Store is OPEN!

Colonel’s Blog, Earthdate 21 June 2024…

Hey Y’all!

Good evening and happy Fast-Jet Friday! The fast jets today are both the Mighty-Mighty F-15E Strike Eagle flying low in the Lake District of England and in Wales this week. Welcome to summer! The calendar is finally agreeing with the temperature. It’s been really hot and dry here for the past week. It looks like the first chance of rain is next Tuesday night and we have temps over 95 degrees between now and then. Not a great outlook for a grass farmer! The animals are doing well and seem to be tolerating the heat without incident. The beef chickens are probably the most vulnerable and the batch nearest processing is the biggest concern. These birds grow so quickly that they give off a lot of heat and when that combines with extreme outside temps, you can run into issues. We will remove some panels on the sides of their pens to try to help with ventilation. As a whole, the beef chicken operation is going smoothly and according to plan. We processed the first 3 batches, have batches 4 and 5 on pasture, batch 6 moves to pasture today, batch 7 is in the brooder, batch 4 will be processed early next week, and batch 8 arrives a week from today. We moved the bull into and out of the pen with the dairy cows this week. We needed Happy and Stella to be bred and we believe he got the job done! Stella was in heat first and Happy followed by about 3 days. The entire ordeal was basically a non-issue. As all indications were positive, we simply locked the dairy herd up, opened a gate, and walked him out. There was one pasture between him and his beef herd and as soon as he saw where they were, he moseyed a big quicker and rejoined them with no issue. A lot of this week, we spent off the farm in town.

Air2Ground Meats is ready to open! We’ve been working hard to get everything ready to open the store this weekend and are to the point that we can make it happen. The biggest issue this week was our inspection from the county health inspector. As is typical for all inspections, there was a lot that the inspector was concerned with that we had never even considered. Like, there were a couple of areas where there weren’t baseboards. It’s an old building and we knew it didn’t look perfect, but who really cares? The health inspector does, that’s who! Not only did the baseboards have to be in place, but they all had to be sealed to the floor to ensure no insects could enter the building. You can imagine where it went from there. We fussed back at the "requirement" to have a handwashing sink separate from the bathroom sink and received a reluctant "approved to open" without one but, “if you expand at all….” It took us a couple of days to get all of the stuff accomplished to get things up to expectation but none of it was a big deal, just a bit of time. We have 4 chest deep freezers, the beef freezer is in the pics, chicken, pork, and lamb. We bought expandable freezer organizers to separate the different cuts of meat and have additional stock below the bins. We have 4’ chalkboards above each freezer identifying the cuts and prices within. We also have a couple of 4’ chalkboards behind the register area for messages, sales, and such. We’re very excited to be working with a couple of local folks to bring additional products. We are working with a local roaster who is roasting us A2G coffee! Check out the pic with the description of each coffee. It’s really good! We will also have Ainsworth Confections offerings. We are starting with a couple of sugar-free, gluten-free items and baclava--check out those pics! We will have a couple more additions and will announce those soon. If you are in the local area, stop by and see us! Shelley and I will both be there this Saturday, 22 June from 0900-1500. Our open hours are Tue/Thu from 1300-1730 and Sat 0900-1500. We look forward to seeing you!

Our Sunday video was a look at how 2 people can raise 550 meat chickens. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gs2-11XIg4A&list=UULFNqaipbTwMJVyld1tmsaCkA&index=2&pp=gAQBiAQB

Thursday’s Dust’er Mud Podcast was a look into the recent Michigan Department of Agriculture and Rural Development raid on a farm co-op where they confiscated almost 250 gallons of raw milk and 1,200 organic eggs. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LdVENhrGynk&list=UULFNqaipbTwMJVyld1tmsaCkA&index=1&pp=gAQBiAQB

Cheers!

Psycho & Shelley