Our History
River of Dreams, Inc., a family farm owned by the Drzewiecki family, originated on April 1, 2002 as a conventional dairy farm. After we sold the Holstein dairy cows in May of 2006, we were plotting the course of our future family farm. We chose to purchase 6 yearling Hereford heifers to join our Angus-Holstein crossbred heifer as the core of our new beef herd. With the seeds of our beef herd planted we continued researching how we could produce healthy delicious beef. Our first introduction to grass-fed beef was back in 2005 when I was a volunteer on the Market Animal Committee for the Calumet County Fair. During one meeting, a staunch corn fed beef farmer mentioned that he had tried grass fed beef at the World Beef Expo, and he thought it was pretty good. Researching grass fed agriculture, we learned about all the health benefits which grass-fed beef provides. We chose to enter into the grass fed beef world, putting both feet into the fire, in the fall of 2008.
In February of 2009, we purchased 5 more beef cows to add to our small herd. That year, we also interseeded more grasses into our alfalfa fields, constructed a good fencing system, and a watering system for the cattle in 2009. After the usual growing pains, by May 15, 2009 our cattle were out grazing on their new improved pastures. While our cattle were grass-fed prior to this time, these efforts represented the first step into turning our farm into a top-notch management intensive grazing (MIG) farm.
Once those challenges were all met, we decided to enter into the direct marketing business in 2010, attaining both our on-premise retail marketing license as well as the mobile retail marketing license which allows us to offer our products at farmers' markets and other venues.
At the beginning of 2011, we expanded out into the grass-fed business purchasing 21 Katahdin sheep, 20 ewes and a ram. Before we purchased the Katahdin sheep, we had tried grass-fed lamb steaks and they were extremely delicious! A few cogs needed to drop into place, and we were on our way into another adventure at River of Dreams with our Katahdin sheep. We've also decided to expand our free-range chicken side of the business, which our daughter Dawn had started in 2010. Fully integrating the free-range chickens allows us to acquire more chicks so we can offer our customers free range broilers as well as free range eggs, both of which are high in Omega 3 fatty acid.
To protect the flock of sheep from various predators we also purchased a Great Pyrenees female puppy, Pandora, in 2011. We felt that since we were opening a Pandora's box with the Katahdin sheep and expanding our free-range chicken side of our busines, we may as well bring Pandora along with the box!! In 2012 Zeus, our Great Pyrenees male puppy joined Pandora in flock protection duties. We're don't know where the future might take us from here, but we will follow the Lord knowing he will lead us in the right direction.