If You Aren't Living Your Dream Yet - This is For You

Are you living your dream or dreaming of a life that's different than what it is now? If you're not living the life you want to be yet, I want to tell you my story with the hope it will encourage you to start today to build the life you want.  Life is short. You deserve to be happy, fulfilled, and doing something you're passionate about! When Jesse and I met 12 years ago our lives looked nothing like they do now. I was just out of grad school and I was BROKE with tens of thousands of dollars of student loans to start repaying. Jesse and I were both making minimum wage harvesting tobacco. I was basically homeless and couch surfing. We owned nothing except debt.  The world and all the practical advice I'd ever been given said I should find a career with benefits and be content with that until I was 65 and could retire comfortably. It took awhile, but I eventually got a "good" job, I advanced in my career, I had amazing experiences and mentors, met some of my very best friends, and accomplished things I never thought I would be capable of. But it quite literally broke me. I couldn't accept that as my reality for the next 40 years.  I knew I was being called to do something different with my life, but I kept staying. It was safe. It's what all the people around me were doing. I had a family to support.  I made it 10 years in the agricultural lending world and I was a burnt out mess.  Everyone told me I was crazy for even thinking about leaving my "cushy" job to do something as unpredictable and risky as farming, but I didn't have it in me any more to stay. In August of 2019, I made the decision to somewhat abruptly leave my job - the one that actually paid our bills, provided our health insurance, had all the so called "perks", so I could farm, be with my babies, and just try to put back together what all the stress of that life had broken in me.  It was terrifying, but I also had this strange peace that it was all going to be fine even though no matter how I penciled out the numbers the money in did not match the money out. What I learned from this experience is that by letting go of that job I thought we couldn't live without, it opened up a whole new life for myself and my family. The right people and opportunities came to us when I stopped letting fear of the unknown control me and took the leap of faith. While our income may have been cut, the abundance that has found us in other ways has been nothing short of amazing.  Maybe now is the time you let go and follow that dream. Make a change. Do the thing you're feeling called to do with your life even if it seems impossible. We only get one chance, my vote is that you go for it. While I'm not going to say we live in some perfect utopia where there's no stress and everything is rainbows and chicken hugs, I love what I do. I’ve gotten to experience so many things I never would have if I hadn’t taken the leap to leave that job. Maybe this won't be what my life looks like forever, I might need/want the stability of a steady income, health insurance, and a faster growing retirement account someday, but for now… this is exactly where I’m meant to be. I’m excited for the possibilities. I have such a feeling of purpose and fulfillment. And I especially love all the connections and friendships this farm has brought into my life. I want you to have this too! Leave a comment or send me an email to let me know - are you living your dream? Do you need some encouragement to get started? I'm always up for a lively chat about following a wild dream most people don't understand! Thank you for your part in encouraging and supporting me as I've chased this farm dream. I love being your farmer, I love being able to serve our community by raising great food, and I am so beyond thankful you're part of our journey. Want more stories like this sent straight to your inbox? Join our email farm community and I’ll send recipes, stories from the farm, and special offers a few times a month!

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Every Day is Earth Day for Farmers

I was feeling a little guilty that I hadn't planned some sort of special Earth Day service project as a family today, but I realized that we live Earth Day every single day around here. While spending Earth Day picking up trash or planting trees definitely makes a positive difference in the health of our planet and are for sure important, raising animals the way we do and buying local foods on a regular basis makes a HUGE impact as well! Here are a few ways buying local, and especially purchasing locally raised grass-fed and pastured meats helps create a healthier planet: Rotationally grazed pastures can sequester as much carbon as forest land. Sometimes you’ll hear that livestock negatively impact the atmosphere with their ahem “toots”, but the reality is that properly managed livestock raised on forage have a POSITIVE impact on the environment by helping to keep the carbon sequestration cycle of grasses moving. Pasture land protects fresh water resources by reducing erosion of topsoil. Bare soil is extremely prone to water or wind erosion when it isn’t continually covered with growing plants. Topsoil is absolutely essential to growing any crops, whether it’s grain crops or pasture forages. It’s estimated that if we continue to lose topsoil at the same rate we have been for the last 10 years that we will not have enough topsoil to feed ourselves in only 60 years. We have to make changes now, there’s no more time to wait. Buying local decreases the amount of fossil fuels needed to transport food products around the world. There is no reason to ship in beef from South America when we have plenty being raised in our own communities. The amount of travelling food does before it hits grocery store shelves is absolutely crazy. When you purchase locally it encourages the continued growth of small grass-based farms like ours. As demand increases for grass-fed and pasture-raised meats, more and more farms like ours will begin popping up to meet the demand. We would love to see many more farms like ours feeding our communities! Thank you for being part of our mission to not only feed our community high quality food, but also to leave our little piece of the world even healthier than we found it. Happy Earth Day!

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The Bigger Impact of Buying Local

I've shared pretty openly about how shopping from our farm has directly impacted our family, but what you may not see is just how many other local families and businesses your food dollars benefit when you shop with us. The positive impact our community is something I’m proud of. The more our farm has grown we've been able to help many other businesses grow and expand right along with us! - Our baby chicks and turkey poults are hatched by a family owned hatchery in Cincinnati. Not only do they provide healthy chicks for us, but we don't have to rely on shipping them through the mail - we can go pick them up the day they hatch. - We purchase our non-GMO feed from a local Amish family. Mark has been mixing the feed for our animals for many years. We've watched him go from operating out of one small pole building by himself to adding his brother full-time to the business, hiring office staff, delivery drivers, and building multiple new buildings to keep up with demand. - Our feed maker purchases the non-GMO grains for our feeds locally. We know the farmer who raised the corn for our feed this year, and it was raised organically! - Our hay is raised by and purchased from local farmers. - We purchase our basic supplies like new heat lamps for the brooder, buckets, shavings, etc. from a locally owned feed store. - We have locally owned heating and cooling businesses on speed dial for walk-in freezer repairs. - The piglets we raise into finished hogs are purchased from local farmers. We have a few farms we support to get as many pigs as we need. - Our beef animals are bred, born and raised without ever leaving our county. Our friend Alex cares for the Mama cows, bull and baby calves, then once the calves are weaning age, we purchase them. - When it comes time for processing, all 4 processors we use for poultry, beef and pork are local, family owned operations. - Our friend Mike purchased a delivery van and has started a new business hauling and delivering products for small farms like ours. It’s brought multiple farms together as we coordinate trips and help each other operate more efficiently. Plus, it’s given us a new way to deliver our products straight from the farm to communities and customers near us! - We’ve been able to provide meaningful work with living wages for those who help care for our animals and pack your orders. - Our fencing and building project materials are purchased from locally owned businesses, and we hired local building and concrete crews to help with our barn. - When we need tires (seriously, there are so many tires around here) or mechanic work done, we have wonderful local businesses who know us and take great care of us. - Those amazing photos you see of our family and farm were taken by local photographers - either Hollie from Holden Photography or Anna from Anamedia. - Our soaps and tallow balms are made by 3 local women owned small businesses, and Heather from Twisted Violet Homestead just made us the most adorable shirts with our new logo! - You’ll find products like maple syrup, butter, sea salts, and other incredible local products from 10+ other farms and food artisans in our farm store and available for delivery. - We’ve donated hundreds of pounds of meat to local food pantries and individual families struggling with food access. - Our taxes are done by a local accountant, we bank locally, we use local lenders when we've needed financing, and we partner with other local small businesses for our needs whenever possible. - The dollars we earn by selling our products allow us to purchase food we don’t produce for ourselves from other local farms. I've probably even missed some of the directions your dollars move out into the community after purchasing from us, but I hope this helps you see just how big of an impact you're making!  Thank you for being a part of what we're doing. We are so incredibly grateful for your support, and allowing us to support the growth of so many other small businesses in our community too. If you’re not part of our community yet, we would love to have you! Add your name and email address below and you’ll be in. And don’t worry - you can expect emails like this about every week or two, we’re too busy to spam your inbox with nonsense!

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Our Food System Is Broken

As I write this we are a couple months into the COVID-19 pandemic in this country. Along with fears about the actual virus itself, this entire situation has brought to light many of the weaknesses in our centralized industrial food system and has many people concerned about food shortages - especially meat, eggs, and dairy. Over time, our food system has been structured to produce cheap, efficient food. To do this, the supply chains have ended up being essentially monopolies that control the entire process. 85% of the beef in our country is processed, distributed, owned by 4 major companies. 85%! This means when any part of their huge system goes down, it disrupts the entire supply chain from the farm to the grocery store and everywhere in between. Right now the beef packers are paying farmers below the break even cost for their animals, while still importing cheap beef raised overseas, and significantly raising prices for consumers at the grocery store. We are seeing shortages on grocery store shelves because of COVID-19 outbreaks in these huge processing plants. It’s not from people hoarding meat, it’s not because there isn’t enough meat. This backlog is causing empty grocery store shelves, and farmers having to destroy fully grown animals that could be feeding people. Those pictures of piles of dead hogs and the stories about how they are “humanely” euthanizing entire barns of hogs and chickens by shutting off the ventilation system and letting them suffocate and overheat to death? Sorry to be gruesome, but that’s not fake news. That’s really happening. USDA is now working on creating protocols for farmers to destroy ready to process beef steers “humanely”, while the packers are still importing cheap beef from overseas. There’s been an outcry to just donate the meat or wait until there’s processing space instead of destroying animals. Because our food system has consolidated so much in the name of cheap meat and efficiency, it’s put a lot of our local butchers out of business. They just don’t exist anymore to process these animals. It’s also not an option to for farms to hold the animals longer until the backlog gets caught up. They’ll be too large for the facilities to handle, plus there will be a backlog of baby pigs being euthanized because there’s nowhere for them to go. Our food system is a mess. While I don’t pretend to have all the answers to this complicated issue, I do know without a doubt that fixing this needs to involve decentralizing meat production, bringing back local and regional systems, creating opportunities for more small to mid-scale processors, and if not stopping the import of meat from overseas completely at least labeling it so as consumers we can make the decision for ourselves what we want to eat. One positive in all of this is there’s been a huge surge in buying locally raised meat, eggs and dairy lately, which is amazing! Our farm sold through inventory that would have lasted us months in just weeks. We are getting nearly constant messages from families and local businesses who are struggling to source their meat from their usual channels. We love that we get to serve our community this way. We are truly living our purpose! Small farms all over the country are stepping up to the challenge of keeping our communities fed and I’ve never been more proud to be part of this group. One conversation we along with many of our other farming friends are having right now is - how much do we invest in scaling up moving forward? Will customers stick with us even when things go back to “normal” and there’s convenient cheap meat on the grocery store shelves? Will this system ever go back to “normal”? There are so many unknowns. Thankfully we are in a position to scale up chicken and turkey production fairly quickly, but beef and pork take longer. Finished grass-fed beef steers take 2+ years to finish, pastured hogs take 6+ months, turkeys a little over 3 months, but thankfully chickens only take 6 weeks! Even though I know it’s alarming to see shelves bare, we and other local farms are doing our best to step up and feed our communities. We have the capacity, it just takes time to create the needed infrastructure and raise the animals. The one thing we want to ask of you is that even if you can’t source 100% of your families meat, eggs or milk from local farms, please support them as much as possible. I know it’s cliche, but where we spend our dollars now shapes the food system of our future. When dollars flow through local farms, they support local processors and businesses. This leads to expansion and more local processors being created to keep up with demand, which opens up more opportunities for farmers like us to raise and process more animals. By diverting dollars away from the industrial food system we keep dollars local and reinvested in our communities. Part of our struggle in this moment to scale beef or pork production quickly is that we can’t get processing slots. Our usual processor who can typically get as many animals as we need in with a month or two notice is booked out 6+ months. I had to make processing appointments for pigs that aren’t even born yet to make sure the spots were there when we needed them. We aren’t sure what to expect in the next year and beyond, but we are here to serve you as best we can. Thank you for supporting our farm and other local farms like us! I can see change happening and I’m looking forward to the positive things that will come out of the pandemic tragedy. I hope one of them is more food security, a stronger local food system, and stronger communities. ~ Dana

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Bringing Back the Victory Garden

Have you ever heard the history of Victory Gardens? I had never heard of them until I took a pastured poultry course at a northern Ohio farm a few years ago. They had what they called a “victory garden” and when I went home I had to google it to find out what exactly that meant. The condensed history of the Victory Garden - these were gardens grown during World War I and especially during WWII when food was scarce. A lot of the canned goods being produced were shipped overseas to troops, food supplies were being rationed, and the government encouraged anyone who could to grow and preserve some of their own foods to take the pressure off the public food supply. It was also a morale booster since it gave families something to work on and everyone felt like they had a part in feeding themselves, helping to support their country, and feeding the troops overseas. At that time, 40% of the nations vegetables were being produced by home gardeners! They even encouraged people to have their own backyard chickens instead of creating zoning regulations to prohibit it. There were information books, plans for what and how much to grow for a family, and they had the coolest promotion posters! Seriously, if you have a minute to do a google search on Victory Gardens, the pictures of their posters are amazing. I think I partly fell in love with this idea because my Grandfather was a WWII veteran. He just passed away a few weeks ago at 94 years old. He was a radioman in a B-24 bomber and flew over 20 missions. Our family has always had a special interest in WWII history and a special appreciation for the people like my Grandfather who truly risked everything to give us the opportunities we have today. A few years ago I had the chance to take a short flight in a B-17 with my Grandfather. It was such a powerful moment in my life because as we were taking off I let myself feel what these young men must have been feeling - as that airplane left the ground knowing they were going to be in danger, understanding that each mission they flew decreased the chances they would make it back home alive, knowing that many many of their friends didn’t. We took a short 20 minute flight and I was hot and airsick. My Grandfather said he flew over 20 missions that lasted hours. At the time I’m writing this blog post our country is at war with COVID-19. In most of our lifetimes, this is the first time we’ve really felt uncertain about what life will look like tomorrow, next week, or next year. Everything changed in the blink of an eye. The things we took for granted like grocery store shelves full of endless supplies of food, the opportunity to work and support our families, abundance, freedom, travel, security, the ability to buy whatever we wanted from Amazon and have it delivered in 2 days - some of that is gone now. But I also feel a deep sense of pride watching our communities and our country come together. I’m choosing to see the positives of what’s happening despite my fear and I have zero doubts our country will recover and our communities will be stronger because of this experience. While our specialty here at our farm is raising forage, livestock and eggs, this year we will be expanding our vegetable and fruit growing areas and raising our own Victory Garden. I hope that it will not only feed our family, but that we can share the surplus with our neighbors and community. As a farmer, I’ve been very aware of the food security issues this has caused across the country. I think that we all need to take back some control over our own access to food. In the last couple weeks we’ve seen grocery store shelves cleared and the global food system struggling to shift resources to keep up with demand. In any major weather event, disease, war, etc. it’s easy for these supply chains to be cut off and food doesn’t get where it’s needed. Having a strong local food system helps to solve these issues. The food is here already, and small farms and businesses can quickly adapt to marketplace changes. Farms that were selling to mainly restaurants and schools quickly switched gears to fill individual customers freezers. Farms that were already selling direct to consumer made some quick changes to how customers accessed their products and kept on rolling. Our area has farmers raising meat, eggs, milk, fruits, vegetables, and more. I know our farm and others have seen huge demand for our products in the last couple weeks. We are doing the best we can to keep up, scale up, and keep everyone fed. The struggle for us is going to be - will this continue? Our greatest fear is investing in growing more products only to be left behind when the grocery store shelves are full and more convenient to shop from. We want to feed you. We want to be here for our community in the good times and in the uncertain times, but this means we need the support of our communities more than just when the grocery store shelves are empty. I want to encourage and challenge you to continue supporting your local farms even when we go back to “normal” and to do what you can to take back some control over your food security. There’s still plenty of time to start your own Victory Garden! While this entire situation is tragic, I hope it changes us for the better. I hope we remember to value the time we get to spend with friends and family, the food on our plates, unlimited supplies of toilet paper, and the luxury of peace and security more than we did before. Our country and my grandparents went through harder times, we can do this. They were a level of brave and selfless most of us can’t fathom. Let’s come together and prove to those who risked or gave their lives for us that we are a country and a people who were worth fighting for. Stop hoarding the toilet paper, go wash your hands, give your elderly neighbor a call to check on them, and let’s take care of each other. Want more recipes, stories and randomness from the farm delivered directly to your inbox? Sign up below to be part of our farm community and snag a free recipe book.

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Our 5th Year of Farming - Why This is Actually a Really Big Deal

It’s finally feeling like Winter on the farm! Eliza and I lit a fire in the woodstove over the weekend. It takes awhile to get the whole house warmed up, but it's nice and toasty now. Wood heat is the best! It's actually been so warm most of the winter we haven't burned much wood because it gets too hot in here. Plus we ran out of hours to cut enough firewood last year, so we've been conserving until we have a day to go cut and split more. In other news, our family is entering our 5th year of farming!! I know that doesn't really sound like a big deal, but the fact that we've survived this long is actually pretty huge. 80% of new farms don't make it past the 2 year mark, and only 2% survive to year 5. Isn't that an absolutely heartbreaking statistic?! Thankfully we are part of the 2% that have stuck it out and managed to not bankrupt ourselves yet. Just in the short time we've been farming I've watched multiple farms around us go out of business or massively scale back for a variety of reasons. Even though the circumstances were all very different for each farm and family, one of the big underlying reasons for changing direction is that it is extremely hard to make enough money to survive without working another job off the farm. Especially with a family to support. It can also be really, really stressful trying to do all the things. As farmers we are all so incredibly passionate about providing the highest quality foods for our communities, raising our animals humanely, being good stewards of the land and resources, supporting our local economy, building relationships and community that our culture is very much lacking right now, and all the other reasons we are called to this work. We can do so many great things as a small family farm, but at the end of the day no farm is truly sustainable unless it is financially sustainable for the families operating it. Our food system is in a precarious spot right now. The average age of the American farmer is 55+, which means a huge percentage of our farmland will be changing hands in the very near future. If small farms like ours can't afford to purchase and operate the land (typical cost of farmland in our area is $5,000+ per acre just to give you an idea), it will end up in the hands of developers or investors. Increasingly these are foreign investors. Our communities need more family farms taking care of the land, but they need to be profitable and financially sustainable family farms so they can stick around for awhile, thrive, save farmland from development, protect and grow safe local food systems, become leaders and mentors for new farmers, support other local small businesses, and provide the healthy food and opportunities for community and connection that all of us need. My challenge to you as we enter a new year is to support your small local farms as much as possible. Whether you're buying from our farm or others, the majority of your groceries or just a dozen eggs once in awhile, our purchasing decisions today will have a huge impact on what our communities and food system look like in the very near future. I know it can be less convenient to shop from us and often not your cheapest option. We do our very best to find and create efficiencies to keep our costs low, but we just can’t compete with mass produced and vertically integrated products found in grocery stores. What I can guarantee is you won’t find a higher quality product or one raised with more integrity, passion and purpose. Thank you for being the hero in our small farm story. We couldn't have made it to our 5th year of farming without you believing in us, valuing what we do, and spending your hard earned food dollars with us. It means so much to our family, and we can't ever thank you enough. We are just getting started and have so many great things planned for 2020 and beyond. Thank you for being on this journey with us! ~ Dana, Jesse, Eliza & Brynn

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Love Your Farm

For as long as I can remember, I have dreamed of owning land. I’ve never been into big fancy houses, expensive vehicles, clothes, jewelry, etc. Jesse and I have never even had cable or satellite TV in our adult lives. Even before we knew this little farm thing would become our purpose in life, we knew we wanted land and we’ve worked towards that dream for the last 10 years. In September 2018 we purchased our 45 acres and have slowly been loving it back into the beautiful and productive farm we know it can be. I saw this essay posted on Facebook before we had ever even found our farm, and after buying this place I thought of it again and just had to find it and share. I also want to make sure this essay is preserved. Even after quite a bit of time on the Google, I was not able to find it posted anywhere else. Part of our excitement and challenge right now is learning this new piece of ground so we can make plans for how to utilize it all to the best of it’s capabilities. We are learning where water flows, which areas the soil needs the most help, where there are plants or trees we want to save, and where we should lay out fence lines, buildings and gardens. My impatient self wants it all to be perfect now, but we have a lifetime to continue making improvements here. And it will probably take that long! I love this farm. I love watching it’s transformation, I love watching my babies, family and friends enjoy it, I love it for raising delicious healthy food for our family and yours, and I love knowing that this is my little piece of heaven on earth to tend. Love Your Farm Love your farm. Every farmer should not only love his work as the artist loves his work, but in this spirit , too, every farmer should love his farm itself as he would love a favorite horse or dog. He should know every rod of the ground, should know just what each acre is best adapted to, should feel a joy and pride in having every hill and valley look its best, and he should be as much ashamed to have a field scarred with gullies as he would to have a beautiful colt marked with lashes; as much ashamed to have a piece of ground worn out from ill treatment as to have a horse gaunt and bony from neglect; as much hurt from seeing his acres sick from wretched management as he would be to see his cows half-starving from the same cause. Love your ground - that piece of God’s creation which you hold in fee simple. Fatten its poorer parts as carefully as you would an ailing collie. Heal the washed, torn places in the hillsides as you would the barb scars on your pony. Feed with legumes and soiling crops and fertilizers the barren and gullied patch that needs special attention; nurse it back to life and beauty and fruitfulness. Make a meadow of the bottom that is inclined to wash; watch it and care for it until the kindly root-masses heal every gaping wound and in one unbroken surface the “tides of grass break into foam of flowers” upon the outer edges. Don’t forget even the forest lands. See that every acre of woodland has enough trees on it to make it profitable: “a good stand” of the timber crop as well as of every other crop. Have an eye for the beautiful in laying off the cleared fields - a tree here and there, but no wretched beggar’s coat mixture of little patches and little rents; rather broad fields fully tended and of nearly uniform fertility as possible, making of your growing crops, as it were, a beautiful garment, whole and unbroken, to clothe the fruitful acres God has given you to keep and tend. And so again we say, love your farm. Make it a place of beauty, a place of joyous fruitfulness, an example for your neighbors, a heritage for your children! Make improvements on it that will last beyond your day. Make an ample yard about it with all the old-fashioned flowers that your grandmother knew; set a great orchard near it, bearing many manner of fruits; lay off roads and walks leading to it and keep them up; plant hedges along the approaches, and flowering bulbs and shrubs - crape myrtle and spirea and privet and roses - so that your grandchildren will someday speak of their grandsire, who cared enough for the beautiful and loved the farm well enough to have for them this abiding glory of tree and shrub and flower. Name the farm, too; treasure up its history; preserve the traditions of all the romance and adventure and humor and pathos that are in any way connected with it; and if some of the young folks must leave it, let them look back to it with happy memories of beauty and worthy ideals and of well ordered industry. Love your farm. If you cannot be proud of it now, begin today to make it a thing you can be proud of. Much dignity has come to you in that you are owner and caretaker for a part of God’s footstool; show yourself worthy of that dignity. Watch earnestly over every acre. Let no day go by that you do not add something of comeliness and potential fertility to its fields. And finally, leave some spot beneath the shade of some giant tree where at last, “like as a shock of corn cometh in his season,” you can lay down your weary body, leaving the world a little better for your having lived in it, and earning the approval of the Great Father (Who made the care of the fields and gardens the first task given man): “Well done thou good and faithful servant; enter into the joy of Thy Lord.” -Clarence Poe

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Why Are You Always Out of Bacon?!

If you’ve been shopping with us for very long, you have probably seen the dreaded line through the BACON category on our farmers market signage. Breakfast is ruined, emotions run high, panic ensues, it’s never fun… and I can assure you we hate it as much as you do! Our bacon is pretty much amazing. It’s sweet, it’s salty, it’s crunchy, it’s good for breakfast, in a BLT, on a salad, as a midnight snack, the list could go on. It’s basically what dreams are made of, I completely get it. In a perfect world, we would never run out of any cut, but it’s just not realistic for small farms operating at our scale. Each pig, steer and chicken only has so many body parts! Part of the bacon challenge is that on a 200+ pound hog, we only get somewhere around 16 packages of bacon. The belly and a little bit of meat from the jaw is the only meat from a hog that can be made into bacon. The majority of a pig is chops, hams, shoulders, ribs and sausage. As consumers, we are used to shopping the grocery store where every cut is stocked, at all times. We can shop any time of day or night and there will be bacon and pretty much anything else we could imagine, at any given moment, waiting for us to toss it into the cart. It’s different for small farms. We use and need to sell the entire animal so nothing goes to waste and so we can afford to raise the next batch of animals. The same concept of cut scarcity is true for beef and chickens too. We tend to run out of cuts like filet, ribeyes and rump roasts very quickly since each animal only has a small amount, but we can’t beef up (ha, get it!) beef production so we always have filet without balancing the demand for the other cuts. Sometimes we also run out of cuts simply because all of you are amazing and we sell out faster than expected! It takes 6-8 weeks to raise a batch of meat chickens, 5-6 months before a laying hen starts producing eggs consistently, 6+ months to raise a finished hog, and 2-2.5 years to raise a finished beef steer. When we run out of things, it takes time for us to stock the freezers again. 2019 will be our 4th year farming, and we are continuing to fine tune when we need to have animals processed, how many to raise, and what your favorite cuts are, but we always appreciate feedback about what you like or would like us to offer! So, my challenge to you is to try incorporating a wide variety of cuts into your meals. Branch out, try something new! And if you need ideas on how to cook it, send me an email and I would love to help. The end result will be more bacon for everyone! :) Want more recipes and stories from the farm delivered to your inbox? Sign up below and never miss out!

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The Gift of Sloppy Joes, Soup and Cookie Dough Balls is Always Appreciated

Quick story.  Picture it... I've been home for maybe 2 days with tiny little newborn E baby. I had spent 30 hours in labor, another 2+ days in the hospital, Jesse and I had minimal amounts of sleep and I don't even remember eating anything besides the breakfast sandwich I demanded basically minutes after giving birth because I was so hangry.  My friend Andrea texts and says she is bringing over dinner. She walks in a little while later and I threw the baby at her (kidding, it was only a gentle toss), so I could check out the food situation.  I will never forget how delicious that sloppy joe sandwich and cucumber pasta salad tasted. She even made a big batch of both so I had leftovers for days. Seriously, it is top 10 on the list of best meals I have ever eaten in my life.  It completely recharged me when I needed it most and made me realize just how much a homemade, hot meal can change someones day.  Since then my gift giving strategy for friends or family having babies, dealing with illness, grandparents or single friends that may not have the time or motivation to cook real meals for themselves has been to feed them. Soup is a super easy thing to cook a big pot of, then dish out into smaller containers to either deliver fresh or freeze for later. If I'm taking soup to a family, I package in a container big enough to feed everyone. If I'm taking soup to a grandparent, new Mom for lunches, or single friend, I use smaller single serve containers so they aren't forced to thaw out a huge batch of soup. Vegetable Beef Soup and Chicken and Noodles or Chicken and Rice are my absolute favorites! I've included the recipe for Vegetable Beef Soup below to get you started! Vegetable Beef Soup 2+ cups Cooked and Shredded Grass-Fed Beef Roast (great way to use up leftovers!!!)4ish Cups of Beef Broth (1 box if you're using store bought)1 can diced tomatoes1 Bag Frozen Mixed Vegetables (the peas, green beans, corn and carrots kind)2 medium potatoes, dicedAround 2 cups of Egg Noodles - the homemade kind, the frozen kind, or the bagged kind you find in the pasta aisle. Add more, less, or none depending on your feelings about noodles!Salt and Pepper Add your broth to a giant pot. Add your shredded beef, any of the goopy broth stuff leftover from cooking the roast, tomatoes and bag of veggies. Let it come to a gentle boil, then add your potatoes and noodles. Let boil gently until your potatoes and noodles are cooked. Add salt and pepper to taste. Boom - Delicious Soup.  Do you notice a theme that none of my recipes have exact measurements? Just trust the process, you can't mess this up. If you're panicking, use the power of Pinterest for a more exact recipe. Fill a bowl for yourself since you worked super hard at putting things into the pot and stirring. Enjoy your soup while you wait for the rest to cool a bit. Next step is to ladle into containers then freeze!  I don't know about you, but I would so much rather create Christmas gifts in my own kitchen than be forced to shop. There are people, I have to wait in lines, I'm starting to sound like a curmudgeon so I better stop there.... But really, sometimes the best gift we can give is something as simple as a great meal. We can hook you up with a tasty beef roast, bones to make broth, and eggs to make homemade noodles, then head to the grocery store for veggies at a weird hour of the day to avoid a bunch of people, then spend some time cooking Christmas gifts in your own kitchen! You can also just buy the broth and noodles at the store, but don't skimp on the roast! :) Also, if you show up with soup AND a bag of frozen homemade cookie dough balls that they can pop into the oven for fresh warm cookies anytime they want, you will be their new hero. Just throwing that out there.  Happy Cooking and Soup Delivering! Dana

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