2007年的保罗·格里夫在办公室工作，并与健康问题作斗争，当他决定做出改变时. Seeking a lifestyle with greater meaning and quality, he and his family began raising pasture-fed chickens for local consumption. In just three years, Greive’s family farm, Primal Pastures, has ballooned to $350,000 in annual sales.
“It’s growing really fast,” says Greive, who was a business major at Concordia.“There’s plenty of demand but the problem is supply. It’s not like a technology company where we can put in more widgets. We need more soil, more grass, more animals.”
Primal Pastures sells pasture-raised chicken, lamb, pork, beef, turkey, eggs and raw honey directly to consumers in greater Southern California. 这是该地区为数不多的几个以轮牧方式饲养动物供消费的农场之一, allowing the animals to eat and live close to nature.
他们有新鲜的空气、阳光和干净的水，而且不会互相践踏.
Primal Pastures has 1,500名顾客，并将其市场限制在南加州，因为他们认为消费者应该能够看到他们的食物是在哪里种植的. Greive works with his father-in-law Tom and brothers-in-law Jeff McDaniel ’03, 07届医学博士(和11届的妻子Bethany Loesch)和Rob McDaniel，他在欧文的康考迪亚大学读了一年. Greive met his wife Lynsey McDaniel at Concordia University Irvine.
“None of us would have thought we’d be into farming as a career,” Greive says. “We had never farmed before and had no idea what we were doing. 但是，作为基督徒，我们最重要的呼召之一是，当神呼召我们做某些事情时，我们要对他的话语敞开心扉，听从他的带领. I feel we've been blessed, big time.”
这一切都始于50只小鸡，以及一个用自然方式饲养它们的想法——让它们在开阔的田野里吃虫子和蠕虫.
健康问题促使格里夫和他的家人在饮食中寻求解决方案.
“I was struggling with arthritis,” Greive says. “Eating differently completely cured it. 这促使我研究食品系统，寻找当地种植的有机食品.”
But he could find no chicken that was raised outside, ate bugs and worms and had not been fed genetically modified feeds. “It shocked me that nobody was doing this anywhere,” he says. “So we said, ‘Why not raise it ourselves? We have a couple of acres of land.’”
这是一个半严肃的想法，直到保罗的姐夫宣布:“我刚订了五十只小鸡. They arrive in two weeks. We need to get ready.”
男人们狼吞虎咽地读着养鸡方面的书，把新生的小鸡放进孵卵器，然后放到草坪上. They posted on Facebook, “We’re raising pasture-raised, soy-free birds. Let us know if you want one. We’ll figure a way to get it to you.”
“We were planning on eating most of the birds ourselves,” Greive says. “We were doubtful anyone would pay for it, but all fifty birds sold. That opened our eyes.”
Slaughtering the birds was a challenge, since none had killed an animal before.
“We had a bird in one hand and YouTube on the phone in the other, and we followed the steps literally off YouTube,” Greive says.
Customers were pleased and the waiting list grew to a thousand families. 人们还询问在哪里可以买到牧场饲养的牛肉、猪肉、羊肉和火鸡. 因此，原始牧场诞生了，并开始与使用相同饲养和放牧技术的当地农场合作.
We are passionate about connecting our faith to the way we farm. We've relied on God’s providence through-out the whole business.
“The most important thing for us is the Lord,” Greive says. “Our bodies are the Lord’s temple. We are passionate about connecting our faith to the way we farm. We've relied on God’s providence through-out the whole business.”
Greive, a gifted athlete, 他在西雅图市中心长大，在尔湾的康考迪亚大学(Concordia University Irvine)“积极参与校园活动”.
"I loved the small classes, the small vibe,” he says. “Compared to my friends at big public schools I had ten times as many friends. I loved every minute of Concordia and thought it was the best place ever.”
他来打棒球，但对这项运动感到厌倦，于是被招募去扔标枪.
“Track was amazing because the team was super diverse,” he says. “I had roommates from all over the world: Africa, Mexico, Asia. It was a really cool group of people. Coach Blutreich will forever be the ultimate mentor to a college kid. 他以一种独特的方式分享他的信仰，这对一个大学运动员来说是如此的引人注目. He was a big part of my life in college. I still want to be like him.”
Greive also joined the handbell choir, first as a joke.
“Some of us jocks thought it would be hilarious,” he says. “But the funny thing is we had an amazing teacher, a fun guy, super cool and he got us totally into it. We loved playing handbells.”
Greive even received a scholarship for it. “It exposed me to a totally different crew than athletics did,” he says. “That was a blessing. To meet amazing people in the music department opened my eyes to a different side of campus. 和我所有的朋友一起巡演的感情和回忆真的很酷.”
Greive also helped found the Chinese language club. 当一位国家竞走教练访问校园时，另一个惊喜等待着他.
“整个田径队都在笑，说竞走会有多有趣, so I said, “如果你们愿意的话，我会穿上我能找到的最短的短裤去竞走。,’” Greive recalls.
但赛后客队教练告诉格里夫，他有教科书般的状态，并敦促他继续从事这项运动. Five weeks later, Greive had qualified for nationals and earned sixth place at championships, making him an All-American race-walker and javelin hurler.
“I was a hundred pounds heavier than anyone else in the race, but I can probably walk as fast as I can run,” he says. “Something about how bowed legs work with hip movement. I had a short but crazy race-walking career.”
美国队邀请他去试训，但格里夫已经去了另一个方向. 在他找工作的时候，三个朋友分别建议他考虑参军.
“I thought, ‘Maybe God’s trying to say something,’” he says. “I prayed about it a lot.”
这些祈祷使他在海军陆战队服役四年，担任情报官员. His year in Iraq was a terrific cultural experience, he says. “I learned a lot about the middle East and learned conversational Arabic. Everyone came home in one piece. We felt like we really had an impact for the better.”
Greive then returned to civilian work, earned his CPA license and landed a job with a good accounting firm. But “I wasn't passionate about what I was doing,” he says. “I always knew I wanted to do entrepreneurship.”
Meanwhile, arthritis plagued him and in desperation he changed his diet. Going paleo—a diet of meats, fish, fruits, 蔬菜和健康的脂肪让他和他的家人感觉更健康，他们开始寻找牧场饲养的鸡来吃. It was the first step toward a new lifestyle—and a new career.
我从来没打算务农但上帝为你打开了一些门如果你愿意走进去, amazing things can happen.
“我从来没有打算务农，但上帝为你打开了一些门，如果你愿意走进去, amazing things can happen,” Greive says.
After raising the first batch of fifty chickens and selling them on Facebook, Greive and his family members realized they had a viable business. 格里夫开始在上班前和下班后把钱投入到经营和农业中. They soon won a $15,000 entrepreneurial award from UCLA, which made it realistic to try farming full-time.
格里夫回忆起离开固定工资是多么困难，他说:“这并不全是好玩和游戏。. “At one point we were down to ten bucks. It has been at very rock bottom for us.”
A major boost came from a 2013 Kickstarter campaign that caught national attention and was featured on MSNBC, L.A. Weekly and AOL.com. Dubbed the “Let’s build a farm together” campaign, it raised $60,000.
原始牧场与土地所有者和较小的卫星农场签订租赁或互惠协议, 允许他们在不属于他们的土地上放牧，避免大量的资本投资. 在不到三年的时间里，他们的家庭农场和七个合作农场经营了4000英亩的土地, with several thousand chickens for meat and eggs, a hundred head of sheep, a thousand pigs and five hundred cows.
他们从惨痛的教训中认识到，把鸡放在户外不加保护是一种灾难. Ninety percent of the flock was lost early on to coyotes, neighbor dogs, bobcats, hawks, owls and weasels. 因此，他们开始使用“养鸡拖拉机”，这是一个倒置的大盒子，可以在鸟类吃草时保护它们. They pull the tractor daily to a new location on the grass. The chickens fertilize the lawn as they eat, regenerating the soil.
They also bought nine guard dogs, a mix of Anatolian Shepherd and Great Pyrenees, which “are the protectors of our whole farm,” Greive says. “At sundown they start patrolling the property, setting themselves up on a point where they can see what’s going on.”
Today, 格里夫仍然亲自宰杀每只鸡，每一部分都被用过——羽毛被扔进了堆肥堆, 内脏喂给看门狗，剩下的卖给消费者和食品企业.
Greive, who is finishing up an MBA at UCLA美国正计划在全国范围内推广原始牧场的轮牧制度. His idea, called Pasture Birds, 涉及到一项专利技术，在草地上放牧更多的鸡, eating bugs and worms.
“如果我们想改变世界，我们需要将价格降至接近商店售价的水平,” he says. “Pasture Birds will scale the idea way up, 使用对土地有益的方法生产接近传统价格的牧场家禽, the animal and the consumer. It’s a big deal. 我们正在吸取过去三年做《赌博十大平台排行》的经验教训，并把它放在一个超大规模的系统上. 想想每年你会对成千上万英亩的土地造成的影响.”
The Pasture Birds idea has already won $25,000 from the American Farm Bureau, and more than $30,000 in a separate award.
Greive says he is grateful “to rely on my passion for what I do for a living. 最大的幸福就是每天早上醒来，知道自己正在做出改变. With this venture I feel like I’m having an impact on things that matter.”
Learn more about Primal Pastures at primalpastures.com.