The Story
The family behind Christiansen's Family Farm is, confusingly and charmingly, not named Christiansen. They are the Thomas family, and they have owned and operated the farm since 2017. They kept the previous owners' name on the door because, as they put it, their values aligned so closely that they were proud to keep the business going under it. It is a small act of continuity that says something about how they see themselves: as stewards of something handed down, not founders of something new.
And they are not new to the work. The Thomases describe themselves as generational farmers and ranchers with deep roots, carrying forward the values and passion of those who came before them. They frame the whole enterprise in terms of stewardship, both of the land and of the animals, and that framing is explicitly faith-informed. They believe, in their words, that the animals are provided for human benefit, and that this makes it a moral duty to give those animals a comfortable life before harvest.
The farm sits in Fairfield, Utah, a quiet town in Cedar Valley, on 240 acres of grass and sagebrush where the animals have room to roam and forage. It is, emphatically, a working family operation. Every family member has a role, the children have been taught since they were small to treat animals with kindness, and the social-media record is full of branding days, kids on horseback, and the ordinary texture of a family farm.
What comes through most in their own telling is community. The Thomases say the greatest reward of farming has been the web of relationships it created: partnerships with local butchers, grain farmers, restaurants, and the individual eaters they have come to regard as friends. The business is built on monthly deliveries and CSA shares, the kind of model that depends on, and deepens, exactly those ties.
The Practices
Christiansen's is refreshingly direct about how its animals are finished, and that candor is the most useful thing about the profile. The cattle, in the farm's own words, are mostly grass-fed and given extra hay, alfalfa, and barley. The lamb is raised in the mountains, pasture-raised, and finished with barley. This is not a 100% grass-finished operation, and the farm does not pretend otherwise. It sits on the grain-finished side of an honest fork, and it names the grain.
That distinction matters for buyers in both directions. Grain in the finish tends to add marbling and a flavor profile many people prefer, while pasture-raising through the animal's life is the line that separates this kind of farm from a feedlot. Christiansen's animals roam large open pastures; the Berkshire pigs in particular get a five-acre paddock where they graze, root, and wallow in self-made mud holes, behaving like pigs. The farm raises beef, pork, and lamb, and credits its quality to attention to genetics, low-stress environments, and humane handling.
The Thomases do not use added hormones, steroids, or antibiotics on the animals they harvest for meat, and they describe running the farm with sustainability and efficiency in mind. The meat is sold whole and half, in boxes and bundles, and as individual cuts, with processing handled through their network of local butcher partners. We haven't stood in the pasture and watched, but the farm states its finishing practices plainly, including the grain it feeds, which is precisely the transparency PRB looks for: a producer telling buyers exactly where it sits rather than hiding behind a label.
Christiansen's Family Farm lists grass-fed, no antibiotics, no gmos, no hormones, and pasture-raised on their public-facing materials. These are the producer’s own claims; we do not independently audit them. Available locally in Utah.