Anna

What a wonderful day to be born, Earth Day.

Penny had her calf a little girl whom we named Anna, as you can see from the pictures she is all white, has blue eyes and LONG lashes.

But Anna didn't know about the electric fence and she got out...FOUR times in one afternoon, I put her in FOUR times, on the fifth time I carried her 100 yards to our holding paddock that has Cattle Panel.

Her Mother whined and I felt bad so I put Anna in a wheel barrow and took her back, out she came again and again I carried her the 100 yards to the paddock.

Well now Anna is staying there and we have the delightful experience of bottle feeding her. What a joy this is and we are really bonding with her, she didn't even know how to suck at first and we had to teach her.

Now she runs right up to me and wants to eat. We eat and then we run around and get a lot of rubbing and scratching. Here are some pictures for you to enjoy.

Cheers,

Craig

Processors and improving business

Yet another problem...Litchfield Locker is STILL waiting for labels for SIX weeks they have been waiting for them, I guess they ordered them and then have to wait to get USDA approval...Damn government.

Meanwhile the six pigs we took to them have been cut wrapped smoked ect and sit waiting for stupid labels.

We have heard of a group in RI called Rhode Island Livestock Association, you take your pigs to Johnstown RI and then they truck it to Westerly Packing to be cut and wrapped under USDA.

This dispite the $100.00 trucking fee sounds wonderful as it is close, I have been to Westerly packing many times and they have a great facility and the man there who is Bruno sounds like he is really in to customer service and personal care.

So when the next pigs are ready to go we will try them.

So thus far Hilltown pork screwed up four kinds of sausage from one pig and said..sorry

Litchfield locker screwed up one whole pig but was honorable enough to pay for it with a check

Now we wait for labels.

What's next, oh yeah add to the issue of the 146 chickens that died last year that are still here which we won't sell except for soup birds as we think they may be too tough.

Ct Dept of Ag called me yesterday and they want me to be on the radio in Hartford for an hour, I really hope I get a chance to discuss processors...

Not wanting to bother people I tend to not call and up date them, after the experiences above, especially with the pork I thin kI need to call customers once a month while they wait for their pork so they know where we stand.

One last note I have been trying to up load pictures of our latest calf and have had no luck...

But on a good note we borrowed a seed spreader (3 point hitch) and after buying a disc harrow we spread seed in our pastures and them raked it all in and they look the best they ever have.

We got 3 more acres fenced in, in the ox pasture and the cows are in heaven.

Cheers,

Craig

The Williams School

The people from the Williams School called me about three weeks ago and wanted to know if they could come to the farm for Earth Day.

They wanted to help us in whatever task we had and desired a tour of the farm as well.

I really didn't know what to expect and quite frankly was a bit concerned about what I was going to do with 30 little kids of middle school age.

My first mistake was thinking that I was going to get 30 kids to help clear sticks, logs and such things from a pasture..

What we got was 30 (+/-) young adults who REALLY worked.

Their Parents should be proud.

Their peers should take note.

They came, they unloaded off the bus and immediately passed out leather gloves that the school had provided (that should have clued me in that these young people were here to work)We did the tour first, I gave my opinions and shared our views of why we farm as we do and why the public needs to get out of the Supermarket and out to the local Farm.

We looked and talked and answered questions, they we went to work.

In 45 minutes 1 1/2 acres of two year old downed brush, trees and stumps were cleared, piled and ready for the next burn.

As they entered the bus to go back to the school I had the pleasure of shaking each students hand and saying a very heartfelt Thank You. When asked if they could come back next year there was no hesitation, of course and we would be honored.

My only regret is that I was so blown away with these young people that I forgot to give the Adult leaders their fresh eggs, maybe next year.

If only there were more teenagers like those who came from the Williams School, what a wonderful world this would be..

See the rest of the pictures at: http://s253.photobucket.com/albums/hh63/footstepsfarm/Earth%20Day/

Cheers,

Craig

We need your help please

Now that I am retired I have gotten active in the fencing team at Ledyard High School in Ledyard Ct.

We need to get our web site hits up so google will pick us up.

If you have a free moment would you please help the team by going to our web site at

www.ledyardfencing.org

The students would really appreciate it and I would be so grateful.

Cheers and thank you,

Craig

January Newsletter

January Newsletter

Now that I am retired from the USPS I will have time to farm, time to get my business act together, and time to get all the jobs done around here that my Dear Wife Sheryl has seen me put off.

I hope to make at least one entry per month in my blog as way of a newsletter just to keep all of our great customers up to date on what we are doing around here.

Here are some highlights, good and bad.

Last Sept we lost 146 chicks within two weeks of arriving from the hatchery. They were replaced but due to decreased sunlight and lowering temps the new birds are STILL with us.

All of our chicken customers for October are STILL waiting for their birds and by now have probably given up on us. Having the birds for so long I just do not know how they will be for tenderness, it has been entirely too cold to process them as our processing area is outside and open air.

Everyone may have to wait until this spring to get their birds but we will post more after we find the weather and time to process some and try them out. If they are not up to our standards I will not sell them.

Perry the Boar is killing piglets, I just figured that out and really it guess I should say I THINK he is the one doing it. The piglets now over 3 months old have been turning up dead in the new paddock.

I had tried to move them out of the new area which does not have electric fence and into the area (the rest of the farm) that does. All we have had is escapee piglets and many times chasing the little oinkers to get them back in the steel fenced paddock.

We have lost at least 5 in about a week.

Both Olive and Pearl are laying on their babies and killing them.

So I have made a purely business decision: I will take Olive and Pearl to the sausage factory with much regret. I had so wanted to keep both of them until they died here, but their grain cost is just nuts if they are not producing and or are killing their babies. Both girls are 7 or 8 now, so from a business point it is way past time.

Perry will either be sold or turned into boar sausage.

This spring I will travel to buy a new boar and perhaps one or two new sows.

Perry in the meantime will be visited by four sows from two different farms not to mention getting back with the ladies here.

We gave away our ducks, at least most of them, we have about a dozen flying around here now and the rest went to another farm, I just could not kill them.

2008 will see us focus on Pork and chicken, we will do turkeys only for our family and then decide if we want to do them in 09.

Julia from Cedar Meadow has been in touch with a man who says his Bourbon Reds get up over 25 pounds, he claims it is all about genetics, so Julia will be buying eggs from him, hatching them and we will buy some poults from her to see how these work out.

Our Ct Dept of AG Viability Grant work is done except for the final touches on our feed bins, we didn’t realize we had to have a audit done on our receipts etc and have found out it will cost around $200.00 for that. Next time I will figure that in to the grant.

We will apply for a grant again at the end of the year as we want:
To get water lines to all pastures for water spigots
To irrigate all of our pastures
Increase our egg production to 100 dozen per week
Buy two hoop houses, one for the layers and one to start a new project: Mushrooms.
To construct steel fence in a big pasture instead of the electric fence so as to be a “graduation” paddock between the piggery nursery and our normal pastures
To purchase a walk-in cooler so our customers don’t have to be inconvenienced in picking up their orders, and to allow us to hold more sausage and bacon.

Having the new road is the BEST part of the grant, it sure makes life easier for me as does the feed bins, no more trips to Manchester (3 hours out of the day) for 1500 pounds of grain.

We have to ask for an extension for our SARE grant, with lack of help and a full time job last year we never had the time to get the Chill System done, we only hope that the SARE folks will understand and allow us the time to fulfill our promise.

I’ve got lots more to say but time has come to get out side and do chores.

One last thing:

THANK YOU TO SHERYL FOR MAKING IT POSSIBLE FOR ME TO RETIRE AND FULLFILL MY FARMING DREAM

Cheers,

Craig

A Honorable Man

January 4, 2008

There really is some honor left in the business world.

I hadn’t heard anything from the folks at Litchfield Locker and my blood was boiling, I was preparing to send letters to every news media entity that had ever done a story on us.

I wanted to “tell the world” about what a lousy job Litchfield Locker had done for us.

We had lost over 100 pounds of sausage from our old processor and then to loose all this meat just put me over the edge.

But I decided to call Litchfield and give them one more chance before I unleashed my “army”, I still had not heard anything from them and being ignored is worse than anything else someone could do to me.

I am glad I waited. I arranged a meeting with Bjarne Svensson, co owner.

Yesterday I drove the hour and 45 minutes and arrived around 8:30 to meet with Bjarne.

We went upstairs, he offered me a seat and listened to my dissertation of what had happened, how well we are known because of our Certified Humane designation and what my future plans were on the farm along with our need to develop a long term relationship with both a Slaughter House and a Processor.

Bjarne is “Old School”, honorable, calm (good thing he’s a big guy) and a man with vision, most importantly he backs up his product and his word. He offered to buy our whole pig… after his offer was made a third time I took him up on it and he immediately wrote me a check for the entire amount.

That is something unheard of in today’s business.

We talked for almost an hour, he showed me around, explained that he had just bought in four short months ago and had already made some of the “past practice’s” disappear.

This man impressed me, that ain’t easy.

He took time to explain how to get more out of my product and more importantly he made me understand why things are done the way they are. Why as an example if you make different kinds of sausage you loose some meat in the process, how long it takes to change between these different sausage batches etc. Knowledge is power and now I at least had a better understanding of how things work and why.

Bjarne and I come from the same school as we both feel “If I don’t like it. I won’t sell it”.

So now I feel comfortable in taking the next load of three pigs to be killed at Bristol Beef and processed by Litchfield Locker. I fully expect to develop a long term business relationship with both facilities and I expect our customers to be glad we have made this decision.

On the way home I immediately called the other farms whom I had relayed my past experience to and I strongly suggested to them that they give Litchfield a try, I think all concerned will be happy with the arrangement.

My apologies to Bjarne for not meeting with him face to face before I fired the broadside, in this day and age it is not a normal occurrence to meet such a man with high standards, old school business practices and a honorable way of solving mistakes.

Cheers,

Craig

The need for a GOOD slaughter house

Here is a letter I sent to Litchfield Locker, I had tried them after someone told me to give them a try, I still have not heard a word from them so now it is time to start sending this letter to all who will listen.

Litchfield Locker & Processing
205 East Main St
Litchfield, Ct 06759

December 09, 2007

Good Morning,

I came to pick up my pork yesterday and I have a few concerns.

1.When I got there and was approached by a man who seemed new to the job the first thing I noticed was confusion, he didn’t know where my meat was, he spoke to one of the butchers who told him there was three names…yet none of my boxes have any name other than mine. He had a hard time finding my meat.

2. In my conversation with you I was told it would take about two weeks to get my order back…it took five and I called you, you didn’t contact me.

3. You told me you could cryovac and label. None of my meat was cryovaced and NO labels were on anything. The man who waited on me said things had been busy there. I thought that each package would have our label on it, each would have a USDA stamp, a list of what the package contained etc. There were none of these.

4. I was told my pig dressed at 161, I got 90 pounds of product of which 10 pounds was fat back.

5. I Express mailed to you our spices for our sausage and yet except for one pack of Italian sausage there was NO SAUSAGE at all. Also our recipe was for breakfast sausage NOT Italian sausage.

6. Ethan and Brieanne(Terra Firma Farm)got their meat weeks ago, I was left out of the loop and had to call them to see if they had heard anything from you.

7. We have a reputation and a product like you just presented to me is NOT up to our standards.

8. I came to you to see if using a local place would work better than Hilltown pork in NY, so this pig was a test, now I doubt that I even got my own pig back.

9. The bacon should have been “fanned” out in cryovac like in the supermarket, it should not be a crumpled mess. I talked to you about smoking our meat longer as I wanted the smoke smell to hit you when you open the package, the bacon has no smoke smell and has no taste. No nitrates does not mean “no taste”

You have failed me big time, now I must call customers and tell them they will have to wait two more months.

I AM NOT HAPPY, where’s my sausage, why wasn’t my order crovaced ( I DID INCLUDE A LABEL FOR YOU TO SEE), why wasn’t the boxes labeled with each individuals name on it and why did it take five weeks to get this done.

Quoting your web site: The Locker was purchased in the summer of 2006 by former chef, Jeff Foglia. As a former chef, he knows how important it is to have only the freshest, high quality products and excellent customer service to keep our customers happy.
In 2007, Bjarne Svensson joined Jeff as the co-owner of The Locker. Bjarne contributes extensive experience as a butcher and meat processor, spanning 20 years and 3 countries. His vast experience is relayed to our customers through his care to deliver the highest quality of meat.
Both Jeff and Bjarne want to preserve The Locker's forty year history of high quality products and services along with excellent customer service.
YOU MIGHT WANT TO CHANGE YOUR FRONT PAGE BECAUSE THUS FAR YOU HAVEN’T DONE ANY OF THIS.


If I am to bring you up to 200 pigs a year, things MUST be right, this is happ hazard, unprofessional and rinky dink. The folks at Bristol Beef wanted to know when I would bring them more pork, I told them I had to see how you folks did with my order…do you want to guess what my response is…

Waiting to hear something positive from you…

Craig

Late updates

September 20, 2007

Our apologies for not keeping up with this, there just is no free time.

In no particular order here is what we need to pass on to you all:

1. We have had some turkey losses and will have to write some of our customers to notify them they will have to look elsewhere for their bird. Nature being what it is some were lost to who knows what (2), rollover of the turkey tractor (3), weasel(2).
2. We have had some chicken losses, we got a batch from our normal hatchery who was supplied by a different hatchery then we normally get our birds from. Out of 150 chicks we have 4 left. They replaced the birds and we have lost about 15.

These birds will grow slowly due to the decreasing sunlight so we may be in to November before we can fill all of our orders.

3. We have to ask the SARE folks for an extension, due to:
a. Our volunteer help has left us to another state. We sorely miss his company and his tireless help around the farm.
b. Business has boomed. Thanks mostly to Faith Middleton and CT Public Radio’s ”Food Smooze” we have had to order more birds and by seasons end we will have surpassed last years numbers by over 400.
c. We lost the Teenage help we had last year for chicken processing so now less people are doing more work.
d. We received a Grant from the Ct Dept of Ag and that grant’s work has run in to delays and cost overages but we are almost done. This grant has a year limit where the SARE grant is longer but still not long enough.
e. Because of the increased number of birds we have to process each Saturday and the reduction in help I have not had time to work on the Air Chill system, I did not want to take the chance of loosing a refrigerator in the middle of the season, should have thought of that before but figured I could be done processing before noon instead of it taking till after four PM.
f. The Farm Market also take about all of Sunday which is the other day I could have been building the system, something else that I didn’t figure in to the length of time it would take to do this.
g. So I will ask to be extended until Jan 2009, that will give me this fall/winter to build the system and write the how to book, test next spring and summer and write the final report in November.

4. Tomorrow morning the Dept of Ag is coming to blood test our pigs, I AM NOT HAPPY because I believe they way they do this test is not as Humane as it could be.
a. They first called in Feb to set a date, I was told I needed a confinement area which of course I had no time to build nor any budget for it.
b. The test needs to be done since we are registered breeders of Tamworth’s and sell piglets to other farms.
c. So they called again last week and said they would be here on the 21st.

(1). We have spent almost $1,000.00 to build the confinement area
(2) We have spent the entire week building the thing and I will post some pictures here to.
(3). I intend to film this blood drawing and look for a better more calm way to get the job done.
(4). I had to arrange time off from my day job at the Post Office.
(5). Shawn spent the better part of four hours hauling all the stone out of this area which used to be our garden area. 97 feet long and 37 feet wide with 13 raised beds of stone.


5. The State Dept of Ag grant progress has, as I said been slow, the road building took a lot of time and all other work in that 10 acres had to stop, animals kept out of their and so the fence overgrew and broke down.
Many hours of weed whacking and fence work now has all the old paddocks in the ox pasture back in shape, a road down the middle and the old paddocks split in half as per our grant.
The two concrete pads are done thanks mostly to Curt. Our chicken processing area is at a standstill with a 300% improvement in what we were using, we now have a ROOF !!! even if it is a blue tarp and the ducks love to roost on the top peak.

Speaking of ducks…I am having a hard time killing them, we have 48 left as I have done just two. Jonathan Rapp a well know Chef in Chester has asked for 25 for a special dinner. Ducks also take a long time to process, I do a chicken in under 7 minutes which in itself is a long time. We demand the cleanest chicken possible so we take time to insure clean birds inside and out. But the paraffin wax method of doing ducks take about 45 minutes per duck, not good.

I do love the ducks though, and have released a number of them, Sheryl keeps noticing the number of free ducks increasing . They fly all around and love to roost on the top of my tractor which I don’t mind except they poop on my instrument panel…

6. I am very honored to have the WCR folks coming to the farm the first weekend n November, then I am one of the three panel members who will discuss: Heritage Breeds and how they benefit the chef. This is a BIG deal as they are nation wide and are spending big money to come to Newport thence our farm and one other. MANY THANKS to Maureen Pothier for arranging this, I truly had no idea how big of a deal this is to be.
7. Not happy with our latest batch of sausage and in fact I called the processing facility in NY and asked what I did wrong. We had the whole pig made into 4 kinds of sausage and it just is not right. The first batches we did were without question the BEST sausage we have ever had, now it will be uncased and re-seasoned for our own use, but a lot of sausage can not be sold due to unsatisfactory flavor and that equates to a big financial loss.
8. We have one feed bin done and full of grain it holds 4 ½ ton easily, two more to build and then that part of the grant is done.

The new chicken tractors have been done for a while, the brooders are all done and worked very well so we are about set on the expansion grant.

The last thing I have left to do on the State grant is to fence in two more paddocks in the ox pasture, then we can make out the end of project report and finally get paid.
9. The farm Market (Denison Farm Market) where I am the Market Master is doing VERY well, last year we had 7 vendors now we have 18. Bernie Lazier who runs Country Corners Farm has become a very close friend and he has just been so much help. He puts out the newsletter and does a lot of more things to make our Market the best in SE Ct.
10. Old time farmer and friend Whit Davis has had a fall and will not be at our market for the rest of the year, he is sorely missed and we look forward to having him back for next year.
11. Jeff is doing well in Football and the Stonington Bears is off to a winning season. Jeff puts his heart and soul into his game and we are so proud that he really is devoted to his sport.
12. Kevin is happy at Ledyard High School where he is a Ag student. He LOVES it and is doing well. Kevin is always the kid who helps like an adult and knows what my next step is in any project.
13. We are sold out of turkeys and have been since Dec of 2006, we are sold out of Chicken for this year and there is a year wait for pork. Faith Middleton is the one responsible for that, she has gotten chicken,ducks and pork from us and mentions this fact many times over the course of her program. Our web site counter goes nuts and then comes the orders. THANK YOU FAITH !!
14. This years YRD party was great and we will do it again next year. Thanks goes out to Shawn, he really stepped up and got things done. The whole family helped in different ways and it was real nice. We miss not having Shane come up this year but we understood. He will be coming next year and I for one can’t to have all my boys here at the same time.

Shawn and Amie spent countless hours mowing, weed whacking, making garbage piles, burning trash and making the whole place look great for the party.

The fire pit had to be dug again and Cody was a big help to Shawn with that, this winter we will get things concreted in so we can use that pit each year. Having a pig roast the way we do is the greatest. Many thanks to Sheryl who really made the party special with all of her planning and forethought.

15. Avery has really helped this year and is about as fast as I am doing chickens. I made up a list a while ago “Farm Jobs that Pay” and both Avery and Wyatt stepped up, got a lot of maintenance type work done and made themselves some cash too boot.
16. We will not be doing turkeys for 2008, we want to let the pastures rest for a year, BTW no sign of black head this year, note to remember is that I treated the 3 I had last year with Shacklee’s basic G and it cured them…explain that…

We probably won’t do ducks next year either, just chickens and pork. I hope to retire in 2008/09 so we will not necessarily reduce the work load just the ground it all covers.

I have put some thought in to expanding our pigs area so it goes up into the woods where all the oak trees there. Have you seen the price of acorn fed hams in Spain…Maybe when I am retired I can take on the extra load.

17. Many thanks to Art Hiles of Red Fence Farm in Groton CT, he got us a free stainless steel standup cooler when McDonalds left Walmart. So now we have four fridge’s for our processing area and more importantly it gives us another place to store the boxes of pork when we pick them up from the processor and wait for the customer to pick up their order.
18. This winter I will be back on the shingleing project, maybe I can finally finish the house siding. It will be nice to be done and I know a certain person will appreciate not looking at all the tyvec…
19. I have the paperwork done to get our yearly inspection from the Certified Humane folks, just need to get it in the mail. This is such a wonderful thing that they do and it HAS helped our business a lot.
20. Sheryl has been very busy making old cage changes so she can have a different set up for the chickens, a lot of time and work is going in to her project. She has really kept us all on track, is always taking the boys to this or that, being a football Mom and a taxi has kept her busy. The house yard has been really nice this year with ever changing flowers ect. The chickens have been responsible for tearing up what Sheryl has put so much effort into.
21. We have had a lot of fun playing Air Soft with all the guys that have the Air Soft guns here, we’ve played three times since August 1st and we all are increasing our war chest a little at a time. I can’t wait until the chicken and turkey season is over, the Air Chill system is done and I can play more often. I don’t take any time to play or do anything else, it’s all work and we still can’t keep up. Up at 4:30, out the door by 5:30 to do chores, off to work at the PO by 7:30, home and back to chores by 4:45, in for supper at 7:45 asleep on the couch by 8:30.

This old man can’t keep up with the young lads anymore and it takes me longer to get up out of a crawl but I still enjoy it even if I do get killed faster than most.
22. I really have an issue with myself because it takes me FOREVER to answer any phone messages or e-mails, hopefully this will ease up upon retirement.
23. Piglets are due any day now to Petunia, with Tammy and Ethel right behind her, we should have lots of little nickel sized noses around here over the next few weeks. This will be great when the WCR tour comes so they can all see the babies.
24. Sometime in the next few weeks I will submit changes to our web site to our wonderful web master Sarah. We will remove the turkey order form, up date the chicken and pork order forms so they say 2008 and perhaps even add to our journal.


I guess that is about it for this time.

Thanks to Joel Salatin for being who he is, for doing what he does and for sharing his knowledge with us all.

Cheers,
Craig

PS Andrew where are you ???

Sold Out and vacation

Well I am sad yet happy to report that we are:

Sold out of pork for 2007

Sold out of turkeys for 2007 (have been since last December)

Sold out of ONLINE orders (monthly orders) for pastured poultry for 2007, you can still come to the Denison Farm Market and order them a week in advance.

We will be going on vacation the first week in july so we will not be filling any orders on Sunday July 1st nor Sunday July 8th, we will be again serving you on Sunday July 15th, this will also give our birds some more time to grow.

For folks wanting chicken who have not already placed an order please contact Cedar Meadow Farm in Ledyard, Julia may have some birds available. http://www.cedarmeadowfarm.net/

Cheers,

Craig