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A big THANK YOU to our beef customers. You helped us sell out of our 100% grass-fed beef for the 2016 season within a few weeks. Your support for our small family farm is much appreciated!
We will have a few additional beef shares available for the 2017 season and have started taking names for an interest list. If you would like to tour the farm, meet the cattle, and understand our better-than-organic practices, please let me know.
We have a great crop of Seascape strawberries this year! With Emmetts's help, we harvested 10 gallons this morning. With the heat, they are tasting very sweet. As usual, they are grown without synthetics or sprays.
The Seascapes will continue to produce through September. We are delivering berries into McMinnville as we deliver to our egg customers in McMinnville.
We have also been busy making some great strawberry jam with just our organic strawberries, organic sugar, lemon juice and pectin. We cut back on the sugar so you can taste the strawberries!
You can ask my family and close friends....I always obsess about the quality and quantity of our haylage. I'm excited to report that we have met our quantity goals for the year. We might still get another cutting from some of our fields. You can see how our season started which was good but you can see below that I still had room in the storage yard.
Now that our storage yard is almost full, I can breathe a sigh of relief. I'm happy to report that the quality has been good with a balance of grass and clover.
The heat is here...well into the upper 90's today! Our lucky cattle get shade structures with misters to keep them cool. They are spoiled!
Moving day is always fun. The cows are excited to move into fresh pasture, and the chickens are eager to get onto the pasture and follow the cows.
The cows get their water, shade structures, and minerals moved into the fresh pasture. Chickens get their mobile coop, water and outdoor roost moved. Notice Emmett skillfully towing the mobile coop into position! As a team, we can get everyone moved in about 30 mins.
After the move is completed, our reward is to sit back and watch the animals have fun!
We practice intensive rotational grazing where we divide up our pastures into smaller blocks (or paddocks) for our cattle to graze. We size the paddocks so that the herd moves every 2-3 days into a new paddock. Soil and pasture health are improved naturally with our controlled grazing.
Michael makes setting up our movable cross-fencing easy and fast with his invention of a stake holder bag (my old golf bag) and colorful harness to hold the spool of wire.
Our beef customers are coming up with great ways to prepare their beef...like making stir fry, tacos, fajitas, roasts, burgers, and steaks cooked sous vide.
We simmer the beef bones over several days to make our flavorful beef stock that we use to make gravy, sauces, and soups.
For me, I like starting with one of our well-marbled steaks and season with salt.
Right before searing and slowly cooking on the grill, I will also add some thyme.
Haylage harvest has begun! Over the next 2 months, we will be harvesting enough feed for our cattle to thrive during the winter months. For those who don't know, haylage is pickled forage. You can find out more about our haylage here.
Today was the first step...all the equipment was prepared and the grass and clover has been cut. More tomorrow... we will bale the cut forage and wrap the bales. Cutting grass under a blue sky with fluffy white clouds and a sweet scent in the air...what's not to love!
One of the perks of our diversified farm is that we eat really well. We are still pulling out pre-cut frozen green beans, bell peppers and zukes that Emmett and I harvested and prepped from our summer garden last year. The grass-fed beef comes from our farm of course. This is our quick weeknight dinner.
The other day RooRoo, my Barred Rock chicken, got "loved" a little too much by Rudy and was injured really badly. Thankfully, my dads knew this chicken was important to me, and my Daddy brought her to the vet. For almost a week RooRoo lived inside our house with us until she was well enough to go outside again. She's back with her flock now and is growing her feathers back at a rapid pace. The hole Rudy made in her neck is now healed, and she enjoys the company of her flock.
Thank you to our loyal egg customers for buying my eggs.
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