did implant an idea in Dave’s head that selling pork direct to consumers at a just price made more sense. “Even though the price for us dropped, the price in the grocery store hadn’t changed that much,” Dave Rosenbaum says. “That taught me that the price markup is not to the wholesale market necessarily, but wholesale to retail was making all the money at that time. That developed the idea in the long run to sell to our consumers at a fair and just price that is not market based.”

In debt and unable to sell their large operation of hogs at a price to keep them afloat, Jan and Dave Rosenbaum quit the hog business for good. They shifted their careers toward teaching in Peru, and later, teaching in Olathe. “We spent 10 years in the penalty box paying off our loans,” Dave Rosenbaum says. “We were never going to do it again.” 

They vowed never to do it again until their children’s 4-H projects brought them two exceptional sows. Over time, they began to inch themselves back into the hog-producing business thanks to the two sows their daughters Nancy and Betsy raised. In that time, Dave and Jan Rosenbaum built relationships with a few Hispanic families working in and around the ever-evolving construction boom(s) in Telluride. In fact, their sole marketing campaign consisted of a sign painted “Se Venden Puercos.” Their customer base grew even more when Sunnyside Farms Market opened in Durango, which was eager to carry locally raised pork products. Little-by-little Jan and Dave Rosenbaum inched themselves back into the hog business, but this time, the focus was on direct-to-consumer sales and wholesale based on just pricing. “It’s a market of consensus rather than an opportunistic market,” George Rosenbaum believes.

It Comes From a Good Place

While their business grew on more solid ground this time, Winddrift Farms was still tied to the national market, because the feed they used was still being purchased. George Rosenbaum, now in his 30s, had spent time in Maui building houses. He decided to come home to be a part of the farming operations, particularly with growing a rotating crop of corn, barley and soybeans on approximately 135 acres.

“They developed the good market and the good genetics of the pigs, but they were buying all the feed on the national market, so the next step in vertical integration for us was now the feed production,” George Rosenbaum shares. “Regenerative farming is what we are aiming for. While producing our feed, we want to leave the soil better than what it was.”  

He says there’s a lot of economics, science and experimentation in their farming methods that are ever evolving and improving. For starters, they don’t use insecticides and are 100% no till. To keep symbiotic bacteria and organic matter in the soil, they rotate the three crops on their fields. This also allows for a lot less use of insecticide than other farms in the area, as the healthier soil is able to ward off some of those bugs on its own. The corn, barley and soybeans are not only used to feed the animals, but the leftover stalks from the corn and barley are used as bedding for the hogs. This combination of bedding, along with the animal scat, are then put back into the fields to ensure the soil’s nitrogen components are prime for the next crops’ success.  

“I lived 10 years in Maui building custom homes,” George Rosenbaum says. “I love building, and I love Maui, but at the root of it, I knew I would never do that forever, because what I was doing for a living was contributing to what I didn’t like about Maui. Here, I know I am improving a piece of land, and I am providing a high-quality feed and nutrient source consciously.”

He adds that their crop of soybeans is of particular importance, as there’s nobody in the area growing them, and, on top of that, there’s nobody roasting the soybeans and pressing the soybeans to remove the oil (many use chemical separation) for the feed. The end pork product is just better.

“Everything has a benefit. The roasting of the soybeans and the barley creates that nutty, malty, barley flavor, and it really adds to the pork fat,” George Rosenbaum says. “It is so damn good, and I know it comes from a good place.”

“We have happy animals and that really matters to us,” Jan Rosenbaum shares. “We have great customers, and they all treat us with such respect, because we respect them.”

“I am so proud of our sow heard,” Dave Rosenbaum adds. “It has been developed over time to produce well in these conditions. And, our just price reputation for a straightforward, win-win relationship with our customers is intended to benefit both members of the deal. If we didn’t have that, we wouldn’t do it.”  

Anyone interested in purchasing pork from Winddrift Farms should visit Sunnyside Farms Market in Durango or Kinikin Craft Butchers and Processing in Montrose.

Originally published in the Fall 2022 issue of Spoke+Blossom.