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Preservation Acres

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The Plaisance Family Farm
Specializing in Endangered Heritage Breeds

Specializing in Critically Endangered Heritage Breeds???
What the heck does that mean?

Most people across the

United States

and throughout the industrialized world get their food from supermarkets. Shoppers place eggs, cuts of beef, canned vegetables, dairy products, and other foods in their carts without much thought. Indeed, industrialized agriculture has benefitted us tremendously by giving us an abundance of relatively inexpensive food; however, this convenience has come at a price.

Most industrialized farms today raise thousands of single breed animals, many of which have been altered genetically to an extent that these animals could not survive outside of their enclosed living spaces. Many of these animals survive only with constant shelter, antibiotics, specially designed and treated food, and other necessary assistance. This farming arrangement is vastly different from the methods used by our grandparents and their grandparents.

In the past, a huge variety of different breeds of farm animals lived most of their lives outdoors on small farms. They were hardy animals that survived with minimal human intervention. With the coming of industrialized agriculture, many of these breeds have been pushed aside for various reasons as corporate farmers focused on the one breed of chicken that laid the most eggs or the one breed of cow that produced the most milk. Many of the endless varieties of farm animals of yesterday have already become extinct, and many more are currently threatened with extinction.

So if we no longer need these animals, why does it matter if they become extinct?

Well, to answer that question effectively, let’s look at the banana. Huh? Yes, the bananas you currently have on your kitchen counter are not the same bananas your grandparents ate when they were young. It has been said that our current bananas are a pale comparison to the sweet and nutritious variety that was grown ages ago. So what happened? Bananas are grown in tropical regions around the world. The bananas you eat today in the United States were probably grown in Central or South America. In Europe, their bananas are the exact same variety we have here, but they are grown in tropical Africa. Japan and Australia get this same variety from tropical banana plantations in Southeast Asia. This same farming practice took a huge hit when the banana plants of yesteryear were devastated by a fungus that spread around the globe. This fungus wiped out our grandparents’ homogeneous banana variety to extinction. Luckily, we had a substitute variety that was immune to this particular fungus, and thus, we still have bananas today.

Could this happen again? Absolutely. Could it happen to our industrially raised chickens, sheep, cows, corn, wheat…Yes it can. If we let the hardy animals and crops of yesterday go extinct, we could be faced one day with a catastrophic threat to our food supply. Many heritage breed animals have incredible resistance to disease, need minimal or no antibiotics for basic health, and are able to survive by foraging for most of their food. By saving heritage breed animals and crops from extinction, we’re protecting our future. It’s that simple.

So how does all of this fit into the mission of Preservation Acres?

At Preservation Acres, our focus is on breeding and propagating “Critically Endangered” livestock and poultry as defined by the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy (ALBC).

For livestock, the ALBC defines the danger of extinction as “Critical” when fewer than 200 animals are registered annually in the United States and these animals have an estimated global population less than 2,000.

For poultry, the ALBC defines the danger of extinction as “Critical” when fewer than 500 breeding birds exist in the United States. Also, there must be five or fewer primary breeding flocks of at least 50 birds in the US, and the breed must be globally endangered.

Many farm animals on ALBC’s critically endangered list are facing the very real threat of extinction. Some have less than 300 living animals remaining today. At Preservation Acres, our goal is to raise, breed, and propagate select breeds identified by ALBC as endangered with a focus on those that are critically endangered.

This site (much like our farm) is currently under construction.

So far...here we are. We've found our land...just under 26 acres in Rockvale, Tennessee, a small country town south of Nashville. I'm upgrading existing fencing and will get two donkeys and a few goats and sheep this spring.