Rory: That's really cool that you've actually calculated that out. And we estimate their pasture consumption to be around 30%, like with the hogs. And that supplements their, what they're taking in on pasture for their feed. So yeah, it's all non-GMO feed, you know that for our inputs, we, and all of our pastures, we have two ton hog feeders that the pigs always have access to with those non-GMO rations. Then the turkeys, we start them around the second week of July for Thanksgiving. With the pigs, we move them about every week or two weeks to a new pasture, just based on the weather conditions and how fast they tear up the ground that they're currently on. So on the poultry it's seasonal, the pigs are year round.
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You got a little bit more leeway on the backend, With the end times, those chickens at the end, there they're full grown so they can handle a little bit more bad weather, but the chicks early on, if you, where we're at, if whenever I try and put chicks out on the pasture, before mother's day, they inevitably get snowed on or there's a flood, it's just always bad.
We do pork year round, the poultry we can only do that, and we've learned the hard way, only run the pastured poultry up in our region between Mother's Day and Halloween. We don't have any barns to speak of on our farm. Tom Bennett: Yeah, so it's all pasture-raised. And I know you briefly mentioned, but the products you're producing do you maybe want to talk about those and the practices that you're using.
It wasn't like overnight, but we eventually got there and I became a full-time farmer in would've been in 2018 I quit my off farm job to farm full-time so. And then it just kept growing from there as people were like, Hey, why don't you raise us a hog? Can, can you raise meat for us? And and so it grew organically to a point to where it was feasible, if I put the time into it required to make it a full-time job. So by 2012, 13, we were just hobby farming, more just raising animals for ourselves and our own consumption. And then when I had gotten out of the Marine Corps around 2010, we were able to, first you got to build the house and get an off farm job and kind of get your life reestablished because you're basically starting out at square one on everything. It was an old corn and soybean field, basically all from a farmer that was retiring. Like I came home on leave a couple of years before I got out and bought, the land. So I started putting things in place prior to getting out of the military. At that time there wasn't really a lot going on online with direct to consumer sales. And I thought it would be a great idea, to have direct to consumer farm. Somewhere around 2007, I started to think about my future and what that would look like outside of the military service. But when I was in the Marines joined in 2001, and I was going to be getting out around 2010. But no farming experience, as far as that goes, aside from my neighbors, having cows that we would go over and chase around the pasture when I was a kid. My grandfather was a butcher and my dad cut meat for a while too. The history of Bennett farms, I didn't come from a farming family. I was wondering if you could maybe talk a little bit about the history of Bennett Farms and how you got started, how you got into farming and then and maybe some of your background and some of the organizations you're a part of today. And Tom, you're a first-generation farmer. So we'll talk a little bit about that today and share some tips with you to hopefully grow your online sales. It's probably these 20,000 farmer's market customers per year that I'm sending to our online store is why it's working so well for us. And then it clicked for me wait a minute. Initially I didn't realize that was as big of a component of our online stores as it was until we started talking to some other farms that use Barn2Door and they're asking us how we're successful.
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non-GMO antibiotic free up here in Michigan and we do about 13 farmer's markets a week, and we also utilize our online store, so looking forward to a conversation today and maybe give you guys some pointers on how to leverage your presence at the farmer's market into more customers online. Tom, do you want to maybe start by introducing yourself and the topic we're going to be talking about today? I'm delighted here to have Tom Bennett with us from Bennett farms in Michigan.
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