We Say No More Than Yes
The imperfect heirloom tomato tastes better every time.
Good farms don’t fail because they say no too often.
They fail because they say yes when they shouldn’t.
Yes to speed.
Yes to scale.
Yes to convenience that quietly breaks living systems.
At Eremos Farm, we’ve learned that stewardship almost always begins with restraint.
No, We Don’t Deliver—and Here’s Why
Modern food systems pride themselves on distance.
The average steak travels 1,500 miles from where the animal was born to where it’s eaten. That includes transport to feedlots, then to processors, then to distributors, then to stores.
The average tomato travels around 1,300 miles, harvested green so it can survive the journey.
These tomatoes may be red, but they weren’t ripened on the vine
Distance isn’t neutral. It hides cost.
It hides soil depletion, fuel dependency, animal stress, and communities hollowed out of food sovereignty.
When we say no to delivery, we’re saying yes to something bigger:
Yes to local resilience
Yes to neighbors knowing their farmers
Yes to food systems that don’t collapse the moment fuel prices spike
Local food only works when communities commit to it.
No to Grain-Fed Cattle
We don’t feed grain to our cows—not because grain is evil, and not because we don’t care about them.
We say no because cows are ruminants.
They were designed to harvest sunlight through grass, build soil as they graze, and convert forage humans can’t eat into nourishment humans can.
Grain-feeding speeds growth, but it creates dependency—on monocrops, on synthetic inputs, and on systems that crumble under stress.
We’re breeding animals that can survive—and thrive—on grass alone.
Resilience beats efficiency every time.
No to Rushing Living Systems
Grass doesn’t grow on deadlines.
Animals don’t mature on spreadsheets.
Soil doesn’t heal on quarterly reports.
Rushing food production creates problems that don’t show up immediately—but they always show up eventually.
So we slow down.
Even when it costs us.
No to Bad Fits
Not every customer is the right customer.
Not every animal belongs in every home.
Saying no here protects everyone involved—from disappointment today and regret tomorrow.
No to Cutting Corners
We refuse:
Short finishing timelines
Cheap inputs that degrade soil
Marketing language that hides reality