Bayou Profile | Building Soil and Feeding Souls

article by Vanelis Rivera
photography by Kelly Moore Clark

IT ALL BEGAN WITH A DESIRE TO HAVE CHILDREN. Newly married, Taylor and Jadie Underwood sprang into building a life that would sustain a family. Naturally, they started with finding a home. So they moved into the former house of Taylor’s grandparents with plans to remodel. Still, amid such an exciting transition period, the couple encountered a concerning drawback. For three years they struggled to conceive which led Jadie to seek medical attention. She was diagnosed with endometriosis, a disorder in which tissue grows outside the uterus making it increasingly difficult to become pregnant. Not wanting to despair, she welcomed treatment options but found the doctors to be generally unhelpful. That’s when she took matters into her own hands. Her intuition led her to more holistic pathways and she noted that one of the aspects of her life she could control was food. This newfound path of food discovery directed the couple to start looking for alternative ways of living. Approximately seven years later, the Underwoods are a family of six operating a 51-acre, first-generation regenerative farm in Downsville, Louisiana.

Before farming, marriage, and now four kids, Taylor’s life was rooted in West Monroe. Though he grew up “out in the country,” he didn’t grow up farming. His only animal companions at the time were family dogs. Jadie, on the other hand, grew up in the close-knit community of Linville, Louisiana, but “moved everywhere” with her family gaining an impressive résumé along the way. At an early age, she worked at a hardware store, and when her family moved to Minnesota, she worked at a few ranches predominantly focusing on equine management. She finished high school in Oklahoma, while also working at a ranch. When she returned to West Monroe, she began working at a bank. At that time, Taylor was finishing college in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. “I didn’t know her at all,” says Taylor, who was friends with her brother. At a family event, Taylor was mentioned in conversation and Jadie’s curiosity led her to add him on Facebook. “We got to talking on there a bit,” says Taylor. After eight months of long-distance dating, Taylor moved back home from school, and less than a year they were married.

When Jadie turned to the practice of using food as a method of healing, the Underwoods began educating themselves. Their first introduction to the significance of regenerative farming came by way of the documentary Food, Inc. (2008), a harrowing examination of the industrial food complex. Taylor was particularly inspired by Joel F. Salatin, an American farmer, who appeared in the documentary. Salatin advocates for responsible earth stewardship, emphasizing farming methods that thrive under symbiotic feeding cycles, ultimately benefitting a farm’s ecosystem. At that point, the Underwoods weren’t necessarily planning to farm, but the greatest takeaway was, “Food is definitely something that we need to care more about.” They thought of their future children, wanting to create a culture of self-reliance, sustainability, and clean eating. In 2017, when the couple finally got pregnant, they knew it was time to move out of their subdivision and find land. Their homesteading dream was to raise their kids differently, wanting them to learn how to care for animals, grow their food, have room to play outside, and expand their imaginations. More than a farm, they desired a way of life. 

In 2018, when they bought what would become 3 Board Farm, the Underwoods had no idea what they were doing. “A lot of ours was trial and error,” says Taylor. First came the chickens, which proved to be their gateway farm animal. When six chickens suddenly turned into fifty, plans to create an agricultural infrastructure gained momentum. The cow pastures followed. Currently, the family has Luella, a Jersey-breed milk cow with a whole lot of sass. Roaming in the same pasture is a herd of Katahdin sheep which includes the matriarch Esther, a ram, and even twin lambs. A few miles from the farm, merrily grazing on 35 acres is the farm’s “beef crew.” On this end of the farm, the beef cattle that come and go are typically a mix of  Beefmaster, Hereford, and Angus breeds. The couple also started raising meat chickens in late 2020. “We did a small batch to make sure we could keep them alive and know what we were doing. And we kept the first batch to make sure they tasted well,” informs Taylor. The Cornish Cross is a hybrid breed characterized by its quick growth—on average five pounds in eight weeks. Two pigs were also added to the farm around the same time. As with the meat chickens, they wanted to experiment with raising techniques. Currently, the family has quite a drove of pigs—a litter of piglets, three “momma pigs” and a boar, each a crossbreed of Berkshire, Duroc, Chester, and Mangalitsa. Not too long ago, Taylor unlocked an unexpected achievement when their sow Scarlett started making a nest to farrow. When Taylor checked on her around 10:30 PM, he had a gut feeling that he needed to oversee her labor. By midnight, she birthed her first piglet but stopped progressing which could result in death. By 1:20 AM, Taylor gloved up and started pulling piglets. This was his first time! By 5 AM he had pulled fourteen piglets from an exhausted Scarlett, who then received some grain and a bucket of maple syrup and water. 

“With learning new skills comes lots of failures,” wrote Jadie on the farm’s Facebook page in 2022. Beneath the post, a picture displays a smirking Jadie, squatting to milk a cow with her third child strapped on her back. The earnest post lists the challenges of learning new farm skills and, at times, starting over “from scratch.” She confesses that amid “subpar meals” and constant overwhelm, what keeps pushing her onward is the realization that her children won’t have to learn those hard lessons because as parents they are setting up a groundwork of knowledge. As far as Taylor is concerned, he is raising men and women, which is to say he wants his children to be capable. And that they are! If you visit 3 Board Farm, you’ll likely spot three sandy-blond children clad in rainboots perched on a gate, playing with chicken feed as if it were a sandbox, or loving on the meat chickens as they feed. “They’re very confident,” says Taylor. The family doesn’t have television service, and screen time is limited intentionally. Of course, from a health standpoint, extensive outdoor play at such a young age has more than likely attributed to powerful immune systems. This approach has been proven time and again. One time, their second child, at two years old, stepped on a fresh cow patty and was found boot in hand, licking the bottom of it. For Taylor and Jadie, this wasn’t as horrific as most would think. After all, their cows tread on premium dirt.

“We’re very passionate about the way we farm,” says Taylor. By practicing regenerative agriculture, 3 Board Farm centers on land management methods that build soil health in an environmentally conscious manner. Though the term was coined in the 1980s, the ideals and practices of this farming approach are thousands of years old and can be traced to Indigenous populations worldwide. The Underwoods don’t use chemical fertilizers, herbicides, or pesticides; their animals are free of medication, antibiotics, and growth hormones. An important tenet of their farming approach is to mimic nature, which includes how their animals are raised. “Our goal is, of course, to raise healthy and delicious livestock and produce for our customers to enjoy,” emphasizes Taylor who ties it all back to building healthy soil. “Everything in farming is dependent on the soil and healthy soil is what regenerative agriculture offers.” The couple are also staunch practitioners of respecting animal welfare. Though some couldn’t imagine raising animals for harvest without getting attached, the couple has learned it is part of the process. They always get attached! They’ve named their cows, observed their personalities blossom, and even picked their favorites. And the chickens always have “goofy,” endearing personalities. They endeavor to provide their animals with the best life possible, treating them with dignity and respect, from birth to harvest. “We have a responsibility to care for the treatment of the animals we consume and the way those animals impact the earth. That’s why we choose regenerative agriculture. We believe in letting animals act and eat as God intended them to,” Jadie wrote in a Facebook post.

Another important aspect of the 3 Board Farm mission is to provide their community with access to food that is being raised responsibly. Since the farm’s inception, fostering community has taken a few pathways. Once a month, they host “Market Day” at their farm store located across from the farm. They stock up on their beef, chicken, and pork products, and often have products from other farms and makers. Vegetables from Current Farms have been on their shelves, and they have had fried pies from Kelly’s Pies. If you miss a market day, you can contact them as they are also open by appointment. Local stores and restaurants like Fiesta On Eighteenth, For His Temple Family Foods, The Back Alley Market, and the Lotus Club feature or use their products regularly. Recently, their reach has extended to Marksville where they have delivered 1700 pounds of hamburger to the Tunica-Biloxi Tribe of Louisiana as part of a USDA grant requiring recipients to purchase from local farms within 400 miles of the reservation.

What started as a journey of self-healing has transformed into a call for connection. Over the years, the Underwoods have touched the lives and tables of many people in our community, spreading the simple message of respectful and honorable farming. They hope consumers begin stepping into their power, recognizing that we are the driving force behind the food industry. The more we care about where our food comes from, the faster we can enact the change necessary to ensure our physical and spiritual well-being.