Will Harris is something of an endangered breed. The Georgia farmer is the fourth generation in a family of farmers, still on his family’s land, White Oak Pastures.
Harris will be in Charleston Jan. 16 to sell his book A Bold Return to Giving a Damn and to let attendees taste sliders made from his beef by three different chefs — Mike Lata of FIG and The Ordinary, Rodney Scott of Rodney Scott’s BBQ and Jeanne Oleksiak of Herd Provisions. The event at High Wire Distilling will feature wines from regenerative vineyards, i.e. wine produced in a way that avoids both toxins and using up the soil’s nutrients.
And while Harris is all farmer, the way he farms now not only make him different from many other farmers, but also keeps his family farm alive. Harris is a regenerative farmer, a humane farmer and a steward of the family’s almost 5,000-acre legacy, raising 10 species of livestock and producing eggs, organic vegetables, honey and more.
He returned to farming despite his father’s wish that he would get away from the uncertainty of farming with a college degree and a regular paycheck. Harris went to college, but he studied animal science “much to my father’s dismay,” he said.
After about 20 years back on the farm running it with the highly industrialized practices he’d learned, he realized he was enjoying it less and less.
A new way of farming
“I started transitioning to the pasture-fed model that we operate today,” he said, adding that he also has abattoirs on his land that reduces the need to transport and stress the animals on their way to slaughter.
“The excesses of the old system just started to bother me,” Harris said. “The first place I noticed was animal welfare, what I had believed was good, but when I really thought about it, we weren’t that great. Quickly after that, land management became an issue, so we started changing things, and we moved away from a business model that had us living comfortably to losing money. I really underestimated the difficulty of making the change financially.”
What saved him, he said, was the luck of being one of the few purveyors of grass-fed beef at a time when consumers began to demand it.
A fifth generation is ready to keep his enlightenment going — his two daughters are part of the farm. The farm has 150 employees, five of whom are family members.
Harris wrote the book after being approached by a publisher interested in his ideas about regenerative farming. At first, he turned them down, saying he was no writer. But when the publisher provided a ghost writer, he agreed to the project.
“I hope the book gives the reader an enlightenment about what makes good food, and the desire to acquire good food, as opposed to the manufactured food-like substance which is so much of our food today,” Harris said.Head to High Wire Distilling Co. from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. on Jan. 16 for a talk from Harris along with bites from local chefs. Tickets ($60 with book, $30 sans book) can be purchased online.
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