Colonel’s Blog, Earthdate 12 June 2023…
Hey Y’all!
Happy Monday from Air2Ground Farms! It was a beautiful day today, cool this morning with a high of 75 this afternoon. We have had a total of 6/10” of rain over the past few days. The grass is growing again! The animals on the farm are doing well. The ruminants are all happy the grass is growing and are busily stuffing themselves with as much of the green stuff as they can. The all have full round bellies. The dairy cows are producing well with as much grass as they can eat. Yesterday morning we got 4 gallons of milk and another 1 1/2 in the evening. The beef chickens are doing very well and absolutely love their daily move to fresh grass. This group is more excited about the grass than the last group. The pigs are growing quickly and are always hungry. The ducks still haven’t figured things out. We are only getting 1-2 eggs a day. Hopefully they will sort it out soon. We had a good day at the market Saturday. It rained a few times but folks waited it out and shopped anyway. We are having more repeat customers which is exactly what we hope for. We missed some of our friends that had other commitments but enjoyed the conversations with other friends that were able to make it. The bottom pic is the front page of the Wright County Journal. The article is about The Little Farm Store, and we are one of the farmers that work with them. We’ve spent the past two days working on the old truck. The pic is of the remnants of a spring in the axle seal. The metal was floating around in the hub and all the way to the differential. We pulled the differential cover and drained all of the gear oil. We removed the hubs and axles on both rear sides and replaced the inner and outer bearings and the axle seal. We decided that while we had all of the tools out we should just do the other side as well, even though it wasn’t yet an issue. We took it for a test drive this afternoon and heard noises we couldn’t identify so brought it back to the barn. We believe it is the brake shoes slightly dragging on the rotors. As I attempted to start it for another test drive, the batteries were dead again. The new (rebuilt) alternator we just replaced isn’t charging. We’ll pull it and take it back to the auto parts store. It’s always something! At least we can get to the alternator on the truck. We think the side-by-side needs a new alternator also but can’t even find it!
Moving away from the poultry CAFOs, let’s look at where pork comes from. Like other Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations, pork CAFOs pack animals into cramped pens. The pigs are crammed together and spend their life on either concrete or slatted wood floors. They have no ability to root and no grass or greenery to eat. The pigs typically have their teeth and tails clipped to keep they from hurting each other or biting each others tails out of boredom. Contrast that to the pigs on our farm. They spend all of their days on the ground in the forest. They root around eating bugs, grubs, weeds, and grass. They spend their days being pigs, doing what pigs do. They get fresh ground every few weeks and are never bored. The pork from our forested pigs tastes amazing; we believe that their happy life is a major factor in the awesome flavor. Final thought: Your pork doesn’t come from the grocery store, it comes from a CAFO.
Local Farm Report for 10 & 11 June 2023:
Harvest:
56 Chicken eggs
0 Duck eggs
1 Goose egg
10 Gallons of milk
Cheers! Psycho & Shelley
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