Environmental Commitment
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Maple Wind Farm is dedicated to sustainability in all its forms. Here are just a few ways we make an effort to preserve and protect our environment.
- We use intensive rotational grazing, making sure not to graze any piece of land until the grass has recovered fully. This method builds soils, reduces erosion and increases the diversity of our pasture, as well as transition zones where meadows and forests meet.
- Because we graze a variety of different species over the same ground, we encourage a diverse ecosystem and utilize different aspects of the pasture with different animals.
- We’re dedicated to energy conservation and the production and use of alternative energy.
- We’re not called Maple Wind Farm for nothing! We have installed a 2nd 10kW Wind Turbine to take advantage of the constant breeze here, and have produced 500 kilowatt/hours of energy per month. Tied into the grid, we utilize what we need and export any excess.
- Pasture-based farming reduces our use of fossil fuels. Most of our feed is eaten live and in place by the animals, and most of their manure is evenly distributed as part of the rotation process. The energy comes from the animals doing what they naturally do.
- Animals also provide energy for other farm activities, and pigs do a large part of that work. We use pigs as sodbusters to recondition pasture, and lace our compost piles with organic corn to get pigs to turn them with their amazingly strong noses.
- We’ll be using Bio-diesel as a significant part of our fuel for farm vehicles.
- Nearly all our farm building fixtures are outfitted with compact fluorescent light bulbs, reducing our energy consumption by 1/3.
- We capture all of our manure during the winter months when soils cannot absorb it. By doing so, we reduce our potential for polluting our Huntington watershed. In the spring we compost it (with pigs as our turners), and spread it on our pastures as fertilizer.
- We’re committed to selling locally! With the average conventional steak travelling 1000 miles from home to table in the U.S., and much of our lamb supply coming from New Zealand, we’ve decided to cut out the environmental costs of such practices by keeping close to home.
