nature's   green   acres

Meet Your Farmers

What Does Your Meat Eat?

Photo by Kevin Kossowan

Nature’s Green Acres is a small husband and wife operation, run by Danny and Shannon Ruzicka, along with their three children; Madalynne, Joshua, and Molly.  Danny is a full time farrier (he shoes and trims horse hooves) and Shannon is a Manual Osteopathic Therapist. 

      Let’s see where do we begin.....   

 Danny comes from a long line of farmers.  He always dreamed of running his own farm one day and carrying on the family tradition. Having bought land in his early 20’s he began to put his dream into action.  He grew grain for sale and rented his pasture out till he could afford his own cattle.  He had crop land, pasture, and a cute little farm house to boot! He was set! Then along came Shannon.   

 Shannon also comes from a long line of farmers, but didn’t grow up on the farm. None the less she always had a passion for the land and animals and hoped to one day be a farmers wife.   

Our desire to be natural all started as a curiosity, and a questioning of the “conventional” methods of production. We began to question and research everything; processed foods and drinks, meats, veggies, fruits, clothing, pharmaceuticals, and more. Armed with a head full of incredible statistics and shocking information, we began to make changes in our life. Conventional farming was now an issue. Did we want to be part of the problem or the solution? As we began making our plans and buying cattle, we agreed that we couldn’t be hypocritical in how we ran our farm and produced our beef.  As plans were made and changed and rethought, we decided to diversify the meats we could offer you and included pigs and nouveau beef.

We knew we wanted the general public to be able to buy and enjoy the farm fresh foods that we grew up on. We also wanted to be able to preserve the old ways of doing things. We researched what the old farmers fed their animals before “bigger is better” and before mass meat production was in vogue. We got a lot of questions answered by hours of internet searching and a lot of books bought and read. The most priceless information we found was from the life time of experiences from different sources, namely Shannon’s grandpa, Chum Zacharias. We bounced ideas off our family and got input from the next most experienced ones in our lives, Shannon’s dad; Barry Zacharias, and Danny’s dad; Greg Ruzicka, and Danny’s uncle; Don Ruzicka, whom has been our guide as we learn to navigate in the world of holistic management and grazing our cows and pigs.

 Thank you all so much!

We know that we have to stand for what we believe and know to be true. We believe in quality not quantity, in healthy foods, and a healthy environment. We know the old saying “You are what you eat”, has never been more true. This led us on a mission to produce and promote these exact qualities in the foods we farm.    We want to offer to you high quality farm fresh meats. We guarantee our products are naturally raised on pasture, hormone free, antibiotic free, soy free, corn free, and grass fed. We also guarantee you’ll love the way real meat tastes! Please give us a call for a tour of our farm and see how the meat you eat is being raised!