Category Archives: Animals

Brooders are full

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We have turkeys and chickens filling the brooders and birds are already out in the field.

So far so good this season.  We have found a hatchery is able to get the young ones to us within 12 hours of hatching!  This has really improved the stock….at 4 weeks the weights are not great but they are consistent and we are optimistic.  We also rebuilt the brooders over the winter and compartmentalized things a bit.  This has helped keep the heat in and allowed better separation between feeding and sleeping.  Downside is the chicks are not as visible.  So far, the good out weights the bad- ah, sweet progress!

Pigs Nest??

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Here is a video of Piper preparing her nest during the early morning hours.  She started labor around 9pm later that same evening.   This is all natural behavior, one in which she is able to fully express on pasture.  It was also a great clue to us that labor was imminent.   She did not farrow well this winter so we wanted to keep a close eye on her this time around.  After giving birth to the first wiggling weaner about 9:30 last night….there were no more babies for almost an hour.  This is where Anita and her Vaseline coated arm came in to assist.  She was able to get the process moving again at a normal pace….and she now has six babies to care for.  Anita was amazingly calm and confident as she worked inside an animal at least four times her size.

Sow Nesting

By 2:30 am she was done…..and everyone was ready for  a rest.   When Taryn and I went to check on her in the morning she hopped up and went to the irrigation ditch for some water and a stretch.  We nervously watched as she laid back down next to her babies.   Taryn quickly huddled up the little ones as Piper worked up the hay (we added some fresh bedding while she was getting water) .  Once she was down she called to babies in to nurse.  By evening chores today…all is routine and everyone is doing fine.  Enjoy the video….it really confirms to me that this is the right path to food.

 

Flush with Pigs

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The sows and their litters came home yesterday. This means that we have four litters on the ground right now! Two sets are ready for butcher and will be offered up through winter pork boxes. The new sets – four weeks old right now…will be ready by the spring markets. These pigs will also be the first on the kale/turnip pasture. We are excited to see how this works. In the meantime, enjoy a video of the little guys greeting the morning.
Hamp/Tam Piglets

Newsletter – Spring 2011

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The 2011 Season is finally here! What a long, long winter…..but not too bad overall. We are trying out another format for emails – we really hope these reach everyone. Lots of things to talk about today as we have been a bit quiet lately- so here it is the latest and greatest from the Great American Egg.

The End of the Winter Egg Drop!

Thanks so much for supporting us through the winter! Even though the hens produce much less in the winter, they eat much more until the bugs arrive in the spring. This is an expensive time of year and without your support eggs would be a really tough enterprise. Thanks again!

First Butcher Day of 2011 – This Coming Monday!

Lots of things going on at the farm this time of year. The grass is getting ready for haying in about a month, three different sets of pigs are rooting up the fringe areas, and feathers are flying in the butcher shop.
We would like to invite you out to the farm on Memorial Day for fresh chicken straight from the chill tank. This is our first open day of the year and we plan on processing about 80 birds- so let us know if you would like one. We will have plenty of cut-up and frozen wholes as well. We are keeping the same deal as last year, where chicken is .50 cents/lb cheaper when picked up fresh on the farm! Pick up time is after 3pm.

New Products for 2011!

I am sure many of you remember the days before we found a smokehouse that didn’t use nitrites in thier cures. It has been a fun winter trying to discover recipes, and methods that work well with our pork. In addition to belly, cottage and jowl bacon; we are adding British bacon this year for you folks fond of lean bacon (that sounds like an oxymoron!). We have also tweaked the breakfast sausage a bit; however, it is still a classic mild sage flavor. Also, on the tenderloins we are offering medallions for the light meat eaters. We also now have USDA Rendered Lard! Lard is on of those items you never knew you couldn’t live without it! One customer even makes her mayonaise with it! Also, new this year is Lingucia – this is definitly our hottest suasage, heavily spiced with paprika.

A New Face! Meet Tayrn- our summer intern

Taryn will be working with us for the 2011 Season. She will be helping will all aspects of the farm as well as starting some sort of enterprise on her own (sheep, cattle, fish, we are still working out ideas). Taryn comes from the OSU geography department, worked many seasons on the family tuna operation in Astoria and just finished up baking for the winter up at Mt. Bachelor. Please welcome her- you can imagine the learning curve ahead for her.

Markets this Year


Wednesdays -- Bend, Drake Park -- 3-7pm
Fridays -- Redmond, Redmond Greenhouse -- 3-7pm
Fridays -- Bend, St. Charles -- 2-6pm
Saturdays -- Salem, Downtown -- 9am to 3pm

Resturants serving our Products


3456 -- Bend, Airport -- Chicken and Duck Eggs
10 Below -- Bend, Oxford Hotel -- Chicken and Eggs
Lone Pine Coffee -- Bend, Tin Pan Alley -- Ham Trifecta Sandwiches
Jackon's Corner -- Bend, Delaware Avenue -- Eggs, Bacon, occasional Crown Roast
Devore's Good Food -- Bend, Newport Ave -- Eggs all week long
900 Wall -- Bend, Wall Street -- Eggs
Hola! -- Sunriver, Marina -- Eggs and Jowl Bacon

Farm Tour

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Things are crazy hectic and we love it-but we are also neglecting the blog. So sad…the blog is always the first to placed on the back burner. Anyway….maybe this slide show will say more than my usual thousand word missives..

Broilers- Late Season Update

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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 and 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!

First birth on the farm

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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!
First birth on the farm