Red Gate Farm got its start in central IL, with our dream of a sustainable little homestead. We have raised most of our family's meat and produce for over a decade. Rather than a tractor, we utilize the power of draft horses to move heavy loads around our farm, selectively log our woodlands, and even run short errands to town by horse-drawn wagon. When time permits, we also hire out our horse-drawn vehicles and services. Our products and services resulted in our little farm growing to provide a wide variety of clinics and tours. Eventually, we simply outgrew the space we had.
In 2021, we decided to expand, sold out, and relocated to 50 acres in southern IL. While the new farm is largely based on all the knowledge and experience we gained at our previous farm, we are re-focusing on the design and purpose of this new farm. Our home is a passive-solar, off-grid design, allowing us to be completely independent from the utility grid. We have designed a rain-collection system for household use, compost systems for soil fertility, a fruit and berry orchard, and we are establishing a new salad, herb, and vegetable garden. We dug a large pond, which will soon be stocked with fish, adding an additional food source to the farm. We only brought a handful of livestock with us until we get established here, but soon enough, we will be back to maintaining a variety of livestock to compliment foraging habits, meaning grasses, weeds, and forbs are grazed more evenly. Our horses will live in a "Paddock Paradise" track that meanders through our back acreage, providing a variety of activities, terrains, and natural systems to simulate the movement and environment of wild horse herds and help our horses thrive. Our poultry free-range and enjoy fresh pasture almost every day to help build topsoil, and they are rotated regularly to ensure our animals always have clean, fresh, uncontaminated forage and lounging areas. The poultry also help scatter manure piles, reduce parasite and fly populations, and in return, we are blessed with a plentiful supply of meat and the most wholesome, nutrient-rich eggs nature can provide. Just as we did in the past, we will use pigs to dig up invasive honeysuckle in the woods, and to massage the humus-rich top layers of our forests, so we repair and rebuild our beautiful woodlands similar to the way they were hundreds of years ago. We've even taken the local wildlife into consideration. In order to live in harmony with the wildlife, we utilize a small pack of livestock guardian dogs as poultry, livestock, and crop guardians. This keeps the predators and pests outside of our fences, which means we don't usually have to take extreme measures to get rid of them. Even in the barn, we don't use chemicals for smaller pests. We just have friendly barn cats to patrol our feed storage areas. We selectively log and flash-graze livestock in our woodlands to open up the underbrush and control invasive species, allow more sunlight through, and improve wildlife habitat.
Although we are currently staying very busy with the construction of our new home and farm facilities, we are very excited about getting our new farm up and running! Be sure to check in regularly for new updates!