Beef Herdshares. Fresh Chickens. Big Fat Sale.

It's been extra busy the last couple of weeks, so I missed getting a newsletter out last week and this one later than hoped. We processed two batches of chickens this week and also hauled eight fat beef in for harvest so that added to the typical weekly chore load. 

August is the month when most farmers start getting burned out after humping it since early spring and then dealing with the heat and humidity of summer.  We experience this most years, one vegetable farmer I was chatting with last week refers to it as "Angry August”.  

 

But fall is around the corner and we are looking forward to cooler weather and a gradual slowdown in the daily chore schedule.  Our last batch of broiler chicks will be out of the brooder house and into the pasture shelters next week, as well as the rest of the Thanksgiving turkey poults. Once the brooder house is empty we are saving at least 90 minutes per day of chick care chores.

 

Pictured above is our growing cow-calf herd along with our bull Nio (standing to the right of the white faced cow), who will be busy for the next few weeks getting all these girls bred. He was 100% effective last fall with a smaller group of ladies and we are hoping he can replicate that success this year.  

 

We have been trying to come up with a simple beef herdshare program for several months to help us finance the current high cost of beef calves and heifers as we grow our beef herd. Even with President Trump's recent decision to import foreign beef to drive down high beef prices, we are expecting beef calves and heifers to be very expensive this fall.  We need to buy approximately 100 six-to-eight month-old weaned calves this fall to replace our finishing herd and add some additional heifers to the cow-calf operation next fall.  

 

We are expecting to pay $2,500-$2,700 per head at current prices, meaning we have to come up with at least $250,000 over the next several months to continue growing our herd. While we can borrow some of that money, we are trying to pay down our credit lines and would prefer not to go deeper into debt. 

 

We have almost 50 head of 100% grass-fed beef that are ready for processing this fall (September through December). Most of those we will process into parts and sell by the cut in the farm store, where we make a decent profit.  

 

We have a long wait list for custom beef (a side or half-beef) which is a more economical way to purchase beef for our customers but we don't really make a profit selling that way with the high calf prices of the last two years.  

 

We will only allocate 20 sides of beef this fall for custom ½ beef orders, and will make those available to the first 20 customers that sign onto the beef herdshare program.  It's pretty simple, just pay a $6,000 deposit at signup and receive a custom half-beef this fall, and another half-beef next year no earlier than July.  We will hold our custom beef prices for herdshare owners at the current $8.95/lb.(hanging weight) for both years even if we raise them for non-owners. For each half beef order we will apply $3,000 of the deposit toward the cost of the meat and processing fees.

 

If interested in purchasing a beef herdshare please email me (reply to this email) and I will send you the simple one-page agreement to review and answer any questions. Scheduling preferences for half-beef orders this fall will be based on timing of signing on to the program. 

 

Anna has been shipping quite a few 4-dozen packs of eggs this week in specially-made boxes and padding and it seems to be working out pretty well with just a few hiccups. These are freshly-laid unwashed and unrefrigerated eggs that should be good on the counter for 3-4 weeks or even longer if you put them in the fridge. Order online now and save yourself a trip to the farm store.