Farm Rants

New pictures

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Hibernation

YAWN……. winters tight icy grip is holding us firmly here in Idaho Falls. It’s a nice break from the endless labor of  spring, summer, and fall which the farm demands of Kevin and I. Still though, I cannot help myself, I still peak into the seed catalogs and dream of trying new varieties of kale, lettuce, peas, and squash. I also enjoy closing the seed catalog and knowing I am a ways away from the actual doing.

The farm is not completely without work right now though. We have ourselves almost 100 laying hens in the greenhouse which are demanding daily water, feeding, collecting eggs, and of course monitoring the health of the flock. Turning the the soil to keep the hens in clean conditions is another consistent chore which any sunny day finds me happily engaged in.

We have started to hatch chicks in the new incubator which can hold almost 300 eggs.  Over the next three days we should see between 50-80 new chicks hatch out.  I might be able to get some pictures or even a short video clip of the new chicks on here so keep an eye out for new content. Both Kevin and I can’t wait to see the new arrivals. Newly hatched chicks are adorable, entertaining, and have a way of drawing one into the spring mindset.

Other than the chicks and the occasional harvest of some carrots or a solid frozen onion or two the farm is fairly quiet.  Most of it is covered with snow, taking its well earned rest. Hopefully we are all enjoying our well deserved winter rest.

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Fresh Chicken

Chickens are ready!

I just wanted to let everyone know that our broiler chickens are getting bigger. I think they are about 5 lbs or so for the bigger ones and the smallest are probably around 2.5 lbs. We will start butchering next week and continue as we get orders and until they are all gone.  Our target dressed weight is 4 lbs but we can get them a bit smaller or larger depending on preference.  I wouldn’t really recommend going much over 6 lbs as the meat can get a little tougher at that stage, but if thats how you like your chicken then, by all means request that, they still taste  great in the  crock pot or pressure cooker.

Right now we have 25 cornish cross broiler chickens which are almost ready. 25 red broilers will be right behind them followed up by 25 jersey black giants after those.  We selected these three varieties as a test run of different production systems. We hope to score the final product on tenderness, flavor, cost of production, and survivability to come up with a reasonable production method and mix of birds. Feedback will be very important for this and we certainly welcome any feedback you have.

The final per pound price for chicken will be $3.50 and with a 4 lb target weight  each bird will be around $14.00. When placing an order please let us know if you want the giblets included. This price is for a whole chicken, optionally we may be able to cut and wrap the parts separately for an additional cost. Those of you who purchased chicken from us last year will notice the final per pound price is higher than last years price which reflects some lessons learned from last years trial run. We learned the actual amount of feed it costs us to raise our birds to maturity, the time it takes to feed and water our birds each day, and the mortality level we can normally expect as well.  The factors listed figured in to a more realistic price point for us to make raising chickens for meat something we can keep doing.

Get your orders in quick as we do not expect these chickens to last long and the extra will be taken to the farmers market in the next two weeks.

Dewayne

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Check out this interesting article

OK I shamelessly post this for the paragraph which reads

“Investments should be poured to promote organic farming which will not only benefit farmers in terms of income, promote better health and safer environment for all, but will also “make farms self-sufficient and farmers self-supporting” in the long run, he said.”

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Whats in the CSA share this week?

So I thought I would give a quick rundown of most of the contents from this weeks CSA delivery.

• Mesclun Mix
• Spinach
• Orach
• Radish Pods (affectionately refereed to as Rat Tails)
• Rose Pedals
• Mustard Greens
• Kale
• Cilantro
• Chard

As you can see the season is still young and the share reflects the abundance of greens growing on the farm at this time. Even a seasoned vegan might have trouble putting all this away in one week.

Enjoy your share everyone!

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