The brooders are full for the last week with broilers. Tuesday’s shipment starts the countdown to the final butcher day - Halloween. This has been a great season for broilers. Biggest change this year was through the hatchery. We have become a steady enough customer that we can get more frequent deliveries but still qualify for bulk pricing. This turned out to be a really nice change in that the batch size is smaller so we can process at a consistent weight. In the past we would butcher a batch of chickens over several weeks, yielding very large and very small birds. Now, when the birds are ready we can process them all at once.

We have found that folks want small whole birds are large boneless skinless breasts. So the downside is that we have had less big birds to part out. We still have some variation and the largest still go to parts.

Another change was adding halved and spatchcocked chickens to the offering. Processing these birds in this way helps out smaller families and the grill masters. We plan on keeping these cuts on the product list as they have worked out well.

And now for the big question- when are we going to have a ‘farm fresh’ day???? These are days where you can get chickens that we butcher in the morning and you can take home and cut up, stockpile, or cook that night. Not sure this day will be…however, we will have at least two before the end of season!

We have a very strict rule concerning eggs…if you didn’t pick here yesterday- you can’t pick here today. A good rule. On occasion, more than we would like, we find a hen that has found a spot to hunker down and try her hand at hatching eggs. A broody hen is easy to spot- she leaves only to eat and drink. She is surrounded by a rooster and his flock, has a hide-away in the hay stack, and the spunk to fend off any potential poachers.

So we left her alone. Everyday we would check her, occasionally she would toss an egg out of her clutch of eggs. Anita would crack it open in the compost pile- it had soured and she had rejected it. Amazing what she can smell through the shell. She had tossed four or five over the last couple of days and we were beginning to think this was a waste of time and this girl should drop her broody habits and get back to laying eggs for sale.

Tonight I checked her- lifted her off her clutch to check her eggs. There were still about 8 eggs left. I had lifted her straight up and was starting to set her back down on her clutch when she twitched a wing and out dropped a chick!! Amazing! Anita had a rough day and this was a real mood changer. We didn’t want to disturb her much as the chick looked only a day old and needed the services of ma.

Most of you know- we buy day old chicks and do not hatch on the farm. In fact, since we are running a slaughterhouse we are a bit more focused on the end of life- rather than the start of it. It was nice to see this chick today. A nice step toward complete sustainability. I can’t wait to check on her in the morning!

Hey Folks,

The market season is on and things are busy here at the farm. We are in full swing with chicken, ahead a bit with pork and our latest flock of layers is coming on line. Most of our first cutting of hay is up, the garden is planted, and the turkeys are almost ready. Yeah!

Couple of new cuts for chicken this year. First, we are halving more of the big birds right down the middle (backs removed) to make for a more manageable, quicker meal. For the grill masters out there, we are spatchcocking whole birds as well. This process basically unrolls a chicken to increase surface area to reduce cooking time on the grill. We make a few tucks and trims as well to try and make it cook evenly.

For pork, we are adding St. Louis style ribs by the full rack. We are also saving organs for the braver souls out there. (Side note: who ordered the pancreas?) We should have chops back in stock by next Wednesday’s market. We will also offer pork shares late this winter, so keep some freezer space open if your interested.

We are looking for a summer intern who would like to learn about our small farm enterprise, work outside, help on butcher days and maybe even try his or her hand at a small farm endeavor of their own design. If you know a responsible and strong person who might fit that bill please have them contact us by email or by phone 541-323-1065.

More news (I should write more often!): Cafe 3456′ has switched over to Great American Eggs in their restaurant. They serve breakfast and lunch at the Bend Airport- check them out if you can- everything we have tried there has been wonderful! Also, Devore’s grocery store on Newport Avenue has starting carrying our eggs- now there is no excuse for running out of our eggs! Schoolhouse Produce in Redmond (recently relocated to Highland) is running a trial with our chicken- we will see how it goes but we are hopeful we are a good fit for their customers.

As for fresh chicken days- we are thinking about July 11th, but will confirm soon. We hope a few can make it out for fresh chicken and a walk about the place!

We will have freshly butchered chicken at the markets this week!

We are targeting a bit smaller bird this year as we have more control over our schedules now that we are done with the government stuff. These birds will be right at 8 weeks and we are hoping to keep them below 5 lbs….we will see.

There will be no farm sales this weekend….stay tuned for ‘fresh option’ days!

The Great American Egg will be at the same markets this year as last! The schedule is as follows:

Wednesdays 3-7pm Drake Park starting June 2nd.
Fridays 2-6pm St.Charles Hospital starting June 4th.
Saturdays 10-2pm Northwest Crossing starting June 26th.

Hope to see you there!

In order for eggs to be resold in Oregon they must be ‘handled’ based on the ODA regulations. On the mass of the eggs this makes some sense- if you the carton says ‘large’ you should have some assurance that you’re really getting a large dozen. I have not issue with this….my problem is that we are no a large producer that has several outlets for non-large eggs. Our older hens drop jumbos and our younger hens drop medium sized eggs. Unfortunately there are no provisions in the regulations for an ‘as-laid’ dozen. Nor is there a provision that says individual eggs can be any size as long as it adds up to a ‘large’ dozen.

So what do we do with jumbo and medium eggs? These eggs have to go into the unlicensed carton. The ODA did offer a suggestion- if I was to label the carton ‘PEEWEE’ eggs then I could put any size egg into the carton as there is no restriction on the maximum size of an egg- just the minimum. Sounded good for a while- but we starting thinking about how many people actually will look inside a carton and determine what size the eggs really are. Selling direct we can talk, explain, somewhat rationalize what we do…but not from a grocery shelf. So back to large eggs.

Check out the fancy new label! Here!

Down side of all this is this pretty label costs about 19 cents a pop!! And, of course, grocery stores want lower prices- yet it costs a premium to package the eggs for them. All this started when the ODA was reading this blog - found out I was selling eggs to Scanlons and wrote us saying we needed a license. So it goes…. Does Scanlons care about a label? Do we? Nope. I know I have ranted about this before but Camus says it best - “Integrity has no need for rules!”.

You would not believe the weight that has been lifted off our shoulders- I think we are officially done with the revenuers!! Much to post about- turkeys are out, the brooder house is full of meat balls and the pasture is doing really well. We have the market garden area finished with netting and hot wire, and the potatoes are in (about 300 fingerlings).

It is a wonderful feeling to be looking forward instead of watching our backs!

Thanks much folks for helping us through the winter….from here on- maybe we can just be farmers not pseudo lawyers!!

We are back to the normal Sunday drop (3-4pm in the Drake Park parking lot). We will have plenty of eggs this week with the extra day and our new Barred Rocks are starting to lay. These gals are almost outpacing the Australorps but have a ways to go with their size still.

We have a couple of new pork cuts to offer this year- Chinese Spare Ribs and Back Fat (yes, fat). Spare ribs were not a big mover last year (a lot of work/not a lot of meat), so this year we have something for the stir fry. This cut is just a spare rib cut lengthwise into 1 1/2″ lengths so they are ready for quicker preps (Thanks to Nancy for the idea!).

Back Fat is to render for lard- yes the real deal. Now you can dump that jar of crystallized cottonseed oil (Crisco) and render the real deal. Together, confit can make a come back, or soap, or perfect pie crusts, and even keep a tub around for the frying.

We also have lots of leg cutlets. We had some of these tenderized cuts made with our last batch of legs last year, but now we think this will be a standard cut- we will see. We are out of shoulders and ground pork already- but fear not- we have a couple more heading to the butcher shop next week.

See you soon- and thanks so much for supporting us- without you, we couldn’t raise animals the way we do, and if we couldn’t raise our animals this way- we wouldn’t be farmers!!

Looks like we have been having trouble for a while with our contact form. If you have signed up but are not receiving emails from us please sign up again.  Sorry for the trouble!

Go here to sign up!

Hazel found a ladybug yesterday during chores….

The killdeer are everywhere….

The fields are turning….

The robins are buildings nests….

And we had rain today!  And even better we planted wheatgrass seeds yesterday!

All proof….it is spring…and like clockwork.