Colonel's Blog, Earthdate 19 March 2023...
Hey Y'all!
Happy Sunday from Air2Ground Farms! WOW! The temps were cold this morning--19 degrees with a windchill of 12. The saving grace was that there were no clouds so the sun felt amazing and began warming things quickly. The animals are doing well except for the guardian dogs. We have 4 together in a pen next to the sheep with 2 inside the paddock with the sheep. (We also have 2 in a large paddock around the lambs but they are doing great.) Tank, our original male is permanently in with the sheep. He is amazing and does a great job training the other dogs. We rotate a 10-month old puppy in with him and have been switching puppies weekly. That has been working well for the past couple of months but things have been getting increasingly worse. The 4 in the pen by themselves are bored and have started fighting. That agitates Tank and he wants them to stop but can't get to them to make them stop so the next best thing, in his mind, is to go tell the puppy in the pen with him to stop...even though the puppy wasn't doing anything. The end result is two dog kerfuffles ongoing at the same time. No one really gets hurt but it sounds atrocious. Over the next couple of days, we will come up with something new to give them something to do and/or think about so they don't get bored. The hogs didn't get breakfast this morning. One thing we learned is that it is easier to get the hogs to do what you want if they are hungry. We will load 5 hogs in the livestock trailer this evening in preparation for their trip to freezer camp tomorrow. We have to leave before sunrise. We will back the trailer up to the loading pen and put food in the trailer. Since they will be hungry, they are less reluctant to go in. We plan to make a YouTube Video of the process for your viewing pleasure. We worked on house projects and edited a YouTube Video yesterday. We will continue house projects, finalize editing, and load the hogs today.
The pic above is a Happy Sunday pic of me and Shelley in front of our new Farmers Market sign with a pic of just the sign below. We are getting things prepped for the market to start the first Saturday in April. We went to the market for the 5 Saturdays of October last year. I was very reluctant to do the market as I despise selling things--I'm just not a salesman. In my mind was the British markets with folks yelling at you as you pass to come buy their wares. That is absolutely NOT the way it was. We set up our table with a sign behind us and a price list of the pork products we were offering. We had our frozen pork in a cooler and we eagerly awaited folks to walk up to chat. I was pleasantly surprised that everyone was kind and engaging, always asking about how we did things. I found it much more enjoyable than I could have imagined. It was more about telling folks what we are doing and why we do it that way than "selling" anything. With that knowledge in mind, I am excited for the market this year. We had a new sign printed with some updated language and our "Homegrown By Heroes" logo. We are a certified Veteran-Owned Farm, that matters to folks in this part of the country, and we are proud to display the logo. Last year, we often heard the comment that "I would buy something, but I don't have a cooler." In response to that comment, we purchased insulated grocery bags with our logo so folks have a place to put their frozen meat. Lastly, we purchased a 2 cubic foot freezer with a glass door to show off our products. Another common comment last year was surprise that we actually had frozen meat products with us, not just taking orders. So the glass-door freezer should make things more obvious. We still need to make some weights to hold down the corners of our tent. Last year, October was the middle of our second drought so we didn't worry about rain and thus used our 50 pound non-GMO feed bags as anchors. As you know, we moved away from the bags and we also want something that will work in all weather. Our plan is to buy 4 five-gallon buckets and pour 50 pounds of concrete in each bucket and then clip the tent strings to the buckets. We will try to get the corner weights complete this week and then we will be ready for the market!
Shelley's YouTube Short for today is another in the Farm Sounds series: Farm Sounds--Pig Back Scratches
Local Farm Report for 18 March 2023:
Harvest:
28 Chicken eggs
15 Duck eggs
0 Goose eggs
5 3/4 Gallons of milk
Sales:
N/A
Cheers!
Psycho & Shelley
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