Web Site Update

October 28, 2008: We have documented (with text and many pictures) our Certified Humane method for processing chickens. We've done this for two reasons: to show our customers who are interested just how we treat our chickens, and second to provide instructions for people who are interested in a humane method for processing their own chickens. The link takes you to an introduction page where you will be warned about the graphic nature of the first few pictures on the next page, and you can choose whether you wish to continue to the next page. �

Lots of changes to the web site thanks to Sarah who always does a GREAT job. Ya know readers, no matter where you are she can help you by building a fantastic site for you, especially farmers !!

She is updating our order forms, the order page etc so please do take a moment to check things out. Coming soon are some widgets??? which will help us with some income if you click on them.

Busy today moving everyone in to winter pasture, seperating pigs in to paddocks, bringing chickens in to winter coup, setting pig houses, making winter beds etc. Busy day.

Cheers,

Craig

Farm tour

We had a really nice beginning Farmer Tour thanks to Joyce Meader last weekend.

We were honored to have so many nice folks come and see what we are doing and maybe learning what to do and what not to do. As long as they learned something the tour was a success.

I don't even mind if they come away with feeling they can do better because they learned what not to do from us.

Busy today mowing the 4 acre lot and am in for lunch. The bees were not happy to see me and the how hut fronts that I left in the pasture all summer were full of wasps, but I outsmarted them and got the fronts moved so I can mow over their damn nest.

Got the cows moved into the oxpasture, all except for the newst calf Allen who is not happy being left behind and seperated from his Mother. He is together with Anna and Nilla the goat.

I had wanted to catch him anyway, castrate him and then work with the two calfs as an ozen team, big ideas, not much time.

Our hotdogs, hamburger and meat sales have convinced us of the need to get bigger and diversify. So we are in the process of trying to get two Angus/Hereford Heifers, one for meat sales the other to breed with Newt.

Also because of the tour this past weekend we really hit the jack pot by getting to know Bill Farrell more, what a great guy and what a head on his shoulders. He is raising the Old English Black hog and has put us in contact with the breeder he got them from. We are now trying to work on getting a couple of Old Blacks so we can cross the Blacks and the Tams.

These blacks are the same kind of pig used in Spain that are acorn fed and sell the hams for THOUSANDS of dollars. WHile we are not interested in selling anything like that we do hope that the cross breeding and the opening of a ten acre woodlot of oak trees will make our customers very happy.

Our friend and great webmaster Sarah has 74 pages of stuff for my journal, she like us is straight out with work and will get the site up dated as soon as she can.

We are also working on a written self guided tour of the farm which will also be on the web site.

Lunch is done, time to go back to mowing.

Cheers,

Craig

Price List

Subject to change since the wife has not seen it yet...

Footsteps Farm
Beef, Pork, Chicken,Turkey
2008 Price List

Scottish Highland Beef, grass fed March-Nov

Groundbeef $7.00/lb.
Stew Meat $7.00/lb.
Patties $8.00/lb.

Boneless Ribeye $16.00/lb.
Boneless Sirloin $12.00/lb.
Bottom Round Steak $10.00/lb.
Chuck Steak $7.00/lb.
Filet/Tenderloin $24.00/lb.
Flank Steak $7.00/lb.
Flat Iron $7.00/lb.
NY Strip Steak $16.00/lb.
Porterhouse $14.00/lb.
Rib steak $13.00/lb.
Semi Boneless Ribeye $15.00/lb.
Short ribs $7.00/lb.
Sirloin stk $12.00/lb.
Sirloin tip steak $14.00/lb.
Skirt steak $9.00/lb.
T-bone $11.00/lb.
Top Round stk $10.00/lb.

Bottom Round roast $9.00/lb.
Eye round roast $9.00/lb.
Top Round Roast $9.00/lb.

Beef Heart $3.00/lb.
Beef Liver $4.00/lb.
Beef Tongue $3.00/lb.
Oxtail $5.00/lb.
Soup Bones $3.00/lb.
Dog Bones $3.00/lb.


All beef hotdogs $8.00/lb 2009: $8.50/lb

Tamworth Hogs on pasture 365 days per year. Some finished on acorns 30 days in Sep/Oct

60/40 Beef/Pork hotdogs $7.50/lb 2009: $8.00/lb
¼ hog $7.00/lb 2009: $8.00/lb
½ hog $6.50/lb 2009: $7.50/lb
Whole hog $6.00/lb 2009: $7.00/lb
Ground Pork $7.00/lb 2009: $7.50/lb
Hot or Mild Italian Sausage $7.50/lb 2009: $8.00/lb
Bacon $10.00/lb
Acorn finished items add $2.00/lb
Brats $8.00/lb
Kielbasa $8.00/lb
Smoked Ham Steaks $9.00/lb
Bone in chops $7.50/lb
Smoked Ham roast $11.00/lb


Pastured Chickens, Eggs and Bourbon Red pastured Turkeys

Broiler Chickens $3.75/lb 2009:$5.00/lb
Cut up chicken $4.25/lb 2009: $5.50/lb
Boneless skinless breasts $7.00/lb 2009: $7.50/lb
Soup Chickens $15.00 flat fee 2009: $20.00 flat
Cat food parts $5.00/lb
Chicken livers $8.00/lb
Chicken Feet $5.00/lb

Eggs $4.00/dz 2009: $5.00/dz
$2.50/half dz 2009: $3.00/dz

Turkeys $6.00/lb 2009: $8.00/lb

Great party

On Saturday we had our annual YRD pig roast, WOW was it great, we had around 200 people present and the whole family worked hard to make this the best year we have ever had.

Many thanks to one hell of a good wife Sheryl for all she did leading up to, during and after the event. It takes a lot of work that no one sees to get something like this to run so smoothly.

The property never looked so good thanks mostly to Shawn (thanks for cutting brush, mowing, painting the Memorial area fence, picking up, making dump runs etc) but also to Jeff (thanks for mending fence) , Kevin (thanks for mowing), Avery (thanks for weed whacking)and Wyatt(thanks for spreading the wood chips in the flower beds), they all worked hard to get the place looking extra nice for our guests.

Brothers Curt and Cody and their wives all pitched in splitting and cutting wood (thanks Jeff and Curt), making flower arrangements (Thanks Donna) organizing, setting up and cleaning up (thanks Nora), gathering stones, relocating refridgerators, buying the kegs (thanks Shawn), getting tables and chairs, getting the fire pit ready (Thanks Cody), doing the last minute things (thanks Hunter, Mel and Morgan) and to all the others who helped in one way or another.

It was sure nice to have my son Shane up for the event and he had a blast as did we all playing Air Soft.

The water slide was a huge hit thanks to Maureen who arranged it's rental, the kids played all weekend on it.

The pig was the best ever thanks to son Pete, he was and always has been our chef for a good number of years, we did pig roasts while Jaime was alive so we have a good lot of them under or belts.

Next year will be even better, YRD V will blow away all the rest in the past and I can't wait.

Our good friend and Web Master Sarah had a cd with 74 pages of journal on it and she will have it up on the site soon. I will try to improve on the frequency of entries and our number one goal for the rest of the year and years to come will be to improve our customer service and shorten our response time answering phone calls and responding to e-mails.

Back to work,

Cheers,

Craig

Thanks for the nice words

Mr. Floyd - We spoke on the telephone a few weeks ago about Adele Douglass and Certified Humane for an article I was writing for The Erickson Tribune. Our conversation stuck with me so I wrote about it. http://www.ericksonblog.com/blog/ Thanks for the inspiration! Take Care, Michele HarrisWriter/ReporterThe Erickson Tribunewww.EricksonTribune.com301-213-1432


The Human Side of Farming
July 10th, 2008 dcfilm Posted in by Michele Harris No Comments »
What did you have for dinner last night? There’s a pretty good chance your answer is chicken. According to the National Chicken Council, Americans eat chicken an average of 4.5 times every two weeks.
If you did answer chicken, do you know what that chicken was fed? Most Americans probably don’t know the answer and it’s not a subject most people want to start delving into – especially since the answer is most likely less than appetizing. Beyond what that chicken ate, how was it raised . . . or even how was it slaughtered?
The answers are hard to come by (and usually pretty grizzly) unless you have gone out of your way to purchase chicken that’s Certified Humane. That seal is the best assurance that an egg, dairy, meat or poultry product has been produced with the welfare of the farm animal in mind. It also assures consumers that the food they’re buying was raised under conditions that animals are supposed to be raised in.
While working on a profile of Adele Douglass, the woman who created the Certified Humane seal (www.certifiedhumane.com), I had an opportunity to speak with Craig Floyd of Footsteps Farm in Stonington, CN. Floyd, who retired from the US Postal Service to pursue farming, is full of enthusiasm for what he does. He and his wife Sheryl are passionate about resurrecting the farm that’s been in the Floyd family since 1712.
The way the Floyds farm is different from most working farms. They follow many of the same techniques his ancestors used before chemicals and industrialization turned farming from a way of life into a big business. He told me how he proudly wears his Certified Humane apron when he goes to farmers markets, joking that a lot of people mis-read the apron and ask him what it means to be “Certified Human.”
The thing is, Floyd is actually a fitting example of the word human. Used as a noun, human means a person – which of course, he is – but so is everybody else. However, when used as an adjective human describes the “characteristic of people’s better qualities, such as kindness or sensitivity.” Craig Floyd represents the human side of being a farmer – yes, even to the point that I would say he should be “Certified Human.”
“We do things a little bit differently here on our farm,” he says. “We treat all of our animals with respect.” Floyd says his animals are like family and he even names all his livestock (and some of the chickens).
“Our personal belief is that the Lord put animals on this earth for our consumption but it must be done with respect. We gather our chickens on Friday night in a trailer and we try to keep them calm. Anytime you stress an animal you change the flavor and the tenderness of the meat. Saturday morning is when it’s time for them to go. We give thanks to the Lord for giving us these chickens and we give thanks to each and every chicken for giving their lives for us.”
In addition to chickens, Footsteps Farm raises pigs and cows. They have a wonderful website (www.footstepsfarm.com) that includes both a journal of their farming experiences and a blog. It’s a great place to visit, especially if you’re interested in the human side of farming.
-Michele Harris

Turkeys

Now is the time for you to order your 2009 turkey, with new production techinques learned at Ployface we will increase our flock to allow more customers to enjoy the best Thanksgiving they have ever had.

Shortly our web site will be updated to reflect a new order form, so get your order in now as we will limit our turkeys to around 100.

We are also looking for a couple of people who want to learn the art of turkey processing to help out in 09.

Believe me, if you don't order early we will be sold out fast.

Cheers,

Craig

Thank you Polyface farm

Just a public Thank You to Joel Salatin and his entire family and crew for a most wonderful day at his farm.

We met a lot of nice folks and wish we had more time to sit and talk with them all, especially the couple from Indiana who we sat next to in the barn. They had been to our site and I wanted to talk with them about the experience but was more interested in seeing all that had to be seen.

For those who do not know the significance of being at Polyface let me just say that their farm is THE leader in faming as we do, being stewards of the land, providing great clean and healthy food, fighting the stupid Gov officials and treating animals with respect.

As time allows I will write my perceptions of what we saw and provide you with some pictures. In the meantime as we traveled home we came up with a "short" list of must do things so I must start to cross items off today!!

The highlight of my day was getting to shake the man's hand and tell him thank you for doing what he is doing.

This visit will certainly benifit our animals, our customers and our land, thanks again Joel.

Cheers,

Craig

Tours

After returning from a most rewarding visit to Joel Salatin's farm in Va, we have a whole list of things to do to bring us more in tune with the land, nature, our business, our animals and our customers.

One of the first things is to suspend all farm tours here at Footsteps. This means we will not do monthly tours and we especially will not do tours for those who appear here unannounced and expect a tour.

What we will do is start annual tours and make them a big deal, food, fun and education. Please keep a eye out for a date for our tour in 2009.

Cheers,

Craig

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