Anisoptera Acres

Anisoptera Acres

Pasture-raised Pork, Poultry, and Beef: The tastiest meat around

Our Environmental Philosophy

Here at Anisoptera Acres we care deeply about the environment. We live here, are raising our family here, and hope to pass on our farm in even better shape than we bought it, with a greater diversity of plants, butterflies, and birds.

Our pasture enterprise allows us to have pasture land with multiple types of clover, alfalfa, and numerous grasses. The result has been great foraging for our bees, profusions of different birds, toads, and lots of tree and leopard frogs, among others, even the occasional snapping turtle.

We have encouraged the presence of mosquito, fly, and pest eating birds on the farm. We have put up numerous Peterson bluebird houses around the farm. While we have only had a few occupied by bluebirds, we have had almost 100% occupancy by tree swallows. The tree swallows are not only voracious insect eaters, they are great fun to watch skimming low across the pasture, fields, and lawn, along with the barn and cliff swallows that nest in our buildings. We also have four wren houses near our orchards which have been fully occupied since installation. The wrens have been great fun to watch and listen to. Our wood duck house down by the pond is often occupied.

Our muscovy ducks also provide fly and mosquito control. They wander throughout the year, eating flies, mosquitos, grasshoppers, and unfortunately for us, low-hanging raspberries.

We have several bat houses (with bats) to assist in night-time insect catching. It is fun to watch their antics at dusk.

We have tried from the beginning to be as energy efficient as we can. In 2011, we went off-grid. We super-insulated our walk-in freezer, installed an efficient gravity flow hot water heating system and a 48 volt DC photovoltaic solar system to power our computer, lights, sump pump, and well pump. We continue to conserve energy as much as possible to minimize our use of fossil fuels.