Welcome to our website. We hope that through our photos and comments you will become better acquainted with who we are and our philosophy.
Steve and Mary Beth Whitmire and their two sons, Bud and Whit are the owners of Ridgefield Farm. Go to the “History” link to learn more about the history of the farm.
We believe in running our farm by The Ten Commandments and The Golden Rule. We constantly strive to make the best possible product at the least cost. If you combine the results of these two sentences, Mary Beth and I believe that one will enjoy happiness and success; in whatever he chooses to do.
Breeding and developing the optimum beef animal and taking care of the land is our passion. While no breed is perfect, after carefully studying available information, we chose Braunvieh. While they are not yet commonly found throughout the United States, they are one of the oldest breeds of cattle in the world, with breeding records and pedigrees stretching back farther than 200 years in Switzerland and with bones being found from the Bronze Age, 900 years ago. The breed is characterized as being very docile, long bodied, well muscled with correct feet and legs. This is due to generations of natural selection in the Swiss Alps. The cows are fertile, give plenty of rich milk with excellent udders from small teats and are excellent mothers. One of our hallmarks is raising and selling animals with easy to work with dispositions. While Braunvieh as a breed are known to be docile, on that rare occasion that one appears to be aggressive, we cull and sell them immediately.
Braunvieh are known as a balanced breed, possessing body conformation for optimum physiological performance. This and the fact that their hair is sleek and fine in warm humid climates and can grow heavy in response to extended cold weather, makes Braunvieh cattle incredibly adaptable to different environments and altitudes. Their dense hair pattern provides a substantial degree of resistance to horn flies, resulting in a much reduced need for fly spraying during the warm months.
Performance in the feedyard and exceptional carcass quality are now attracting the attention of an increasing number of commercial cattle producers and packers. Braunvieh crossed cattle are proving to be very efficient gainers in the feedyard, while producing meat that is tender, has excellent marbling, and universally produces higher yield grades due to less back and rump fat than the English breeds such as Angus. For more information on Braunvieh, go to www.Braunvieh.org.
Ridgefield Farm is run by Steve and John Hart, assisted by Mary Wright. Steve primarily works on long term projects and breed related activities while John, as farm manager, oversees day to day operations. They both work on breeding decisions and cattle management. John is a Tennessean by birth and was raised on a farm. John and his wife, Kim, and young sons Jared and Lincoln and infant daughter Audra live in a newly constructed house on the farm. John joined Ridgefield Farm in January of 2007, coming from a background of running a farm for a private school in North Georgia for eight years and before that he worked in a Polled Hereford operation. John is a very knowledgeable cattleman and farmer and works extremely well with other people. He is truly an asset to the farm and has made numerous suggestions from pasture management to animal nutrition which are helping to cut expenses while improving the overall quality of the cattle.
Mary Wright performs numerous tasks. Without her the farm would be in big trouble. She is in charge of keeping the cattle records up to date, annual cattle inventories, paying the bills, handling deposits, dealing with customers and prospective customers and “Bull Deal” customers, managing feedyard and harvest data and helping to put together the sale catalogs and arranging for sale day catering, etc. She has occasionally even been known to help band bulls. Perhaps most of all she helps keep Steve organized and on schedule.
John Hart is assisted by James Conley, a 2006 graduate in Animal Science and Ag Business from NC State University. James is working with Ridgefield Farm for a couple of years prior to getting his masters degree and is involved with everything from AI work to pasture management. He and his new wife, Elizabeth, a 2007 graduate of NC State in Ag Education, live in the 100 year old farmhouse on the property. We are also very fortunate to have a couple of very capable and dependable employees who live just down the road from the farm; Kevin Laney and his mother, Ramona. Some version of a Cook Family member has been involved with Ridgefield Farm since its inception in the 1950’s, and have helped the farm get to where it is. Ramona is capable of doing most anything from building fences and bush hogging to working cattle, and helps pay special attention to the overall neatness of the farm. Kevin also is capable of most any activity involved in fence building, working cattle and farming, from assisting with birthing calves, if necessary, to gathering hay. In the past few years he has also learned to operate the numerous pieces of heavy equipment which have been utilized in various construction projects.
Both Bud Whitmire, a junior at the University of Wyoming, in Ag Communications, and Whit Whitmire, a senior in high school at Christ School in Asheville, NC, work on the farm during the summers.
The farm consists of about 1,020 acres located in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Western North Carolina. About 870 acres is owned by us and the balance owned jointly by us and other family members. The state line of Georgia is about a mile south of us and one can see Tennessee from some of our higher ridges. Our land is very hilly, to steep, with as much as 800 feet of elevation differences between low lying areas and ridge tops. The acreage is about 60% forested and 40% in pasture and includes about 34,000 feet of streams and creeks. The farm serves as a learning laboratory and is an integral part of the Land Management Resources Department of Western Carolina University.
In late 2006, after purchasing the main farm from non-farming relatives, Steve and Mary Beth donated a conservation easement to The Land Trust For The Little Tennessee on 700 plus acres. While no title transfer occurred, the primary result is that all development rights were extinguished; thus, insuring that the land will forever remain as open space and available for use in only agriculture related businesses.
We co-operate as much as possible with the USDA-NRCS and NC DENR, Division of Water Quality, in optimizing grazing lands and in fencing out cattle from the streams. We have run approximately 16 miles of new fence since 2005 and drilled six wells with which to provide water to every pasture. This has not only provided us the means to improve stream water quality, but also given us the ability to sub-divide pastures into smaller grazing paddocks. A significant by-product of all of the stream fencing has been to create tremendous wildlife habitat. Our combination of open meadows and forested areas, coupled with the wildlife friendly stream buffers, provides for a very diverse population of game ranging from white tail deer, turkeys and hogs, to rabbits and quail. Large populations of song birds and blue herons also inhabit the buffer areas. This, in turn, insures that the farm is well populated with a number of raptor species of birds. Numerous hawk species and Peregrine Falcons are routinely seen around the farm. Ridgefield Farm was the Environmental Stewardship Award Winner for Region II of the NCBA in 1994, while under the management of EJ Whitmire, my father.
We feel that by employing the best people and utilizing the best available knowledge and technology in livestock and land management, and by careful selection of outstanding cattle; we can sustain ourselves on a beautiful farm in a beautiful part of the country, living in harmony with nature. This is the Whitmire Family and Ridgefield Farm.
