Matt Gentry | The Roanoke Times

Sammy, an Ancient White Park bull, shares a pen with females on Leaping Waters Farm in Alleghany Spring. Alec and Sarah Bradford own the small farm and use environmentally conscious practices to raise their livestock breeds and to grow heirloom vegetables.

Sarah Bradford, 40, and daughters Sadie (left), 2, and Tallulah, 3, walk the lane from their home on Leaping Waters Farm in Alleghany Spring. Bradford's husband, Alec, says she is the "heart and soul of the farm."

Homer, a large English black pig, churns up the soil on Leaping Waters Farm. To keep the pastures healthy during the grazing season, farm owner Alec Bradford alternates the grazing cattle with foraging heirloom pigs and chickens, a process that aerates, fertilizes and sterilizes the fields without manufactured fertilizers or chemicals, he says.

Alec Bradford, owner of Leaping Waters Farm, says despite today's deepening economic recession, the demand for the farm's "beyond organic" heirloom beef is much higher than the family can supply.

ALLEGHANY SPRING -- Alec Bradford stood in muddy boots on a recent Thursday morning, huddling against a cutting winter wind as he surveyed his herd.

His quiet voice was almost drowned by the bang-clang of cow horns against metal poles as the world's oldest cattle breed ate from a round bale feeder.

The wild white cows of Celtic lore, today called Ancient White Park, paid little mind as the clean, sunny smell of good hay eddied around them in the frigid air.

Two years ago drought dried up pastures and hay prices hurtled into the stratosphere, Bradford said.

But he and his wife, Sarah, held on to Leaping Waters Farm, using her salary as a physician to help them over the worst.

Despite today's deepening economic recession, the demand for the farm's "beyond organic" heirloom beef is much higher than the family can supply, Bradford said.

Leaping Waters beef was served at presidential inaugural events in January and is sometimes available at restaurants in New York City, Charlotte, N.C., and Washington.

In February, the Bradfords were invited to Fashion Week, where organizers promoting a new line of organic clothing by designer John Patrick set up a farmers market in New York City's Garment District.

There they sold their beef to "people who looked like they never eat anything ... but they were totally receptive," Bradford said. "It was one of the strangest experiences of my life."

The Bradfords join a growing list of small family farms across the New River Valley that use environmentally conscious practices to raise rare livestock breeds and heirloom vegetables for sale.

The farm

Bradford, 33, grew up working on his family's Tennessee farm until a stroke forced his grandfather to give up farming. The younger Bradford reluctantly left farming for a time to work at an Italian winery and then at a trade magazine in New York.

In 2004, he married Sarah and the couple moved to Montgomery County, where they started Leaping Waters Farm. Both the 325-acre farm and the Bradfords' 3-year-old daughter, Tallulah, are named after a waterfall behind the farmhouse.

Tallulah is a Native American word for leaping waters, Bradford said.

Together the family looks after heirloom pigs, chickens, cattle, horses, guinea fowl, dogs and even a small group of wild turkeys. They also grow and sell organically grown produce through a farm-direct CSA, or community-sponsored agriculture program.

Leaping Waters beef, pork, eggs and vegetables are available at farmers markets in Salem and Blacksburg and at select restaurants up and down the East Coast through Heritage Foods USA, a distributor of organic and heirloom products.

And on that list, Leaping Farm beef ranks high not only for the cache of the cattle raised there but also for how it is raised.

The cattle

The ancestors of Ancient White Park cattle are thought to have roamed the forests of the British Isles before the birth of Christ.

According to the Ancient White Park Cattle Society of North America, mentions of the wild breed can be found in early Irish sagas and the cattle may have been used in Celtic and Roman rituals.

"Park" was added to the breed name when the great estates of the British Isles were fenced, or emparked, in the 13th and 14th centuries, according to the society's Web site.

Some estimates put the worldwide Ancient White Park population at about 1,200, although there may be more. By summer, about 80 of the storied white cattle will graze the pastures and hilly woodlands at Leaping Waters.

Only a handful of farms across the United States are known to breed the Ancient White Parks. Two of the largest and most well-known American herds live at the B Bar Ranch in Montana and at Heritage Farm in Decorah, Iowa, home of the nonprofit Seed Savers Exchange.

In the 1980s, B Bar Ranch and Heritage Farm mounted an effort to build new herds of these ancient animals. Today they are helping small farms such as Leaping Waters spread the breed across the country.

Alec Bradford said he chose this breed because he found its history fascinating and the meat to be extremely flavorful.

And, Bradford said, because they were traditionally feral, Ancient White Parks thrive on the grass, weeds and brush that cover the hilly pastures of his farm.

The Bradfords built their current herd on cattle bought from Heritage Farm, where the breed has become a tourist attraction drawing about 20,000 visitors annually, Seed Savers Exchange Director George DeVault said.

One recent morning DeVault said he was out on the farm with his dog, shivering in the minus-34 degree weather as he watched the Ancient White Parks graze.

"They didn't seem to mind a bit. They were munching hay. ... Now that's something special. You want to keep genetic characteristics like that alive," he said.

"Modern breeds and varieties don't have that hardiness. Old-time breeds have the genetic code to perhaps save human kind one day," DeVault said.

The White Parks, with their snowy white coats and lyre-shaped horns also spark the imagination.

"When I walk out in one of the valleys here and see them, I'm not in northeastern Iowa in the 21st century. It takes me back to a different place," DeVault said. The cattle are "a living legacy that connects us with so many things in the distant past."

Better nutrition

The appeal of Leaping Waters' beef goes beyond a tantalizing story and a link to ancient history. Because all the farm's meat products are grass-fed, health-conscious consumers concerned about farming's effect on the environment are willing to pay a much higher price than consumers of conventional beef.

"My whole life I've heard beef is bad for you," said Phil Mosser of Shadowchase Farm in Craig County. "But what's wrong with the beef animal? Nothing. It's what we feed it."

Mosser and his wife, Mikie, used to produce cattle for sale to conventional feedlots, where they were fed corn and other cultivated grains to fatten them for slaughter.

But eight years ago, the family switched to pasture finishing and have rebuilt their business selling directly to consumers at their farm and at farmers markets. Their cattle range freely, eating good quality forage supplemented with kelp meal.

"We plant a lot of things for them: sorghum, clovers, alfalfa. We graze them at different times in different fields depending on what's growing well that season," Mosser said.

Studies show consumers may have good reason to spend extra on these products. A 2006 University of California Cooperative Extension Service report showed that grass-fed beef contains higher concentrations of vitamins A and E, as well as omega-3 fatty acids and conjugated linoleic acid than grain-fed beef.

"You've always heard that wild game is good for you. But you now have a beef animal that is better for you than wild game," Mosser said.

But not just good for your health. These farmers say their products are better for the environment, too.

To keep Leaping Waters' pastures healthy during the grazing season, Bradford uses a rotational grazing system developed by Joel Salatin of Polyface Farm in Staunton. Salatin's approach was made famous by the best-selling book "The Omnivore's Dilemma."

Both Salatin and Bradford describe their farm practices as "beyond organic." Using this system, Bradford alternates the grazing cattle with foraging heirloom pigs and chickens, a process that aerates, fertilizes and sterilizes the fields without manufactured fertilizers or chemicals, he said.

The market

Old Montgomery County farmers were warm, encouraging and welcoming when the family settled here, Bradford said.

But they did shake their heads and chuckle a little when he told them about his strange cattle and how he planned to make a go of it. But over time his sales have shown the veracity of his business plan.

"Nobody laughs anymore," he said.

That success comes from hard work, but also from a commitment to serving a particular market.

"People who buy grass-fed beef have a different relationship with their food than lots of people," said Shelley Fortier of Taylor Hollow Farms, a producer of grass-fed Angus beef.

And those customers make their purchase decisions based on more factors than price.

"A pound of Wal-Mart hamburger might be $2, but it has huge fat content and the origins of the beef are unknowable. I know more about my cow's lineage than my own," she said.

While Virginia's 20,000 beef farms generate more than $400 million a year and make up the state's second most important agricultural industry, according to a 2004 report from the USDA National Agriculture Statistics Service, small beef operations still face big challenges.

While Taylor Hollow's 48-head herd can supply small batches of meat to local customers directly from the farm and to Annie Kay's Main Street Market and occasionally to some restaurants, Fortier said her farm is simply too small to support larger-scale production. In fact, each new suburban development converts more of the area's farmland to residential use, reducing grazing land and pushing up land prices.

Most meat sold to restaurants and grocery stores must be processed in a USDA inspected slaughterhouses, which are scarce in Southwest Virginia.

When producers find a processor, it's simply a fact that processing the meat in small, identifiable batches drives up costs that must be passed on to consumers.

Finally, farmers say federal regulations written to govern large-scale industrial meat producers often burden small farms with expensive and unnecessary requirements.

"The U.S. government makes it very difficult to run a small farm, and very difficult for a family to feed its kids a healthy meal," Bradford said.

Still, Bradford said he thinks, and Virginia Tech agricultural marketing specialist Denise Mainville confirms, that niche-market beef production is in some ways insulated from economic downturns.

Farmers often develop a loyal and committed customer base, and those customers are loathe to go back to nameless, faceless products, Mainville said.

They may cut back on their spending and buy cheaper cuts, but they often won't betray their commitment to local farmers.

"That relationship is very key," Mainville said.