
Colonel’s Blog, Earthdate 30 April 2023…
Hey Y’all!
Good afternoon and happy Sunday!! It’s another beautiful spring day, sunny and mild temps. The animals are great today. We moved the flerd first thing this morning. They are now at the top of the hill (bottom middle pic), where the sheep will stay for a moment and the cows will move on. We plan to do a road-march this evening or tomorrow morning. We will utilize the county road for about 1/2 a mile—it’s legal to move your livestock on any road in Missouri. We’ll put a wire across a couple of driveways to deter the herd from visiting our neighbors and just walk them up the road to the gate at the top of the hill. We’re putting them back in the area they left a couple of weeks ago so we can unroll more hay while the grass recovers from their first pass. As the temps increase, the grass will grow faster and we won’t have to hold them back, but until then, we will have to pause grazing sometimes. The new beef chicks arrived Friday and are doing well in the brooder (bottom left pic). The beef chickens on pasture are continuing to grow freakishly fast. They should be ready to process in about 3 weeks. We believe they will yield 4-5 pounds dressed. Yesterday, 7 Guineas wandered through the female guardian dog pen and 6 made it out the other side. We haven’t trained the dogs to birds and it didn’t matter how much or loudly I yelled as I ran towards them, they were protecting their lambs from those intruding birds. The new beef calf (top pic) is doing amazingly well. She keeps up with the herd as we move them each day. Every time she runs, she curls her tail completely up above her back. Too cute. The market was great yesterday. It started a bit slow as the temps were cool and the skies gray, but by about 1000, it really picked up. Lots of new friends and great conversations. Any minute we are about to receive our new piglets (new training pen bottom right pic). 10 pure Berkshire pigs from top breeding stock. We are very excited to have them join the farm!
It is very encouraging to chat with folks at the market. Quite a few folks let me know they are reading and enjoying these blog posts. They look forward to see what is stuck in my craw each day. Also, we are realizing that we aren’t the only ones that really desire good quality food. Folks are very interested in not only what we are doing, but also how. We spend a lot of time talking about our desire to keep each animal in its natural environment. The pigs spend their days in the forest. The cows and sheep on pasture. We truly believe that allowing the animals to thrive in their natural environment is of utmost importance. The animals are able to thrive doing what they are meant to do. We believe the end product in the form of edible meat is of much higher quality because the animals live a good life. The cool thing is that there are also a lot of folks that believe the same way and appreciate how we are doing things. Our products are not cheap. We do our best to offer them at as low a price as we can so that the most people can enjoy a quality product, but that’s still more expensive than the stuff you can find at big stores. When we started this venture, we knew we were willing to pay more for a premium product, but we didn’t know if others would be willing to do the same. The more we are able to get the product in front of people, the more we see that others are willing to pay a bit more for a higher quality product. At the end of the day, we are producing amazing food for our family and are also able to offer some to others. We love this!
Local Farm Report for 28 & 29 April 2023:
Harvest:
53 Chicken eggs
27 Duck eggs
1 Goose egg
0 Guinea eggs
10 1/2 Gallons of milk
Cheers!
Psycho & Shelley
Like-mindedness...those words ran through my mind after chatting with you and Shelley Saturday.
And then I see the references in your blog to Joel S. in VA and I had that aha! moment.
Kathy and I were heading back to Springfield from a day or working on the property in Ozark Co. and she wondered aloud if you guys managed to get a visit at Polyface when you were at the big 5-sided brick edifice?
Thanks so much for being willing to share what you are learning and doing with novices like us. We are so glad to be close to settling in Ozark Co. with so many amazing people for neighbors!
Such a blessing!
Tim & Kathy