Saturday Farm Update - Fresh Chickens, Egg Update & Dairy Manager Position

FARM HAPPENINGS 
This past Wednesday we processed another batch of chickens, so we do have whole fresh and cutup chickens available in the farm store through Sunday at closing time.  Then we take our final batch of the season next Wednesday October 23rd, so we will have fresh chicken again in the store Thursday through Sunday.  After that we do have a good supply of frozen chickens stored in our freezers.  Not sure if it will be enough to get us all the way through to next June, but probably through February or March at least. 

 

We also cut up another 250 chickens into parts last week, so we do have all the chicken parts available in the store as well, including the airline breasts and leg quarters until they sell out. We do have another 700 or so whole chickens that we can cut into parts this fall.  Next year we will try to do more parts as they sell very well, but getting our processor scheduled to do more parts is the challenging part of the equation. 

 

As the days get shorter and the nights cooler, the hens egg production always decreases. So as many of our regular customers have noted we are regularly running out of eggs in the store, sometimes relatively early in the day.  The good news is we have reinforcements on the way.  

 

Last week we purchased 600 new organic pullets, which are young 16-17 week old hens that are just coming into their first laying cycle. We put them into a couple of our empty Mobile Range Coops that were recently vacated by the broiler chickens, so they are getting acquainted to our daily pasture rotations and enjoying the fresh grass and bugs.  

 

They should start laying eggs in the next week or two, but they will be small “pullet” sized eggs for the first few weeks then gradually increase to medium and large eggs over the next several months. Once the cold weather hits we will move them into the hoophouse for the winter.  

FARM STORE UPDATE

Our long-time farmer friend “Apple Mike” brought us a truck load of organic Michigan apples and apple products this week, and was also kind enough to stop by a Michigan co-op on the way and bring us a bunch of local, organic produce as well. 

 

Apple products include many varieties of fresh apples, plus freshly pressed cider, dried apple slices, and apple cider jelly. 

 

Local produce available in the store includes onions, broccoli, celery, spinach, acorn squash, spaghetti squash, butternut squash, red and orange peppers, beets, mushrooms, and radishes.  We also have boxes of local organic garlic from Garlic e-scape in Woodstock, and several varieties of organic potatoes from Igl Farms in Wisconsin, all recently harvested.  

 

And we are now carrying local organic pasta from Carosello Pasta - hand made with the same Janie's mill organic flours we carry in the store.  

 

Last but not least, we are looking to hire a Dairy Operations Manager, someone with experience that would allow us to transition back to twice-a-day milking so we would have more raw milk available for our customers.  The ideal candidate would be someone that grew up on a dairy farm milking cows with the family, maybe went off to study ag science in college, but misses the cows and wants to get back into dairy but the family has sold off the herd!  If anyone out there knows one of these folks please send them our way.  The full job description is on our website.

 

We are also running short of bags in the store, please bring us your used plastic or paper shopping bags so we can recycle them and keep them out of the landfills.

 

Cheers,

Cliff, Anna, and the Farm Team