Summer Update

Summer is officially here and boy are we in the thick of it. I know that I am a native of this place but when it gets this hot I wouldn't mind being native a few hundred miles north.

In addition to being hot, it's very dry. I don't like to complain when I know others have it much worse. I just wish that I had taken the time to get rainwater collection put on the greenhouse roof and added extensions to our pond drain to make it deeper. I could have 300+ gallons in plastic barrels and maybe another 8,000 gallons in the pond (very rough estimate).

The weather lately has made me realize the importance of deep mulch gardening. I've got quite a bit of exposed soil and it's fried. So, in addition to the upcoming chicken butchering days, I plant to:

1. Put a gutter and downspout on the greenhouse.
2. Get 3 PVC elbows and short pieces of pipe to add 12-18 inches of depth to the pond.
3. Mulch the garden and get some soaker hose for targeted watering.

I'm a little concerned about the pending availability of 2nd cutting hay on this area. This has got me to thinking about putting up loose hay by hand. I've mowed about 5 acres of pasture. If I had managed it for making hay from some of it, I could probably have 4 or 5 tons of hay. When I say "loose hay by hand," this is what I mean.

Here's a cool blog for those of you with an interest in horses.

And, last but not least, here's some food for thought.

Hogget and Chickens

We ate the first of the hogget last night. As far as we could tell, it is indistinguishable from the 6 month old lamb that we've had in the past with the exception of the size of the cuts. If we can get more quantity with the same quality, I expect that all of our ewe lambs will be kept over to one year old.

We will be butchering chickens on July 7th or 14th and will have a few extra to offer for sale. More will be ready in mid-September and we are taking orders for then. Quantities are extremely limited! If you are in north central Ohio and are interested let us know soon. The price is $2.50 per pound, including processing. These birds are raised on pasture and live their lives feeling the sun on their backs and the grass under their feet. In addition to all the grass, insects and worms they can eat, we feed certified organic grain.

Hogget Butchering

Our hoggets were slaughtered on May 29th and I picked up the meat from ours today. I can't wait to try it for the reasons outlined in this post.

The corral we built for separating hem worked well - as long as I remembered to close the gate!

The butcher and I are on the same wavelength. He told me that he would be sure to tell my customers, "You know Joe and now you know me and that's a food chain!" Walmart could never match it. He is looking into expanding an offering "natural," i.e. no antibiotics, other drugs, artificial hormones, steroids, etc. meat by the individual cut. More power to him!