It Takes Faith to Farm

Our QueenBurger smash burger is made with local, grass fed beef from Baldwin Family Farms.

“I was always interested in cattle,” says V. Mac Baldwin of Baldwin Family Farms in Caswell County, North Carolina.  As a child, Baldwin made a cattle scrapbook, using photos he cut out of magazines.  He bought his first calf for sixty dollars when he was ten years old and kept it watered and fed in the yard of his childhood home in Durham, North Carolina.

By the time he left for the Navy, he had seven head of cattle, which was more than the family’s two-acre yard could support.  To feed the cattle, he brought home food scraps from the grocery store where he worked.

Baldwin Family Farms was founded in 1969 and relocated to their current location in Yancyville, NC in 1981. 

While working with cattle seemed inevitable for V. Mac, selling beef was not. “We got into this by accident,” Baldwin says, as he describes how he and his wife Peggy Baldwin spent 20 years raising Charolais breeding calves.  By chance, a field buyer for a beef company came to the farm asking if the Baldwins were interested in selling lean beef and they began the transition to raising full weight cattle.

Baldwin takes pride in the white French Charolais cattle they raise.  The farm is responsible for the entire life of the animals through birthing, grazing and growing the calves into grass fed steers.  Baldwin Family Farms is Global Animal Partnership approved and Animal Welfare Approved.

V. Mac believes it takes faith to farm and he carries a testament in his pocket.  He describes his annual orchestration of year-round forage for the cattle as his “grass ministry.”  The cattle graze on sweet grass and clover in a natural cycle through the seasons.

Baldwin explains, “healthy cattle are raised on good grass.”

The Baldwins have adapted their business over the years, including adding chickens to their farm system.  They raise hatching eggs and use manure from the hens as fertilizer for their pastures.

The farm system relies on nature to provide sufficient rainfall.  In turn, they are stewards of nature on the farm.  They protect habitat and provide woodland breaks for wildlife.

There are now three generations of the Baldwin family operating the farm, including V. Mac and Peggy Baldwin’s son.  His grandchildren are involved in the farm and his son will eventually run the business.

Baldwin has kept his faith and his entrepreneurial spirit.  The family is gradually buying land and he expects the next generation will double the farm’s acreage.  “You can’t stand still,” Baldwin emphasizes, “there’s always a challenge to do more.”

As the farm grows, the family must also grow the market for their beef.  This is the next focus for Baldwin: “We have to do a better job of telling our story.”

Portions of this article are excerpted from an article originally written for North Carolina State University’s Local Food Champion program.