StarWalker Farms is the first farm in the United States to achieve Regenerative Organic Certified status for both beef and pork.
Its home — in Northern California’s Trinity Alps Wilderness — also has a wild, mystical feel to it.
The Trinity Alps are flanked by the rugged Marble Mountains to the northwest and Mount Shasta, a little further inland.
In the middle of it all, Jason Walker and his wife, Kristina, operate StarWalker Farms, a 7,000-acre organic farm where the cattle and pigs eat and live just like the wildlife that thrives in the expansive forests and lush grasslands of the area. Blacktail deer and clear mountain lakes filled with trout abound in StarWalker’s surrounding hills.
When he can get away from the farm, Jason takes advantage of the vast outdoor opportunities, backpacking into the mountains for trout, packing his bow to hunt blacktail in the Marble Mountains, shooting ducks and geese in the marshes or casting during the salmon run on the Scott River.
“That’s probably one of my most favorite things, is just to be in the mountains, fishing or hunting,” he says.
“There’s pretty much anything you can think of up here and I admit I am kind of spoiled.”
Life at StarWalker Farms: Elk, Blacktail Deer and 7,000 Acres of Northern California
Jason’s workdays are spent outside running a farm totaling 7,000 acres of owned and leased land.
His office is in the fields. The farm isn’t treated as something separate from nature.
In fact, when the two intertwine—and they often do—Jason gains a renewed sense of appreciation for the place where he works and lives.
Blacktail deer are all over the place in his area of northern California, but there’s also Roosevelt elk.
They don’t grow the enormous antlers like the Rocky Mountain subspecies, but they’re still an impressive sight.
Sometimes the elk venture onto the farm, and those occasions when Jason hears a bugle while working in the fields is always memorable.
One summer he was out at 2am checking to see if the alfalfa hay would be ready to bale. If alfalfa gets too dry after it’s cut, the nutritious leaves can shatter when it’s baled.
Having some dew on the ground is best for leaf retention, so it’s not unusual for Jason to bale at night.
So there he was, out in the dark checking the hay when a raucous broke out in the darkness.
It sounded like the rattling and clashing of two bull elk fighting, but Jason thought he was just hearing things.
And then it happened again, followed by some cow mews and a loud bugle that shattered the night.
For the next hour, he listened to the bulls fight and bugle like crazy before deciding to bale hay.
When the work was finished, Jason drove down the lane at daylight and saw a big bull looking beat up and tired walking across the field.
“He looked like he had gotten his butt kicked that night, and it was so fun to just sit there and listen to what went on,” Jason says.
“That makes me really enjoy what I do, being out in nature and working at the same time.”
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How StarWalker Farms Manages the Natural Ecosystem
At the foot of the mountains, the pastures and alfalfa fields of StarWalker Farms are a magnet for all wildlife, not just elk.
It’s not uncommon to see 100 or more blacktail feasting in the alfalfa during the summer and fall, and Jason admits it does make him cringe.
But the farm is managed as if it’s part of the natural landscape, and the damage caused by the deer is minimal and even tolerated.
After all, even when the deer are hammering the alfalfa, there’s just something about watching a big buck trot by that makes it a bit more palatable.
“You just love seeing that,” Jason says. “You forget about the fact that they’re eating your crop and it’s a reminder that it’s just part of the system.”
When it comes to nutrition and taste, the system that produces lean venison in the natural world is one that Jason uses to raise the cattle and pigs on the farm.
If it’s good enough to produce healthy, lean venison in the wild, then surely the same process works for raising beef and pork for the farm’s thriving organic meat business.
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The approach is actually simple, no matter if it’s a cow or a deer. Grass goes in one end, manure comes out the other, the soil is fertilized and everything grows.
If you stick to the system that nature defined, the taste and nutrition of the final product is hard to beat.
“Our cattle and pigs are out there like the deer and elk, just doing what they’re supposed to be doing and living their best life. That’s the protein that ends up on your plate,” Jason says.
Wild Game vs Grass-Fed Beef: A Different Kind of Protein
Deer, elk, trout – this isn’t the same protein as a fast-food cheeseburger.
Wild game is packed with healthy omega-3 fatty acids combined with the deep, rich flavor that some people mistake as “gamey” but Jason views as an attribute.
Unlike a cow raised on grain in a feedlot, a deer eating brush and grass, running up and down hills is like an athlete in training.
StarWalker livestock is healthy and active, producing a flavor and nutrient profile vastly different from that of a cow raised in a confinement setting.
“It’s just a lean meat dense with flavor. It’s not getting covered by a bunch of fat. It’s just nutrients and it dances on your palate when you eat it,” he says.
“If that’s gamey, I don’t think it’s a bad thing.”
Jason said his grass-fed cattle, especially the Scottish Highlands with their super thick coats and ability to graze and forage just like wild animal, also taste slightly similar to venison because they basically eat and live like a deer.
“Gamey probably isn’t the right word, but you just feel like you’re eating a nutrient-dense piece of meat and flavor,” he says.
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Regenerative Organic Certified: What Does it Mean?
StarWalker Farms has been certified organic for more than 40 years and they’re also the first to achieve the Regenerative Organic Certified label for beef and pork in the U.S.
So what does it all mean?
According to Jason it’s essentially mimicking nature but with livestock.
The only difference is while he raises cattle with a regenerative and organic approach, there’s also a production element to raise more animals to meet the business demand.
But the backbone of being regenerative and organic is being all grass-fed with a focus on rotational grazing to let the land recover.
Nature works the same way, like an elk herd grazing in the mountains is always moving from one meadow to another.
They don’t stay until all the grass is gone, but rather graze for a bit, move on and then come back to that same meadow after it has grown back.
“We try to use those same techniques in what we do,” Jason says. “That symbiosis in nature is what we try to duplicate all the time on the farm.”
Organic by itself is easy to define: animals raised without hormones, GMOs or crops treated with pesticides and herbicides.
So wouldn’t that make something like the blacktail deer in the Marble Mountains the ultimate organic meat?
Jason doesn’t disagree, but any animal that eats a similar diet and lives in a clean, pristine ecosystem can be considered organic.
“A deer eating grass or whatever it finds, up in these rugged mountains, I think that’s the base of where organic comes from,” he says.
“There’s nothing tainted in its diet.”
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Exploring Regenerative Hunting
Aside from his farm being organic, Jason also practices regenerative agriculture, which focuses on improving the health of the soil that grows the nutritious grass and hay that feed the cattle.
One way to achieve that is through rotational grazing and limiting the number of cattle to what the land can support for a period of time.
Jason believes regenerative is also a term that applies to the role of hunters in managing game populations.
When an old, trophy blacktail buck is harvested, for example, it creates an opening for a younger buck to step in and keep the cycle going – out with the old, in with the new.
And those seasons when only the female of the species can be hunted, that’s what keeps the population in check with what the land can support.
“It’s regenerating the population of the herd,” Jason says. “And the best thing about it is being done by hunters who want to be in the outdoors and want that amazing protein.
“I can’t think of a better system than that.”
It’s a system that he’s proud to be a part of both on the farm raising grass-fed beef or in the mountains archery hunting for blacktail.
As time goes on, Jason hopes to do more of the latter, harvesting the wild protein that is uniquely-grown in the mountains of northern California.
“Most of my time is sucked into the business right now, and I look at everybody else going off hunting and I’m a little jealous,” he says.
“My plan is to work my butt off here for the next five to 10 years and then spend more of my time in these mountains.”
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