FARM PROFILE Pasture-Building in the Granite State In order to have grass-fed cattle, Rocky Meadow Farm had to grow a pasture from scratch in rocky Francestown, New Hampshire.

PULL QUOTE: Because a freezer full of beef provides such good winter eating, it is easy to think of local beef as food without seasonality. That is not how Wayne LeClair of Rocky Meadow Farm and other pasture farmers view it. The product they sell is the result of careful management of a seasonal input: grass. Wayne LeClair of Rocky Meadow Farm considers himself a grass farmer, and to be a grass farmer, you need to have grass. In 1986, when LeClair moved to the 270 acres tract at the base of Crotched Mountain in Francestown, the property — now aptly called Rocky Meadow Farm — was entirely wooded. &emsp;&emsp;"In '85, there wasn't any grass; it was all woods. It took 30 years, and it didn't come willingly," says LeClair of his 15 fields, totaling 70 acres of grass. &emsp;&emsp;In determining the new landscape, Leclair worked both intuitively and methodically. &emsp;&emsp;"Start small; everything is baby steps. You mold the land as best that it can be molded, considering a lot of it is granite," says LeClair. &emsp;&emsp;Everything was done one step at a time. LeClair started with just one field and two cows while trying to hold space for his busy household of six and a full-time job. At first, LeClair hired people to stump the trees and move the rocks, but over time he also started investing in the necessary machinery and doing it himself. &emsp;&emsp;Leclair made his decisions by "walking the land." Deciding where fence borders, roads, and ponds should be put is a balance of making the land work for you but also making the land "self-sustaining." &emsp;&emsp;"Your decisions should increase the richness and fertility of the soil," says LeClair. &emsp;&emsp;Building pasture in a state defined by its sheer amount of rock is difficult work. &emsp;&emsp;"It makes you identify with those that left the land for the fertile Ohio valley," says LeClair. &emsp;&emsp;The biggest rocks were pushed into the gullies, presently invisible under cover of the snow. &emsp;&emsp;As the number of fields has grown and the food supply increased, so has the head in LeClair's herd. He now maintains a herd of about 25 Galloway Cattle. &emsp;&emsp;"There is something magical about the 25 number," notes LeClair. &emsp;&emsp;Any higher and the workload seems to increase unsustainably. &emsp;&emsp;"They eat a field too fast or get into mischief," says LeClair. &emsp;&emsp;The grass that feeds the cows starts growing steadily in May, putting on growth until the dog days of late July and early August. The grass will have another period of growth, although much shorter, in the fall before the freeze. LeClair is disappointed that this article is being written out of season, and therefore I won't be able to see the grass (he thus provided us with photos of his own). He implores me to come to the farm when the snow recedes, and we can walk the land. &emsp;&emsp;Because a freezer full of beef provides such good winter eating, it is easy to think of local beef as food without seasonality. That is not how LeClair and other pasture farmers view it. The product they sell is the result of careful management of a seasonal input, grass. The meat in the freezer is the miraculous work of nature, storing and condensing this nutrition into flesh. &emsp;&emsp;LeClair best serves the cows by serving the pasture ecosystem. Fussing over new plantings is the early work, but the ongoing rhythmic work is moving the cows from pasture to pasture in a timely manner to eat and fertilize the ground. Too much time on pasture can stump the grass. Most of the fertilization process happens naturally with the movement of the cattle, but LeClair will also spread organic chicken manure from Pete and Jerry's eggs when he can get it. He also limes the fields to allow the grass to better absorb the available nutrients. &emsp;&emsp;The cows can be out on pasture until the snow covers the forage, but the grass has stopped growing. To feed the cows the rest of the year, LeClair maintains enough fields to store enough grass through the winter. The scale and efficiency of this process have also grown over the years. LeClair started with a 50-horsepower tractor and then graduated to a 2,000-horsepower tractor with the necessary equipment to harvest small square bales moved by hand. A mature cow can eat up to a bale a day, each bale weighing over 40 pounds and often moved around the pasture by hand. &emsp;&emsp;In 1995, LeClair was one of the first farmers in New Hampshire to invest in a baleage baler. The technology was developed in Europe to deal with the variability of the wetter climate and its ability to jeopardize a season of dry-stored hay. This system which allows the grass to be stored in large round bales when wet, ensures a good grass harvest no matter how inclement the season. Moving around these larger bales requires strong tractor forks. LeClair is grateful for the equipment that makes this and all the other transformations on his land possible. &emsp;&emsp;"Hydraulics are the most important invention," says LeClair. &emsp;&emsp;LeClair's farm is animal welfare approved, and his cows live a healthy life that is considerably longer than most cattle raised for meat. The average age of commercial slaughter is 17 months. For LeClair's highland herd to reach maturity, it takes 28 months. This kind of patience is best employed by those who can see the land's whole cycle when beef is not the only bottom line. &emsp;&emsp;LeClair sells his beef both by the side and in packages. He isn't having any problems selling his product, which sells out most years. Since his start, he feels there has been a customer recognition of the superior quality of a product raised locally and has superior health advantages to the grocery store equivalent. Many people who buy beef from LeClair have been doing so for years. The customers come to his farm, and when they are picking up beef, they talk, and LeClair listens. &emsp;&emsp;My customers have "taught me a lot of things," says LeClair about what is "important to people." &emsp;&emsp;Questions about supply chain and labor shortages made people anxious at the beginning of the pandemic and persist today. This made requests for Rocky Meadow beef overwhelming in 2020. &emsp;&emsp;LeClair identifies the single largest hurdle to increasing local meat production as the scarcity of processing plants, particularly USDA-certified processing plants. LeClair processes his animals at Adams Farm in Athol, Massachusetts. Labor shortages challenged the business during the pandemic, and processing dates were pushed back 2-3 weeks. Reserving a processing date was a 3-6 month wait time. LeClair knows that he could retain his slaughter date because of his long-term relationship with the business. &emsp;&emsp;Besides being a grass farmer, LeClair is an emergency room physician at Monadnock Community Hospital, and we spoke during a difficult and scary surge of the pandemic. After getting off the phone, I wondered if I had been socially irresponsible not to ask him more questions about his work with COVID patients. &emsp;&emsp;Upon reflection of the hour and a half we spoke, I realized that LeClair had been patient and thoughtful and had given me no indication that what we were talking about was frivolous. This is perhaps because LeClair knows that his work outside of the hospital also holds the promise for improved outcomes. Not just improved nutrition, but also a contentedness from being grounded in the rhythms of a place. &emsp;&emsp;In this regard, he has had many teachers. While doing his residency in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, he forged relationships with the Amish families that lived in the area. He was moved by their work ethic, their "rhythmic" and "historical" relationship with the land. While working for the Indian Health Service in Arizona, he adjusted his lens to understand the beauty and bounty of the desert. While traveling to medical conferences in Montana, he forged lifelong relationships with cattle farmers there, who work to preserve a family business despite challenges from all sides. &emsp;&emsp;One of the Rocky Meadow fields, 10 acres of hay, sits atop a mountain, about a mile from LeClair's house. In a moment of stillness, LeClair can stand with a view of the old Francestown Soapstone Mill. It is a reminder that extractive industries change and move rapidly as an extraction method becomes more economical somewhere else. &emsp;&emsp;LeClair's extraction process is older than that of the soapstone mill, one that is as old as our relationship with ruminants. The process is more of a long conversation with the land and how to manage it to feed the animals that feed us. &emsp;&emsp;"Nature has tremendous power," says LeClair, "and we should give it as much space as possible to take care of us."