As I was setting out to write this week’s article I noticed the counter in the upper part of the page showing that I’ve written five hundred blog posts for the farm since 2014. I’ve been cranking out an average of one post per week for nine years. I had not been tracking this, so […]
Roald Dahl’s books and stories have been a persistent influence in our family’s fiction. I’m pretty sure that my kids read all of his children’s novels, exhausting our local library’s collection and then pulling in the rest of the books from the county’s inter-library loans. They’ve even enjoyed some of his short stories written for
Listening to Plants Talking Read More »
This week we began the spring cycle of chickens, with the first batch of newly hatched chicks going into our brooder. We normally time our hatch dates to start earlier in the month, but this year it made more sense with our family schedule to delay things a few weeks. The weather is fickle, as
Back to the Brooder Read More »
I was in Arizona for a few days this week, and I’m sure it surprises no one that my sightseeing was more focused on agriculture than on landscapes. Wherever I travel, my head is always on a swivel, looking to see what’s growing, as I attempt to pick up on all the details of how
How the Other Half Farms Read More »
We are developing some new chicken products to offer this summer once the pasture season gets underway. We need feedback from our customers to know how to prioritize our work on the sorts of items people would like. We’d really value your responses to these questions. Your results are collected anonymously. Please feel free to
New Chicken Product Poll Read More »
There’s often an expectation that beef stew is a cold-weather meal, but I’ve noticed that our customers tend to order stew cubes consistently year-round. And that seems right to me. I think there are times when our bodies just know what they need, and sometimes a hearty, slow-cooked meal hits the spot perfectly. This week
Recipe: Grass Fed Beef Stew with Fried Parsnip Chips and Gremolata Read More »
Someone recently asked me if our beef was certified as grass fed by the American Grassfed Association. The question itself was straightforward but it caused me to do some thinking about certifications, trying to understand what kind of value they represent for us as farmers and for all of our customers. Food products are a
Is the Farm Grass Fed Certified? Read More »
We’re certainly no strangers to snowstorms in March, so this week’s big snow wasn’t entirely out of place. We have a system in place on the farm that can handle the usual range of storms we get, although I’m sure there are upper limits to what we could deal with. With snowstorms that drop two
When the Snow Gets Deep Read More »
We wanted to let everyone know that we’ve been making some changes for the better with our butter. We’re still having the butter churned by the ever-capable folks at Kriemhild Dairy, but we’re sourcing the cream from Tom McGrath at Family Farmstead Dairy just south of us in Worcester. Tom’s cream checks off several boxes:
Good News for Butter Read More »
During the recent Superbowl, in some midwestern regions agricultural interest groups aired commercials with titles like “We are the 96%.” The goal was to promote more understanding among the public that the majority of farms in America are family farms. Polls indicate that most people believe that most farms are corporate-owned, and the perception of
Family Farming: There’s Got to Be More to It Read More »
