New Arrivals - July/August Newsletter

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September 4, 2018

Meet The New Arrivals!

Hey It's David,

The last two months have been extremely busy for us on the farm. We have been very dry and it has definitely upped the work load. However the soil restoration work we have already done is really paying off! What little rain we have received has all been soaked up into the soil and we have gotten excellent grass growth response from it.

The livestock really enjoy the grass when it has been dry (with less water every bite has even more nutrients) so they have been quite happy (just a little hot). So we made them a shade structure so we could better control their grazing patterns, give them a reprieve from the heat in fields without trees, and control where they rest so we are able to have them deposit their manure on the weakest areas of the field. Thus speeding the land healing in those areas.

Our mission has always been to "restore the health and vitality of the land while nourishing the families who eat of its bounty". In accordance with the first part of that mission, it has been our dream to have the opportunity to touch and heal more land (through intensive, land mulching, carbon sequestering, soil restoring, forage stimulating, multispecies planned herbivory or more simply mimicking nature by rotating ALL animals across the landscape allowing them to use their natural giftings to heal the land).

As we have had the opportunity to touch and restore more land we were blessed to be able to welcome two good friends of ours: Austin and Kelly to our team as restoration agriculturalists to touch and restore more land and provide more nutrient rich food to all our families.

Austin and Kelly are passionate about regenerative agriculture and nutrient rich food. They were blessed to have not grown up with an agricultural background so they had much less to "unlearn" when they got here. We feel blessed to have them here and we hope you will all take a moment to greet them when they are doing drop-offs. Here is a little more about Austin and Kelli in their own words:

"Hey ya'll, we are Austin and Kelli Williams. We had been living in Colorado for the past year before David and Mariah gave us the opportunity to be farmers in training back in Mid-Missouri. Even though we consider ourselves avid backpackers, mountain bikers, rock climbers, and snowboarders, we thought the chance to learn how to farm, heal the land, and nourish the people was too good a deal to pass up. We packed up everything we had and headed straight for Boonville. We're so excited to be part of a something as important as regenerative agriculture, and are totally psyched to crest this wave with a new generation of like-minded farmers. We hope we get to meet you on one of our delivery runs, but if we don't, at least we know you get to enjoy the fruits of our labor!"

Speaking of providing more nutrient rich food to all our families.... many of you have noticed that we have been out of most of our beef cuts and bundles for several months and more recently out of ground beef! We apologize for the inconvenience. Our supply for our family is the same as displays on the store (needless to say Mariah has reminded me multiple times that we are out of ground beef :).

It is an exciting problem to have; however, it is more difficult to rectify. Since we are a seasonal pasture based farm we harvest our beeves in the fall after they have finished on grass (deposited super healthy nutrient packed intramuscular fat). This grass finishing process is why our beef tastes go good and is so tender. Most grass fed beef isn't finished which hurts the eating experience and lessens the nutrient density.

Grass finishing is also a lengthy process. It takes about two years from birth to finish. So compared to our pasture chickens which grow quite rapidly our beef production is a slow but rewarding process.

All that said as part of our mission we are working to expand regenerative agriculture (to restore the health and vitality of more land ). As part of that mission we have decided to create a fellowship of likeminded small family farmers that operate their farms and produce nutrient rich pasture raised food according to our strict and delicious standards. We are excited about the implications this could have by allowing these family farms to increase the amount of land they can heal as well as improving the availability of some pasture raised products (like beef). We will introduce you to some of the incredible family farms that make up the Fed From The Farm Fellowship of Family Farms in the coming months.

Another result of this is that our beef will be back in stock much sooner than it otherwise would be. All of it will be 100% grass fed to finish and produced exactly the same as our standards on healthy soil, grazing verdant pastures. While we may have a select amount of grass fed to finish beef available sooner (especially ground beef) we know for sure we will have beef available for pickup the 1st of November. If you want to ensure your family is stocked up consider purchasing one of our preorders for October. There will be no bundles available before then.

On the topic of beef we want to make you aware that our costs of producing, processing, and storing our delicious meat have gone up dramatically this year. Because of this we will have to increase our beef prices this fall.

However, We want to ensure nutrient rich pasture raised food is affordable for your family. All of our pre-order bundles will remain the same price because we won't have the cost of storing the meat if it is picked up right away. Also we will add more bundles for some of our favorite products like ground beef and steaks to help your family save even more.

Thankfully our costs of producing most of our other pasture raised meats has not increased like the beef so all our other prices will remain the same at this time.

We are passionate about your families and we want to be upfront and forthright about these changes coming this fall. Thank you for your commitment to land restoration and the health of all of our families. We look forward to seeing you soon.

Blessings

Your Farmers

-David, Mariah, Judah, and Baby Ephraim

The Worst Laid Plans

Today, I am sharing this story in an attempt to bring healing to your farmer's (my) mind and psyche after a series of events that individually would have been minor hiccups but taken together in the exact series proved to be a challenge that I found insurmountable (well nearly anyway but we will get to that). So let's get into this complicated trail of improbable and ridiculously frustrating events. It all began about two weeks ago as I was arranging to get some of our pasture raised pork back from the facility where the primals (large chunks of meat that have not been cut into steaks, roast, sausage yet) were being stored after they were harvested (we have a USDA inspected facility where we cut and pack everything but at this time we don't have the capacity to harvest animals onsite - we are looking forward to having that someday!)Anyway, the facility is three hours away, so in an attempt to save money on freight, I messaged a friend who often hauls frozen meat for us to see if he would be coming that way. He said yes and gave me the date. Here all my troubles began. For reasons I can't explain, though, I have long since wracked my brain on the subject, I misread his date and never replied to him. Though he was very clear about it, I somehow got it in my head that he was coming through a week later and I clearly remembered setting up the appt - even though I never did. The stage for disaster had now been firmly set but it gets so so much better and more improbable. Now you should note that our pork breakfast sausage is one of our best selling farm products (for good reason) and inventory had been getting lower and lower. However, I had a plan in place......My friend would bring the pork to us the next Friday and would arrive at noon (I still don't know where I got Friday or noon from because I never messaged him back but it was firmly fixed in my mind and I made the whole plan based on this fact). Our team would be primed to immediately grind some of the pork into sausage and we would be restocked just in time for the weekend and hopefully just before we ran out - yay and koodos to the grand mastermind of a farmer for fitting everything together perfectly while saving on freight 🙌. I even messaged the facility manager and asked him to put some of the pork in a cooler so it would be thawed and ready for us to immediately work. I had practically thought of everything - what could possibly go wrong!Now it had been an extremely busy week, but I was riding high until Thursday evening came. It was then, I got a call from my friend who asked me if I needed something hauled the next day? I was floored. I reminded him the plan and he (rightly) informed me I had never made one but the facility manager had asked him when he was coming on Friday and he was confused so he called me. Well, there I was in a pickle. I needed that pork or we were going to run out of sausage. However, my friend was not already coming through, so if I had him make the run it would cost much more as it would be a dedicated trip and because of the ridiculously late notice he wouldn't be able to get it delivered until 3:00 P.M. the next day - when our processing crew normally leaves for the day. Clearly this wouldn't work so I thanked him but told him I would just pick it up myself. In my mind I was already formulating my second great plan. In it, I would just leave my house at 2 am get there at 5am, load up and be back by 8:30 with plenty of time to spare for the team to get the pork sausage done. I hung up and began to realize I had a larger problem than I thought. Let's imagine it like a tangled web of portable fencing that is wrapped around a prickly thorn tree - just to keep things clear. First prickle - one of our delivery drivers had asked off the next day (Friday). Second tangle - our warehouse manager was then set to cover his route. He had to pickup a heavy load so he would be taking the larger delivery box/van. Double knot - 4 pallets of pork would need to be picked up and our other delivery vehicles only hold 3 pallets. Fish tail looking tangle - Because our warehouse manager was going to be covering deliveries I was supposed to pick up our turkeys first thing Friday morning from where they were harvested so they would be frozen and ready to start packing on Monday. Tangle around a thorn - a pallet that needed to go back to the facility where the pork was harvested had accidentally been taken from the farm freezer to where we rent cold extra cold storage in town and they wouldn't open till 8 a.m.Ball of tangles with spikes coming through it that looks like a solar system model in yarn and harpoons - For my plan to work, I needed to leave at 2 a.m. to pick up four pallets with a vehicle only big enough for three pallets bringing a pallet with me that I couldn't possible get access to until 8 a.m. and be heading in the opposite direction to pickup Turkeys by 8:30 A.M...... PerfectI sheepishly called my friend back and asked if he could haul it after all. He graciously agreed and I began concocting my third plan - a better plan undoubtedly!As you may recall, my team was set to leave on Friday afternoon at the time the pork was to be delivered. So late Thursday I gave them the great news that I needed them to work an extra 3 hours on Friday - all to get this sausage done. I asked Mariah to make them homemade sourdough cinnamon rolls as a special treat to thank them for their dedication though - and assured them it would be worth it!Friday came around and I raced off to pick up Turkeys, made a special stop at our rented cold storage to get that pallet (lets call it "the package" just to make it seem more dramatic), and then brought it back to the farm so it would be ready to load on my friends truck after he dropped off the pork at 3:00 P.M. Then fate struck down plan #3. The following facts may seem unrelated but tragically they will unite into a tale of woe so follow carefully. -At 3:07 I got a text the pork hadn't arrived. -At the time I was talking to my father and was about to ask him if he could check a small group of cows we needed up the next day. He hit some bad service and the call dropped. -I put a quick call through to my friend which revealed that due to traffic he wouldn't arrive till 4:00. The timeline to get the sausage done was now shrinking! -Mariah asked me to make sure to bring some eggs home as we were having company over that evening and she needed them for the meal. -I raced over to our on farm processor and forgot to call my father back. My processing crew prepped everything that could be prepped as they waited, and I sat down to write a weekly farm update (this very email - about a very different subject haha). Then, just as my friend pulled in with the pork, I got an urgent call that the hot water heater in our chick brooder was making noises that sounded like an asthmatic elephant was having an alergic reaction while playing the tuba. I was dubious, but he put his phone on speaker and all I could contend was that I thought someone must simultaneously be playing the electric triangle with a rake as well! To say those were noises which should never come from such a device is an understatement! So I dropped everything and raced back down the road to where the chick brooder was. On the way over, my phone rang and the manager of our processing team informed me that after unloading the truck he found the pork was frozen like a brick. He didn't think they could grind any of it in that condition. Fearing an imminent explosion in the chick brooder, I told him to just try and dropped my phone in the seat of the truck in my hurry to enter the brooder. Upon entering, the elephant seemed to have recovered (owing in large part to my farm help unplugging everything and turning off all of the valves). A quick inspection showed that it was not in fact a musically impaired elephant but instead a falsely open valve forcing water at high pressure backwards through the machine. Thankfully he caught it early and after draining the excess pressure and resetting the valve all seemed well - at least for a moment. Then I got back into my truck simultaneously realizing that, in my haste, I forgot the eggs my wife needed for supper at the processor (we pack and wash eggs in separate building there and we always eat the broken and excessively weird shaped and dirty ones ourselves which we set aside when packing). As I raced back, I returned a call from our processing team manager and he informed me the pork was just jamming up the grinder because it was frozen so hard. I thanked him for trying, told him to season what little had made it through the grinder, and offhandedly asked him if he had loaded "the package."My heart sank, as he explained that he had been focussed on the pork and getting the team going. The truck left before he brought "the package" out to load. Frozen pork, no sausage, no back haul of "the package" back to the other facility and a high trucking bill. It was a gut punch to say the least. If that call about the asthmatic tuba playing elephant had come just five minutes later I would have been there to load the truck myself. Alas, if a fourth plan had ever existed the last nail in it's coffin was delivered in that moment.As I loaded the busted dirty eggs into the truck, I glanced at the clock and noticed with alarm that it was already passed the time I had promised Mariah to be back with the eggs. I raced down the road and remembered to call my father back (several hours had passed since the dropped call) and talked briefly about how the farm and animals looked. When I asked him about that small group, he was confused and said he hadn't seen them. Bewildered I told him where they were supposed to be and he exclaimed something along the lines of "Oh dear. We are up a creek without an oar, with three holes in the bottom of the boat, and a hurricane on the horizon". It turned out that not seeing the group (or knowing it existed) he left several gates open when he was there hours before and the cows could pretty much be anywhere. We both raced to that part of the farm and I just couldn't get it out of my mind that if the call hadn't dropped and if the pork been on time I would have told him about the group and prevented this entire mess! Mercifully, when we arrived the cows were just where they were supposed to be and hadn't had any curiosity to explore any other fields past the open gates. I sighed in relief and gasped as I saw the time and raced home -very late indeed!Just as I came through the door with the eggs, I got a text that, in total, 47 packs of breakfast sausage had been produced......Sadly, that yield could almost be measured in man hours per pack of breakfast sausage and it represented poignantly the grand failure of no less than 4 master plans. The seeds of failure had been sown the week prior when I never responded to my friend (but distinctly thought I did) and no amount of exertion could undue that wild chain of events that seemed dead set on the same outcome - namely being out or nearly out of breakfast sausage for the weekend - quick if you hurry you might be able to order them before they are gone! I am recovering slowly from the trauma of this insane saga but writing it out is helping me heal and hopefully it gives you a chuckle as well. Blessings Your Farmer -David

{Watch} Onto Fresh Pasture

As part of our regenerative grazing plan we are continually moving the cows, sheep, chickens...... onto fresh pasture. Some people imagine this would be quite the roundup to be constantly moving all of those animals. While it does take time, the animals also learn very very quickly that when we call it means fresh pasture is just ahead and they sure get excited about that. Often just a few calls and the cattle or sheep will just follow us into the fresh sward of pasture. One of my favorite parts of moving the cattle is just how excited they get. They are massive creatures and yet they jump and throw their heads around in excitement just like their young calves haha.

New Arrivals - July/August Newsletter

More from the blog

The Worst Laid Plans

Sounds Of The Farm - 100% Grass Fed To Finish Beef

{Watch} Onto Fresh Pasture

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