Never despise small beginnings. We often remind ourselves when God decided to populate the earth He started with only two people. Our orchard is starting with more than two trees, but it's a humble beginning just the same. Yet we are excited to see the growth and potential already expressing itself in these young trees.
Our Red Delicious & Fuji apples, Sweet Belle of Georgia & Elbert peaches, Orient, Keiffer, and Bartlett pears are steadily growing. While it will take awhile before we see any fruit, we know given some time that we will have abundant fruits for your (and our) enjoyment.
We're also expanding our blueberry orchard each year until we've reached our capacity. Our strawberry patch is growing too. These are 'ever-bearing' strawberries, meaning we will have three seasons each year once they're established, rather than 'june bearing' strawberries that produce for about three weeks and then they're gone. With ever-bearing, you will have several times throughout the summer to come pick strawberries!
We've added a small vineyard of grapes we hope will become productive in a couple of years too. Some Concord seedless grapes, as well as some Canadice Seedless red grapes, and some red seeded Steubens will provide a variety that are good for jams, jellies, juices, fresh-eating, and wines!
Like all we grow around here, our pick-your-own orchards are organic. What fun to get your kids involved in picking their very own fruits. For many, it may be their first hands-on opportunity to pick an apple, peach, blueberry or strawberry fresh from the tree or vine. Now, that's an education!
This kind of a chicken coop is called a 'chicken tractor.' This pen is floorless. We move it every day. That means every day these chickens have new grasses to eat (over 40% of their daily diet), new bugs to catch (a great protein source), and a chance to deposit new slow-release nitrogen fertilizer onto the freshly scratched soil to replenish what was taken. It also prevents pathogens from growing since the sun cleans the previous day's litter.
Pasture raised chickens are richer in taste and have a yellow fat that is indicative of a high chlorophyl diet (due to grass) which produces unsaturated fat (the good kind). They're also much higher in Omega-3 fatty acids, and many other nutritional benefits.
'Time Magazine' wrote an article a few years back after researching traditional chicken houses and reported that approximately 10% of the total finished weight of a chicken in the grocery store was due to fecal soup. This soup is due to the way they are processed, even at USDA government inspected processing houses. Is that a grimace on your face? Ours too.
A chicken tractor eliminates predators while allowing the chickens to live in a stress-free environment in the light of sun with shade, food and water. It's as close to being out in nature as is possible, but better in some ways because they don't have to fend off possible predators.
Our supplemental ration consists of corn, cracked oats, Nutri-Balancer (an organic multivitamin and mineral meal with probiotics included, fish meal which is a great source of protein. We use no antibiotics, hormones, coccidiostats, synthetic vitamins, germicides, and the like.
These chickens are mature about 8 weeks after we get them day-old. If you're interested, contact us.
Once again we are into early February awaiting the arrival of a fresh batch of layer chicks. We'll add another 50 chicks to our existing layer hens. Of course, they won't begin laying eggs until about the middle of July. But we're excited to once again be increasing our flock of hens. We continue to have a waiting list of folks who want some of our delicious eggs; and we are grateful. The chicks we purchased toward the end of October will begin to lay eggs the end of March. This will help with a few folks on our waiting list. We only wish we could fill all these requests faster, but you can't really rush a chicken to lay eggs!
Luc and Kate will be participating this spring in a 4-H project that involves raising and showing some Red Star hens. They will be receiving some little chicks and will show several of them in a few months at the Poultry Show & Auction at the annual Fair. They will receive more chicks than they enter in the contest. The ones they do not enter at the Fair will become egg layers for us around the end of August!
We look forward to further expansion of our egg business. Not only will it help grow our farm, it will also give us a whole new group of friends which we always enjoy. Someone once said a friend is a gift you give to yourself. We enjoy how growing our farm business helps us meet even more friends.
We believe the best way to get great, healthy eggs is to free-range and pasture-raise our chickens. Happy chickens produce happy eggs! The grasses they eat give their yolks a deep orange color due to the chlorophyl in the grasses, and provide omega-3 fatty acids too. Not all cage-free chickens have this luxury. Government regulations only require chickens to be given 'access to the outside' to be classified as cage-free. With such a vague description, conventional chicken houses could fence off as little as a 10' square space for their several thousand chickens and call them cage-free, or free-range. Indeed, some do. We think the best way to be assured of the quality of your food is to know the farmers who grow it for you.
We don't have any beef yet, but we are moving in that direction. We have some fencing issues, a pond water issue, and need to build out a hay shed. With those in place we'll be ready to get some 'moo machines' on the grass.
But meanwhile, let us briefly explain the difference we will have with our beef; it's a difference that no only involves the animals, but the fresh earth too. After all, we are called to care for both.
Cattle are like children, if you let them they'll eat only ice cream and leave the broccoli on the table. With an open pasture model (which you mostly see as you drive past a cattle farm) that's disastrous. They 'free-range' the pasture going around only eating the ice cream (the fresh grasses) while avoiding the broccoli (the weeds). In time, the weeds multiply in number due to non-removal, while the grasses are being eaten down so low their roots diminish, stunting their growth and expansion. A traditional rancher's solution? Herbicide! Plus a new round of planting new grass seed. But we believe there is a much better way.
We will put our cattle in a smaller, temporary fencing pasture that we move every evening around sundown, along with their water. By putting them in a more limited space they do several things.
First, they eat the broccoli when all the ice cream is gone. They will avoid any plant that is actually bad for them ... somehow they just know. That not only gives them a healthier diet than a monocrop, it also prevents those weeds from ever going to seed. So the cattle become a walking, mooing 'herbicide' machine, removing the next year's crop of weeds before they get established. Year two on a pasture always looks far better in terms of grass to weed ratio.
Second, one cow will drop 50 pounds of nutrient-rich fertilizer a day in the form of manure. Ten cows will deposit 500 pounds a day!! When you concentrate that in one area each day, in a short period the entire pasture is covered with rich fertilizer. Cows that free graze often deposit under trees or around watering holes or hay stations, doing the pasture no good. So ranchers have to buy manure spreaders and use their tractors to spread it or spread traditional fertilizer then pass that expense on to their customers when they sell their beef. I'd rather have the cows spread their own natural fertilizer, thank you.
Next, controlled grazing also allows them to aerate the soil through hoof impaction. But since they're only there one day, they don't pack the soil down or damage the grasses.
Rotational grazing is not only good for the soil, it's good for the cattle too. Ever heard of marbled beef? The beef industry has done a good job of convincing the public on the 'high quality' of marbled beef. But marbled beef is the result of feeding cattle high doses of corn which are not part of their natural diet. Their bodies over-metabolize the corn because it's unnatural to them, and their bodies produce so much fat - bad fat - from the metabolization that it saturates their very muscle, the meat. The marbling in the beef is saturated fat, linked by research to high blood pressure and heart disease.
Not so with grass-fed beef. These cattle are far leaner. Grass-fed beef does have fat; it's where God intended it to be, on the outside of the meat. But the biggest difference is that the fat in grass-fed beef is unsaturated fat. The GOOD fat. The kind of fat that is not harmful to you. The kind of fat your body actually needs. Corn fed, or grain fed beef don't produce this kind of fat. But grass-fed beef does!
This is the kind of beef we will be growing on Fresh Earth Farm & Orchards. We think you're gonna like it, and we KNOW you body will love it!
