When she was 10, while most children are asking their parents for allowance money and believe that eggs come from the grocery store, Shelby Grebenc was soliciting her grandmother for a loan of $1000 to start her own pasture-raised egg business. Shelby and her parents live on four acres in Broomfield, Colorado, 20 miles outside of Denver. She began caring for laying hens when she was just 6-years old. “Dad was trying to teach me to be an adult,” she says, so he gave her chores—watering, feeding, and letting out the family’s small flock of chickens. In the summer, she loved it. When it was 20oF during Colorado’s winters, she hated it, but that didn’t keep her from learning everything involved in raising hens on pasture and starting her own business selling eggs to help expand the family’s income when her mother, Nancy, who has multiple sclerosis, was in a nursing home.

Jessi Maurer always wanted to be involved in farming, so when she turned 20 and moved to the country, she started buying livestock. More than 30 years later, Jessi and her husband Dennis raise 100 Alpine and Saanen dairy goats on Lucky Hook Dairy in Moses Lake, Washington. Their dairy operation has always been pasture-based and animal health has always been central to their business.

Mark and Debbie Millsaps began their small farm with just enough laying chickens to produce eggs for their family and friends in 2004. Then, with more interest, they added a few more chickens and then a few more. Now they are raising 100 Animal Welfare Approved laying hens. AWA certified Boer meat goats were later added to their five acre family farm to rotationally graze with their chickens.

Holy Cow Grassfed Beef is located on 128 acres in the Yakima Valley of Central Washington where Janelle and Roy Moses raise more than 100 cows and their calves. Without employees, Janelle is “on-call” year-round to help give birth to her calves, and checks her cows morning and night to ensure that they are healthy, happy, and protected from predators and disease.

Steve and Marci Jacobs, along with their twin sons and daughter, raise Animal Welfare Approved registered Angus and Angus cross cattle in Healdsburg, CA. Both Steve and Marci have been in agriculture most of their lives and are graduates from Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo. It was a natural fit for them to start their own farm with their family’s old line lineage of beef cattle that has been in the family for generations.

Michelle Leisen and her husband Chris Cornilsen, along with Michelle’s parents Janet and Corrie Leisen, raise Animal Welfare Approved laying hens (Buff Orpingtons, Plymouth Barred Rock, Black Australorp, Americanas, Silver Laced Wyandotte) at the completely solar powered Leisen Family Farm in Santa Rosa, CA. Michelle has been connected to farm animals since childhood raising lambs, rabbits and dairy cows for 4H and Future Farmers of America. And while the Leisen family has been farming in Sonoma County for 100 years, this is Michelle’s first endeavor into “the chicken department” as she calls it, only raising hens since 2010.

Thomas and Kristeen Powell raise Animal Welfare Approved egg laying hens (Anconas and Rhode Island Reds) with the help of their children Caleb, Dylan, Emma, Preston, and one on the way (also known as “Peanut”).

Greg and Laurie Newhall and their partners and longtime friends Gary and Nancy Jones raise Animal Welfare Approved Black Angus cattle and egg laying hens at Windy N Ranch in Ellensburg, WA. They are also in the process of obtaining AWA certification on pigs, goats, sheep, Thanksgiving turkeys and meat chickens – an unusual variety for any ranch to offer! Greg believes that ranching requires a driving passion and one day hopes to pass his work along to his family.

Swope Cattle Company raises grassfed beef cattle in the lush hills of the Midwest. Cattle are raised outdoors with the highest welfare standards, eating fresh grass and enjoying the sunshine of east-central Missouri, just north of the Mark Twain National Forest. Swope Cattle Company is an independent family farm that prides itself on high-welfare management and quality grassfed beef.

Simon Boers is in the lovely Hagerman Valley in Idaho, set among the Snake River canyon and hay fields, and home of many public wildlife preserves. Evelyn Simon and her husband, Joe Bennett, are the team behind the farm, working together to raise champion goats–prized for their look and the taste of their meat. Judges from the American Boer Goat Association have described the goats as high quality, beautiful animals with excellent Boer characteristics, like a bold curved nose, strong shoulders and a glossy coat of white and brown hair.