How's the Chicken?

Last Saturday was our first CSA Share delivery where we delivered to all of our customers. Preparing each 10lb share turned out to be a little more work than we had calculated. We tried to make sure that every share included both beef and pork as well as a variety of cuts. At first we second guessed our decision to limit CSA Shares. However, now we are glad that we did. Like everything else we have experienced, the first few tries require us to overcome a learning curve. Once we get into a good groove with our CSA Shares, we will reevaluate our ability to handle more CSA Shares.

Last Saturday was also our first chicken delivery. Aside from the chickens being a little smaller than we expected, we are very happy with the quality and flavor that our chicken offers. We have already had several emails from our customers who are thrilled with the superior meat quality and flavor. The chickens we delivered on Saturday were the New Hampshire Reds (Red Ranger). We found that the chickens that reached a 4lb dressed weight had considerably more breast meat than the 3-3.5lb chickens. Our next batch of New Hampshire Reds will be raised two weeks longer in order to get all of them into this 4 lb. range. We plan to have these ready the first weekend of August. In the meantime, our next group of chickens will be the Delaware and Plymouth Rock chickens. We expect that these chickens will be true to the heritage breeds with more slender dispositions and an abundance of flavor. We will harvest these chickens in June. For July we plan to harvest another type of chicken. This chicken will be the Slow Cornish Cross. These chickens have the heavy muscling and large breasts that many are used to. The difference is that they grow much slower allowing their skeletal system and organs to keep up with their growth rate. As a precaution, we are also feeding them a lower protein feed to ensure that they stay healthy and happy. This is simply an experiment, but so far we haven’t lost a single Slow Cornish Cross chicken which leaves us very optimistic.

Turkeys have been a bit more challenging than the chickens. Again, we blame ourselves for simply lacking the experience required to raise poultry on pasture on this level of production. However, how else can we learn unless we try? This past Friday we moved our 80 young turkeys from the brooder to the pasture. The forecast called for a little rain but in Vernon it decided to snow. Sadly, we found 17 turkeys that didn’t make it through the night. Had we known it would get cold enough to snow, we never would have moved them from the brooder. Interestingly, all but two of the 17 were Bourbon Reds. The Royal Palms seem to be much more hardy and cold tolerant. This is good for us to know as Vernon is rather cold. In fact, we run the furnace in our home from September to the first of June. This only leaves about three months of warm weather. Even during these three months, we have day/night temperature differences of 40-50 degrees. This kind of weather can be hard on certain breeds of animals which is partly why this year has been so challenging. Since, nobody in Vernon or Utah for that matter, has raised large numbers of heritage poultry, we really have no record to reference. We are learning as we go. We have helped several other small farms who are getting started in Utah by sharing our experiences so that they might avoid some of the problems we have incurred. We are learning (the hard way) which breeds are better suited for our climate. We are confident that by next year we will have a much better success rate.

As mentioned above, we have already heard back from several customers that the chicken is fantastic.  However, if anybody else has had a chance to try the chicken, we would love to hear your feedback.  What do you think of our idea to raise Slow Cornish Cross?  Do you like the idea of more breast meat or oppose the use of non heritage breeds?  Remember we we want to be your farmer.  This means we need to know what kind of food you want.  We look forward to hearing your ideas!

Turkeys and Chickens

We have been going crazy trying to figure out how to offer our customers chicken and turkey.  The challenge has been that we can't find anybody to process them for us.  We have finally decided that we will just have to process them ourselves.  We don't want to be butchers, we are very content being farmers.  However, we don't see any other way right now.  Assuming we can get all the USDA certifications and other hoop jumping out of the way we are prepared to try a very limited amount of turkeys and chickens.  We will process all the chickens at one time probably in June/July and all of the turkeys at once right before Thanksgiving.  These birds will be raised the right way, on pasture with wholesome grains, naturally without any growth promoters or antibiotics, and they will be treated humanely of course.  All of our animals are pampered like pets and given the best treatment we can provide.  They are stress free and very happy!

We will raise non commercial heritage breed turkeys and probably start with 100 or so.  We anticipate we will be able to sell them for $4.00/lb.  This is far cheaper than other farms we have seen.  As we have stated before, our goal is to make wholesome, clean, yummy food affordable for as many families as possible.  Heritage breeds grow slower than the commercial breeds and take more feed to raise as well.  They are more expensive to purchase as chicks because they are not as common.  Also our farming methods are sustainable and more labor intensive than factory lots like the ones you see in Moroni, UT.  We will also be setting up our own processing station and purchasing all of the equipment necessary.  We really don't anticipate making a profit our first year and will try this as an experiment.  The heritage breed turkeys offer a whole new world of flavor.  When you combine this with our sustainable farming practices and premium feed, it truely offers a mouthwatering, gourmet meal for your family. 

We will also start small with the chickens with 400-500.  We are unsure of which breeds to use.  We have a great source for Poulet Rouge type chickens which are traditional breeds raised on pasture.  Poulet Rouge is a label placed on chickens that are raised on pasture and allowed to grow to the age of 11 weeks+.  These chickens are the not the heavy breasted chickens most people are used to which is why we are a little reluctant to start with them.  Any type of pasture raised poultry has firmer, denser, leaner meat that is similar to turkey in texture.  This is because the chickens actually get to run around and be chickens!  The commercial chickens are raised in such confinement that in most cases they can't even stretch their wings. The non Cornish X chickens have longer lighter breasts and longer legs.  We will most likely try to raise both varieties since we are in the experiment phase and see what our customers prefer.  In crunching the numbers, we will most likely be priced at $3.00/ lb for pasture raised Cornish X (heavy breasted) and $3.50/lb for the Poulet Rouge chickens.

This past year we raised 35 of our own chickens.  The meat is the most flavorful chicken I have ever tasted!  The texture is out of this world!  In addition to eating this delicious food, it is also more nutritious than factory raised chicken and without the chemicals and drugs!  It also feels good to not support the factories that produce meat that comes from animals that in our opinion are tortured.  Did you know in many beef, pork, and poultry factories that wastes like chicken manure, processing extras (guts) and all kinds of bizarre and disgusting things get cooked and fed back to the animals?  It's no wonder that the animals need a constant supply of antibiotics to stay alive.  Nor is it any wonder that we have all of the food recalls and health problems.  I would be willing to bet that if as a country we ate wholesome, local, natural food raised sustainably that a large portion of our health problems would go away.  It sure makes a lot more sense than spending trillions of taxpayer dollars on health care reform.  Let's fix the problem at the source and stop trying to put a bandaid on it.  I'll step down from my soap box. : )   

We actually have 5 turkeys this year that we are selling for Thanksgiving.  They are pasture raised, humanely treated and all natural.  These will be harvested the day before Thanksgiving and be sold fresh not frozen.  They are $4.00/lb.  We can meet you in SLC on Wednesday evening to deliver them.  Since we only have 5 available, you will need to call quick to get one in time.  They will be processed at a facility in Tremonton as part of this year's 4H projects.  We expect them to dress out at 15-25 lbs.  Please call with any questions.

Based on the information above, we would like to know how many people are interested in buying pasture raised chicken and turkey from us.  How many birds do you think you would buy at one time knowing they were only available once a year?  How many a year would you buy if they were availble 2-3 times a year?  Any feedback you can offer us will be helpful in determining how much money we can justify investing and how many birds to buy.  Also, if anybody is interested in a business opportunity and would like to set up a small processing facility we can send A LOT of business your way.  This would allow us to raise more chickens and turkeys as well as offer them at a lower price.  If you are interested in this, call us and we can go over more detail.  Thanks again for all of your support of our local, family farm and loyalty!