Homegrown Acres

About Us

Strangers in a Strange Land...

We are Brian and Helen Wright and we welcome you to our small piece of paradise! Brian is an expatriate Texan and Helen is his California Girl! We are both retired from the Air Force and subsequent careers in Corporate Security and Procurement for various companies in Silicon Valley. After our boys went to college and joined the Air Force, we have retreated to lives as caretakers of wonderful animals and the small farm they share with us.

We are members of the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy, Slow Food USA, and are a sponsoring member of Local Harvest. Brian is also the Secretary and Registrar for the Large Black Hog Association.

Homegrown Acres sits on 40 acres in the beautiful Missouri Ozark Mountains! We are a diversified, sustainable small farm, with 23 acres of pasture and 17 acres of old growth forest.

Our hogs spend most of their lives living on the pasture and in the woods. We believe that if you are raising heritage animals you should do so in a manner that helps them to retain their abilities to thrive in their natural environment. We only provide supplemental feed when our sows are pregnant or lactating or during the winter when the pastures have stopped providing food. We do not use preventative antibiotics or hormones and we let the piglets wean themselves naturally. We don't cut off their tails or teeth like many traditional farmers do. Because we treat our animals with respect, they trust us to be with them and we try to spend time with every animal each day.

The poultry also graze on our pasture and are only confined at night to protect them from predators. We use hay from our pastures as bedding in the coop, and reuse it and their manure as a natural mulch and fertilizer for our gardens. Our goats graze the pasture and help remove excess undergrowth from our forested areas. We also keep a llama in the herd to deter predators.

Our hay is a mixture of tall fescue, grass and clover. Tall fescue is well adapted to the soil and weather conditions of Missouri. We grow clover mixed in with the fescue; as a legume, the clover helps to fix nitrogen in the soil and replaces much of the nitrogen that the grass removes from the soil. Due to the manure that our animals leave behind, we are able to harvest two hay crops each year without having to add processed fertilizer to the pastures. We also use rotational grazing so that our pastures have time to recover.

We are very fortunate to have three stands of old growth forest on the farm. The forests include a wide variety of trees including red oak, black walnut, sycamore, cedar, hickory and sassafras. They also have wild blackberries, grapes, onions and mushrooms. We are managing the forests to maintain the health of the trees and provide a favorable environment for many varieties of wildlife including white-tailed deer, red-tailed hawks, bald eagles, several varieties of woodpeckers, bluebirds, raccoons, opossums, foxes and squirrels.

All of these practices are designed to ensure the long term viability of the soil, plants and animals on our farm. We consider ourselves to be stewards of the land; responsible primarily for its health while we provide good food for ourselves and our neighbors. We are also responsible for ensuring that our animals are treated well, unlike those that endure the unhealthful conditions of confined industrial livestock facilities.

Contact us for more information.