What is the star of your Thanksgiving meal? Mashed potatoes? Gravy? Cranberry sauce? What about chicken?
We get that Turkey is the traditional centerpiece next to stuffing, yams, green beans, and pumpkin pie, but we have a few reasons why going with an organic Farmer Focus whole chicken can do more than shake things up a bit this Thanksgiving:
Spend less time in the kitchen! With a smaller bird, the roast time can be shorter. Once the internal temperature is 165 degrees F and the juices are clear, it is ready to enjoy! Here are some whole bird recipes for inspiration.
Perfect for a more intimate Thanksgiving dinner. Some folks like to keep it small, or maybe there are only 2-3 people to feed; a whole bird could be a great way to serve a smaller dinner.
The demand for turkey is high this year, the supply is limited, and prices are up. Those who want turkey for Thanksgiving are encouraged to shop early. If you haven’t shopped yet, or want to avoid getting a frozen turkey, grab a fresh, organic whole bird from us.
Your whole bird is 100% traceable back to the farm! Enjoy the conversation starter during your meal, and use the Farm ID from our label to learn more about where your food came from.
You’d be supporting fair pay for farmers who raise chickens to high standards!
Convinced? Well, if not, think about how great it is to know where your food comes from and how your dollars support small, family farms. When you’re ready to find Farmer Focus chicken near you, use our store locator and whip up a great holiday meal!
At Farmer Focus our mission is to promote and protect generational family farming. That commitment is what drives us every day, and it’s the reason I started this company. These executive orders are designed to do what we have been doing since day one, ensure fair pay for farmers and provide customers transparency.
This executive order is designed to do three things related to chicken farming:
1. Make it easier for farmers to bring and win claims, adopt whistleblower protection for farmers, and ensure fair pay for farmers.
At Farmer Focus we don’t operate under an “integrator model”. Traditional chicken companies use an “integrator model” which controls the hatchery, the feed, and almost every input of the process. In this model, the companies even own the birds while they are on the farmer’s land. This limits how farmers can raise their birds and means that the farmers hold most of the risk with a limited potential for outsized reward. The Farmer Focus model is based on paying an average price per pound. Our farmers don’t compete.
At Farmer Focus, our farmers:
Purchase and own their birds and feed from independent suppliers to ensure accountability and ability to seek compensation for claims.
Are empowered to make farm-specific decisions to achieve third-party certifications from the USDA and Certified Humane.
Are fully invested in the process, and that ownership empowers farmers to make the best decisions for their farms.
There is a reason we have a waiting list of over 100 farms, and it’s because we care; about our farmers, their families, and their birds.
2. Direct the USDA to revise what meats can be labeled as “Product of the USA”.
Every Farmer Focus chicken is hatched, raised, and harvested in the United States. Specifically in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia and West Virginia. Our commitment to fair pay for our farmers is also a commitment to agriculture in rural communities. As we grow, we plan to look for communities where our farming model can continue to have an oversized impact.
3. Directs the USDA to develop standards and labels so that consumers can choose to buy products that treat farmers fairly.
Farmer Focus is built on transparency. Our Farm ID, found on every pack of chicken, lets you trace your chicken back to the farm and meet the family farmers that raised it. Every Farmer Focus product is USDA Organic, Certified Humane, Non-GMO Project Verified, Certified Halal, and Gluten Free. We believe each of those things is more than just a seal on a package. It’s peace of mind for those choosing Farmer Focus.
Founding Farmer Corwin Heatwole and family.
If you’ve bought Farmer Focus organic chicken before then you’ve supported fair pay for farmers. If you’ve entered your Farm ID then you’ve seen exactly where your food came from and the standards to which it was raised. And for that, we thank you.
I don’t know what changes these orders will have at other companies. I do know that Farmer Focus’s commitment to promoting and protecting generational family farming through organic, sustainable, and humane farming practices; will never change.
Corwin Heatwole, Founding Farmer & Chairman
Farmer Focus has been recognized as a Sustainability Partner in the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality Program (DEQ)! If you’ve been following Farmer Focus, you know we mention “sustainability” often, but we realize that word can mean a lot of different things. Since the beginning, we have been pushing the limit on what it means to be sustainable. We know that our positive interaction with the environment is connected to healthy, productive land for our partners, as well as a sustainable workplace for our team and community. In other words, we view sustainability as a process since our climate is ever-changing.
Last year we earned the Sustainability Partner recognition for achieving our environmental goals, and this year we have broaden our goals to help us achieve long-term sustainability. We accomplished this by participating in research with universities on how we can improve the conditions of our poultry houses by recycling the bedding and planting trees on farms to increase biodiversity, soil quality, and mitigate carbon dioxide emissions. To further support our partners, we participated in a volunteer event with the Chesapeake Bay Foundation to learn more about the importance of riparian buffers and how to properly plant trees on farms to support this best management practice for water quality. Continuing to strive to make environmental sustainability a part of our culture, we have established a Sustainability Team to brainstorm and implement practices to decrease our environmental footprint.
Our facility here at Farmer Focus is making waves in being more environmentally sustainable. We recycle 9 tons of cardboard monthly to reduce our waste in the landfill and track water usage to support our efforts in installing a water reclaim system, enabling us to safely reuse water in our facility. We have given attention to everyday actions we can take like implementing the compost bin in our employee cafeteria. The efforts we make today help us work toward our goals; as we look ahead to building our new facility, we have kept sustainable practices and worker welfare top of mind.
The responsibility of reducing our carbon footprint is ongoing and part of our culture at Farmer Focus. We are continuing our research, actively working towards eliminating our cardboard usage in our facility, and continue to track our waste, water, and energy metrics.
Doing our part to continue to be environmentally sustainable and learn new, innovative ways to reduce our carbon footprint, means that we can contribute to a healthy future for our employees, consumers, and communities. Join us on this journey; the future starts here!
More news to celebrate! Farmer Focus has been approved as a Sustainability Partners participant in the Virginia Environmental Excellence Program (VEEP), and man, has it been a long time coming! After four years of steady improvements to our policies and practices, we’ve demonstrated environmental sustainability to a degree that deserves recognition, and we are just tickled! But what does all this mean?
The VEEP Sustainability Partners program encourages organizations across Virginia to make environmental sustainability part of their culture through leadership, innovation, and continual improvement. Some of the current partners are working on goals like reducing greenhouse gases, picking up literally tons of litter, creating a native plant meadow, and developing outreach aimed at youth, among many other initiatives. The results these partners report are benefits like energy and monetary savings, lots of recycling, reductions in harmful emissions, more trees, and stream restoration. Over the past four years, we’ve been working on ten goals. Reusing chicken litter and composting are our current top priorities. Both projects aim to conserve water and protect the Chesapeake Bay Watershed from pollution. We’re creating a machine that will run through a chicken house, heat the existing litter enough to kill pathogens, and lay down the newly conditioned bedding for the next flock. Also, we’re figuring out a better way to deal with the waste left over from water treatment. We aim to compost all our waste and convert it into safe fertilizer.
But we did a lot more than that to earn this designation. We also partnered with Farm Aid to promote and protect generational farming. We believe in the same idea that Farm Aid states in its mission: to keep family farmers on the land. Many of our farmers grew up on family farms, some of which are several generations old. This legacy of farming, providing sustenance and security, is composed of countless important stories of hard work, determination, pride, and generosity.
Helping a high school student with their presentation about a local business and our new internship program that pairs a college student with our Environmental Health & Safety Manager bring refreshing creativity to Shenandoah Valley Organic, and we hope to build more of these partnerships in the future.
Even though we’ve been acknowledged by the Department of Environmental Quality, our work is just beginning. We have much to learn and many ways to grow, and as the climate continues to change and new challenges emerge, so will our strategies for reaching our goals. Thank you for supporting our journey!
Now, more than ever, people want answers — where is their food coming from? And what kind of care is put into their food before it lands on the shelf? At Farmer Focus, we believe that customers should have these answers at their fingertips. That is why we provide free range and organic chicken that is 100% traceable to the farm where it was raised. With the use of our 4-letter Farm I.D. and the help of third-party auditors who verify our certifications like Organic and Certified Humane, we’re able to carry out our commitment to full transparency.
For Farmer Focus, transparency, means that customers know exactly how their chicken is raised. Unfortunately, it’s hard to squeeze all the information about our standards and certifications on the packaging (it would be impossible to read if we did!). That’s why we’ve unpacked the label here to explain how the standards we set as a company have led us to earn the following claims:
Organic, Humane, Traceable
Organic, Humane, Traceable
1. What does it mean to be certified organic?
Farmer Focus works alongside third-party auditors that each verify different certifications. These third-party auditors frequently visit the farms we partner with to help all operations stay up to date. One of those certifications is organic.
Organic – A Combo of Diet and Environment
Simply put, the term “organic” refers to the standards for a bird’s diet and environment. These standards must be put into practice starting no later than the second day of a bird’s life.
Diet
Our chicken is fed an all-vegetarian, certified organic diet of corn and soybean meal. This blend of high-nutrient ingredients is never grown using pesticides or chemical fertilizers, is non-GMO (not genetically modified), and doesn’t include animal by-products. Aside from the birds’ feed, an organic diet also means that the birds are never given drugs, antibiotics, hormones, or steroids (The FDA has prohibited the use of added hormones and steroids in poultry since the 1950s, so that is a given).
Environment
According to the USDA, organically raised birds must be given access to the outdoors, weather permitting. Unfortunately, this standard is vague and has created inconsistency in the poultry world. Outdoor access for some companies may only mean that chickens get open windows to peer through, while for others, outdoor access means that chickens are given space outside with vegetation and shade structures.
Because this definition of outdoor access is not specific enough, Farmer Focus works with the Certified Humane Program to better specify how our partnering farmers implement outdoor access, or “free range” systems.
2. What is Certified Humane and how does it define free-range?
Created by the Humane Farm Animal Care Standards, the Certified Humane Program sets strict standards for humane animal treatment. These standards are set with the assistance of scientific research, veterinary advice, and farmers’ experience. The Certified Humane Program is especially unique because it offers strict objectives for the claim “free-range,” which is not yet federally defined — and, as mentioned above, is a more concrete way to define this term for our partnering farms.
To be considered free-range by the Certified Humane Program, by 4 weeks of age, each chicken must be given a minimum of 2 square feet of outdoor space with living vegetation and shade structures. Access should last 8 hours per day, as long as there’s enough daylight and the weather permits.
It’s important to note that the Certified Humane Program doesn’t require farms to be free-range. The Humane Farm Animal Care Standards decided to offer the standards for free-range as an optional add-on to the claim, and Farmer Focus chose to take advantage of the opportunity.
Aside from the standards for free-range, the Certified Humane Program also outlines specific guidelines for humane animal treatment that guarantee a clean, stimulating environment with free access to food and water.
3. How do customers find out where their Farmer Focus chicken comes from?
Farmer Focus chicken is always traceable to the farm where it was raised. When customers buy our chicken, they will find a unique 4-letter Farm I.D. on the package that is enterable under the “Enter Farm I.D.” tab on our website. This interactive feature leads customers to a profile of the farm where the chicken was raised. There, customers can find the farm and farmer’s name, a brief story, and a gallery of pictures that catch a glimpse of the farmer’s life. Try it out! Enter Farm I.D. “PHIL” on our website and find out how, after moving away for years to work in construction, farmer Phillip Coblentz couldn’t help but return to farm life.
What do these certifications mean for customers?
Two words. Healthier chicken.
The way chicken is raised directly affects its nutritional value. By eating Farmer Focus- Organic & Free Range Chicken, you eliminate potential exposure to pesticides and other toxic chemicals. What you will get, though, is chicken packed with vitamins, nutrients, and antioxidants. Studies have shown that organically grown food contains 69% higher levels of antioxidants. Additionally, the Organic Trade Association has found that organic farms emit 30% less greenhouse gasses than conventional farms. This means that with every purchase of Farmer Focus Chicken, you not only eat cleaner — you support efforts to keep the air you breathe clean.
We hope this rundown of our label makes you feel like a confident and informed chicken-buying-expert. If you have any questions or want to learn more about us, feel free to visit our website or find us on Facebook or Instagram.
For more information about Farmer Focus and to shop your favorite cuts, check out our farm page!
At Farmer Focus, our name says it all. We are on a mission to promote and protect generational family farms, and we take it pretty seriously ~ even in our individual daily routines! For National Farmers’ Day, we wanted to share some of the ways we really enjoy connecting with our farming community. Most family farms offer a diversity of seasonal goods in order to keep the farm running through the months, so there are many different ways to directly impact their business.
1. PICK-YOUR-OWN
In the Shenandoah Valley, this is one of our absolute favorite ways to get outside and celebrate harvest seasons. Many times, these events coincide with how-to workshops that teach different ways to use the food you take home. From sunflower fields to apple and peach orchards, pick-your-own is a great way to spend the day outside with friends and family and connect with your farming community. Right now, it’s pumpkin season, which is hands-down the most fun of picking seasons. Take a group of friends or the kids to a local patch and find your perfect carving pumpkin!
Search pickyourown.org for a free list of farms and festivals in every state.
These are the most direct ways to support local farmers, while adding adventure to your weekly meals!
Farmers’ Markets are a great way to get acquainted with seasonal foods in your area, and to meet your farmers face-to-face. Fun fact: local farmers are your neighbors! If you have questions about the foods for sale, you can bet farmers have the answers—so take the opportunity to learn and try new foods or new ways to prepare your favorites! Visit the United States Department of Agriculture website for a list of Farmers’ Markets across the country!
3. JOIN A CSA PROGRAM
CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture. A CSA is like book-of-the month for vegetables—for a fixed fee, your local CSA farmer assembles a box of vegetables (sometimes other goods like fresh flowers, herbs, eggs or cheese) that are seasonal and ready to prepare.
In some cases, you pick up the boxes at a farm or central location, and in other cases, boxes are delivered right to your door! This is a great way to connect with your farming community and learn more about local seasonal foods. Are you ready to get creative in the kitchen while supporting local farmers? Find a CSA farm near you!
Most food co-ops strive to stock their shelves with locally grown food and custom goods from farmers. If the items can’t be found locally, you can bet they do their research to find responsible sources. By spending at a co-op, you indirectly support farmers by paying into a grocery system that offers fair payment for local goods, and consistent income across the seasons.
Co-ops keep prices low by relying on the participation and management of its members. Some co-ops require membership to shop, but most are open to the public! These stores are always great places to find local honey, soaps, jams & jellies, cheese, and much more. Visit a co-op to find unique gift items, or something to make your weekend meal a little more special.
Search this directory to find a co-op in your area!
5. SPREAD THE WORD AND SHARE YOUR EXPERIENCE
One of the biggest challenges in finding ways to support local farmers is advertising. Farming is a 24-hour a day job, and most small farms don’t have a full-time marketing department. But social media and word of mouth is powerful! If you take part in any of the 4 adventures above, share your experience with friends, and invite them to join you. Ask farmers if they have a facebook page and tag them in your stories, share your recipes and culinary adventures with local foods, repost local food events, and use hashtags to connect with supporters across the globe!
Some of our favorite hashtags: #farmtotable, #meetyourfarmer, #knowyourfarmer, #nofarmsnofood #localfood #shoplocal
Photo by Igor Miske
So be the Captain of a weekend adventure—or a whole season of local foods—and invite others on the voyage!
★ GET INFORMED & DONATE ★
Learning about our food system can be a little overwhelming at first, but there are organizations dedicated to bringing you quality information about farming, in ways that make sense to everyone. As the holiday season approaches, consider an annual donation to organizations who work hard to keep family farms on the land, and innovation moving forward. Even $10/year is worth giving! Here’s a list of organizations worth looking into:
You hear a lot from Farmer Focus about the 60 farm families that raise our chicken. You don’t often hear about the more than 480 team members working to bring delicious chicken to your dinner table. Today, we want to celebrate the accomplishments of those team members and give special recognition to members of the Heatwole and Prieto Rodriguez families who have been with Farmer Focus since our founding in 2014.
This past year brought a flood of people to grocery stores, allowing more people to discover Farmer Focus than ever before. Despite all of our new customers our production facility never operated under a line speed waiver. That allowed us to continue focusing on the things that matter; worker welfare and bringing high quality chicken to dinner tables. That focus brought home the WorkSafe Award for the 3rd consecutive year, achieving a Total Recordable Injury Rate of .90, well below the industry standard of 3.5. Our team only saw 4 OSHA recordable injuries for all of 2020 and passed 3 Million work hours without a lost-day injury. Despite one of the most challenging years on record, we’re proud of our team members for setting the bar so high.
At Farmer Focus our team’s welfare always takes priority and our COVID response came earlier than most because of that. In early February of 2020 Farmer Focus took steps to prepare for what would become known as COVID-19. Our initial written plan was finalized on February 29th and by March 2nd we had a COVID Response Team in place putting that plan into action. That preparation and the continued diligence from our team members led to the percentage of COVID positive cases in our production facility remaining at or below the percentage of cases in Virginia throughout the pandemic. We still saw a limited number of cases coming from outside, but there was only a single case of community spread in our non-production facilities, traced back to a member of our non-essential workforce. While we’re proud of the work we’ve done containing COVID to date, we’re all ready to move beyond this. To quicken vaccination efforts at Farmer Focus and ensure no team members lose pay, we are supporting on site vaccination for all team members that choose to get vaccinated. We plan to continue operating under our COVID-19 guidelines until we can ensure the safety of every employee.
At Farmer Focus we’re about doing things the right way; for farmers, their birds, and our planet. That takes the commitment of every employee and we couldn’t have asked for a better team to get us through this moment.
Erik Vaughan, SVO President and Chief Operating Officer
WE HAVE SOME GREAT NEWS TO SHARE…
Our employees have once again raised the bar much higher!
On November 6th, 2019, the employees of SVO achieved 2 million manhours without a lost workday injury. We achieved this through new hire training, safety huddles, hazard recognition and policy adherence. It’s the consistent message of “doing the little things right” that maintains a Culture of Safety.
To thank our employees for their commitment, we hosted a “Christmas on the Bayou” themed feast on December 20th. Guests enjoyed seafood gumbo, red beans and sausage over rice, and, of course, grilled Farmer Focus chicken! It was a festive occasion, timed to get everyone into the holiday spirit. Santa and one of his elves made any appearance, and several employees donned their ugly Christmas sweaters and other accessories!
This celebration, as well as the sweatshirts that were gifted to every employee, would not have been possible without the help of our wonderful partners and sponsors:
Admiral Security Services
Alchemy
Capital Electric
Colonial Webb
Daniels Promotional Products
Gravity Group
Houff Corporation
IMI Global
Kalmbach Feeds
LD&B Insurance & Financial Services
Longenecker’s Hatchery
Lucas & Kite PLC
Memco
Meyn America
Miller Cupp Associates, Architects, P.C.
Moyer Brothers Company, Inc
Prime Equipment Group
QSI
Rodney’s Odds-N-Ends
Sealed Air
Top Bead Welding
Total Quality Logistics
Unicorn
Wharton Aldhizer & Weaver PLC
Wolf Industries
And a very special thank you to:
We are eager to celebrate more major milestones in 2020…and beyond!
This year, we selected 3 partner farmers who we consider to be our champion-chicken-growers. These farmers were chosen based on 2 critical elements, compliance and feed conversion, and they are outstanding in either one or BOTH categories: Performance of the Year, Compliance of the Year, and Grower of the Year Awards (includes both criteria).
BUT WHAT DO FEED CONVERSION AND COMPLIANCE REALLY MEAN?
Compliance: This includes the work a farmer does to meet, and often exceed, our certification standards: Organic, Certified Humane, and GAP Step 3. Each standard offers unique guidelines that help them create a healthy, clean environment for the chickens to grow. Growers that go above and beyond this criteria are considered for the Grower of the Year and Compliance of the Year Awards.
Feed conversion: With the help of nutritionists and a few people from the Farmer Focus team, the farmers are given a “meal plan” for their flocks to ensure the birds grow happy and healthy. Feed conversion is simply the way we measure how much feed within that plan is required for the birds to get to a healthy weight, which is measured by a calculation called feed conversion rates. The growers with the most efficient feed conversion rates are considered for the Grower of the Year and Performance of the Year Awards.
WITHOUT FURTHER ADO…
Grower of the Year Award: Jamie & Elsie Cline of Pine Grove Farm
Throughout 2020, Jame and Elsie have, without fail, far exceeded the expectations for both feed conversion AND compliance. Outside of growing organic chicken, Jamie and Elsie are kept busy raising cows and growing corn, soybeans, and hay. We are so proud to have worked with these two since 2017, and look forward to many more years of partnership!
Compliance of the Year Award: Daryn Martin of Valley View Farm
We are so thrilled to announce Daryn Martin as our recipient for the Compliance of the Year Award, which recognizes the farmer who continues to surpass our certification standards and pass audits, which are regular check-ins for these standards, with flying colors. Daryn has only been with Farmer Focus for a year and a half, and we are so impressed by the work he’s done so far!
Performance of the Year Award: Jeffery Dinges of J&D Poultry / J&D Poultry 2
This year, Jeffery Dinges has time and time again shown true expertise in feed conversion, and we couldn’t think of anyone better to present this award to. Jeffery has been in the bird business for a lifetime, and it shows! We are so thankful for the dedicated work this farmer puts in to raising chickens every single day.
We simply could not be Farmer Focus without our incredible partner farmers, and for that, we look forward to recognizing them by presenting our annual Grower Awards. A special thanks goes to this year’s recipients. Keep up the great work!
Summer has been great in Harrisonburg, but the time has come for Shenandoah Valley Organic employees to prepare their kids to head back to school.
On Saturday, August 10th, Farmer Focus hosted a Back-2-School Kit giveaway for employees, handing out grade-appropriate supplies to families with children in kindergarten through middle school. This event was a team effort! Volunteers across departments filled bags with essential school supplies donated by friends and vendors and handed them off to 140 very excited kiddos. Any extra kits at the end of the day were donated to Harrisonburg City Schools.
Maurice Norman is the employee who spearheaded this event—he’s been a part of employee engagement programs with companies in the past. When asked about his idea for this event, Maurice said “First of all, we like to tell and show all of our associates how much we appreciate them and the work they complete here at SVO. It can be as simple as a good morning hand shake and a genuine “thank you for all you do’“ at the end of the day.” He knew providing school supply essentials for kids and grandchildren would be a meaningful way to show appreciation for our work family.
Maurice says, “It was great to see everyone that showed up and to have the opportunity to get to know one another outside of work. Meeting everyone’s children, significant others, parents, and grandparents was great!! I would like to personally thank everyone for all of the hard work and being brand ambassadors for Farmer Focus!!”
Special thanks to the SVO culture committee and volunteers for working together! And to our generous sponsors: Marlin – Ilyse Johnson Zee Company Prime Equipment May Supply Ferebee Johnson Roy Norville (In kind)
Little ones who are ready for school!Kanika Shipe and her boysClaudia Ramos de Rivera brought the whole family! Milagros Reyes Cruz an her daughter Nelson Curet Ramos and Maurice Norman
