Inside Etta Hills: The Flavors of a Regenerative Farm

Etta Hills Farm is a regenerative family farm in Etta, Mississippi, raising grass-fed beef, pastured pork, pasture-raised eggs, and pastured poultry on diverse, adaptively grazed pasture. The animals graze the way ruminants and chickens evolved to graze. The soil gets healthier every year because of how they’re moved. And the meat, fat, and yolks that come off the farm carry the nutrient density of the land they came from — onto the fork, into the kitchen, and onto the table. This post is the working introduction.

What we raise

We raise four protein lines on diverse Mississippi pasture: grass-finished beef, pastured pork, pasture-raised chickens (and eggs), and grass-finished lamb. None of them are finished on grain. None are treated with growth hormones or sub-therapeutic antibiotics.

Grass-finished beef

Cattle that graze across our pastures from start to finish. The meat is leaner than supermarket beef, deeper in color, and richer in fat-soluble vitamins and omega-3 fatty acids. The marbling, when it’s there, traces directly to the forage diversity in the paddock the animal was eating from.

Pastured pork

Heritage-style hogs raised on pasture and woodlot, foraging the way pigs were designed to forage. Pork tenderness and depth of flavor are functions of the animal’s diet, movement, and lifespan — and ours have all three.

Pasture-raised eggs and poultry

Yolks the color of late-afternoon sun. That color is the carotenoids — pigments the hens picked up from the plants and insects they ate on pasture. A confinement egg’s yolk is pale because those compounds aren’t there.

Grass-finished lamb

Light, clean, pasture-finished. Less common in American kitchens than it should be — and worth the place at the table.

Come walk the pasture

We host farm tours. We answer hard questions. We’ll show you the soil, the rotation schedule, the animals at whatever life stage they’re in when you’re here. If you’re within driving distance of Etta — or willing to make the trip from Memphis, Jackson, Tupelo, Oxford, Birmingham, or anywhere else in the South — come walk the pasture with us. It’s the cleanest way to know what you’re buying. No label can do what an afternoon on the farm does.