A Busy Monday

A busy Monday.

We had a woman named Lauren come out and helped us weed out the raspberry patch this morning/early afternoon. I met Lauren at the march Winter market in Oxford. She had just moved to town and needed a place to play in the dirt and asked if she could help us out. I said yes. And she works for food. She was an interesting person, secular and politically left of center and because she teaches Medieval Lit at a college in PA she is fluent in middle and old English. I think that's way cool. She's here to be with her SIO while on sabbatical. And she seems to be a careful gardener which is good. We have lots of work for her to do this spring.

When she arrived I was folier feeding garlic, spinach and the strawberry plants in a hoophouse (that are already in flower!). Eugene and I had already made 2" soil blocks and transferred some basil and pac choy to those and he was getting ready to plant more seed. he stopped his seed planting and worked with Lauren weeding out the raspberries for about an hour and when I was finished feeding fish emulsion to plants I got in on the action.

I noticed the raspberries are beginning to leaf out. This is early for them but considering we have had temperatures about 25 degrees above normal who can blame them. They probably think that it is far later in the spring than it is. They are hardy plants as long as they are not producing flowers and fruit so if they leaf out and the weather decides to go to 25 degrees below normal next week they should be alright.

Lauren had to leave around 2pm. She got a nice big bag of lettuce and a couple of garlic bulbs and a bag of dried basil. It's like having a CSA again only this time the member is engaged with the farm and I do not write a newsletter. Of course no money is changing hands, but that is okay with me. Right now we can use help more than cash.

After she left I read email and than ordered the first of the planned 600 meat birds. I ordered a straight run of 50 rock cornish cross day old chicks to be picked up this coming Sunday and a second batch of 100 cornish hen chicks to be picked up Easter Sunday. It sure will be fun to have baby chicks again. They are entertaining and a good source of meat, manure and income for us. Hopefully Danny boy and Nate will not think of them as snacks. Last year Nate was quite bad about wanting to kill the chicks but we managed to keep most alive other than the first day we stupidly put them on pasture and than left the farm to do a farmers market and also left the dogs out to "guard" the chicks. When we got home, Nate had pushed their fence down and had killed a couple of the chicks and was mouthing a couple of others when we arrived. We had to punish Nate and gather up about 25 peeps that had run into tall grass and weeds to hide from the huge predator and put their fence back together all before unpacking from the market. It was a bad scene, one that will not be repeated.

As I write this blog entry I am making a chicken and vegetable soup for dinner. I have been having cooking problems for the past week, ever since the element in the oven burned up. I find I am oven dependant and not having one has taken me out of my cooking comfort zone. Granted, I know how to make literally hundreds of dishes on the stove top but complete meals here often include baked squash, biscuits, a cake, roasted potatoes, roasted chicken, etc.. And at the moment I cannot embellish meals not make dessert from scratch (which is a good thing health-wise but a bad thing enjoyment-wise)

Toad Song

Last night the toads were in full voice. I could pick up 4 different notes, most seemed to minor keys except for the middle A. Their singing was driving the dogs nutz.

Toad song is sure sign of spring (as are the 20 degree above average/normal temps we have been enjoying)

Sustainable Links!

Promoting Sustainable Agriculture

Consumers are paying a high cost for substandard, cheap factory food. The following links are working on different areas but all have the same goal - to support sustainable agriculture. There are far too many groups to mention here (apologies to those we missed). Be sure to find local sustainable agricultural groups in your area as many of them hold extremely informative annual meetings where you can meet local farmers. Depending upon your area of interest, familiarize yourself with any or all of the following links.

• If you are concerned about the quality of the food you are buying at the grocery store, some of the following links will help guide to healthier more humane choices through local farms.
  
• If you are interested in stopping factory farming, some of the following links will help show you how to get involved.
  
• If you are a farmer who is interested in producing food for consumers, there are links below that will help show you how.
  
• Some of the following links will also be able to provide scientific literature supporting the benefits of sustainable agriculture.

It is important to understand the impact you have when you spend your money on factory food. Changing your shopping patterns by supporting local agriculture will not only help improve your health, it will also help improve the environment and bring back our rural communities.

Weston A. Price Foundation
The Foundation is dedicated to restoring nutrient-dense foods to the human diet through education, research and activism. It supports accurate nutrition instruction, organic and biodynamic farming, pasture-feeding of livestock, community-supported farms, honest and informative labeling, prepared parenting and nurturing therapies.

Slow Food
The association's activities seek to defend biodiversity in our food supply, spread the education of taste, and link producers of excellent foods to consumers through events and initiatives.

Farm and Ranch Freedom Alliance
The Farm and Ranch Freedom Alliance is an advocate for the many thousands of independent farmers, ranchers, livestock owners, and homesteaders in this country.

Eat Wild
Eatwild.com is an excellent source for safe, healthy, natural and nutritious grass-fed beef, lamb, goats, bison, poultry, pork and dairy products.

The Meatrix
An excellent flash presentation about factory farming and links about what you can do about it.

Food Routes
The FoodRoutes Find Good Food map can help you connect with local farmers and start eating the freshest, tastiest food around. Find your local food on their interactive map, listing farmers, CSAs, and local markets near you.

Global Resource Action Center for the Environment (GRACE)

• Grace Factory Farm Project
• The GRACE Factory Farm Project (GFFP) works to create a sustainable food production system that is healthful and humane, economically viable, and environmentally sound.
  
  
• Eat Well Guide: Wholesome Food from Healthy Animals
• The Eat Well Guide is a free, online directory of sustainably-raised meat, poultry, dairy and eggs from farms, stores, restaurants, inns and hotels, and online outlets in the US and Canada.
  
  
• Sustainable Table
• Helping consumers make healthy food choices to create a sustainable system.
  
  
• Sustainable Food In Schools
• If you don't like the food being served in your or your child's cafeteria, do something to change it! Includes guidelines on what to do, how to do it, and examples of successful initiatives underway around the country.

Local Harvest
This website will help you find farmers' markets, family farms, and other sources of sustainably-grown food in your area, where you can buy produce, grass-fed meats, and many other goodies.

Farmers Markets
National listing of farmers markets.

Kerr Center for Sustainable Agriculture
The Kerr Center was established to provide farmers and ranchers in the area with free technical assistance and information on how to improve their operations. Wise stewardship was emphasized.

National Farm to School
Farm to School programs are popping up all over the U.S. These programs connect schools with local farms with the objectives of serving healthy meals in school cafeterias, improving student nutrition, providing health and nutrition education opportunities that will last a lifetime, and supporting local small farmers.

Farm to College
This site presents information about farm-to-college programs in the U.S. and Canada collected by the Community Food Security Coalition.

Center for Food and Justice: Farm to Hospital
The CFJ has a program Farm to Hospital: Promoting Health and Supporting Local Agriculture.

Farm to Cafeteria: Community Food Security Coalition
Putting Local Food on the Table: Farms and Food Service in Partnership
Farm to school programs have been addressing the dual issues of improving children's health and providing new marketing options for family farmers.

Food Security Coalition
The Community Food Security Coalition (CFSC) is a North American organization dedicated to building strong, sustainable, local and regional food systems that ensure access to affordable, nutritious, and culturally appropriate food for all people at all times

The True Food Network
The goal of the True Food Network Working is to create a socially just, democratic and sustainable food system.

Acres USA
Acres U.S.A. is the only national magazine that offers a comprehensive guide to sustainable agriculture. Drawing on knowledge accumulated in more than 35 years of continuous publication, we bring our readers the latest techniques for growing bountiful, nutritious crops and healthy, vibrant livestock. Acres U.S.A. has helped thousands of farmers feed the nation's growing appetite for clean, delicious food.

Ecological Farming Association
Eco-Farm supports a vision for our food system where strengthening soils, protecting air and water, encouraging diverse ecosystems and economies, and honoring rural life are all part of producing healthful food.

National Family Farm Coalition
The National Family Farm Coalition (NFFC) provides a voice for grassroots groups on farm, food, trade and rural economic issues to ensure fair prices for family farmers, safe and healthy food, and vibrant, environmentally sound rural communities here and around the world.

Rural Coalition
The Rural Coalition is an alliance of regionally and culturally diverse organizations working to build a more just and sustainable food system which: brings fair returns to minority and other small farmers and rural communities, ensures just and fair working conditions for farm workers,
protects the environment, delivers safe and healthy food to consumers

Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy
The Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy promotes resilient family farms, rural communities and ecosystems around the world through research and education, science and technology, and advocacy.

Grain
GRAIN is an international non-governmental organization (NGO) which promotes the sustainable management and use of agricultural biodiversity based on people's control over genetic resources and local knowledge.

Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture
The Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture explores and cultivates alternatives that secure healthier people and landscapes in Iowa and the nation.

Rodale Institute
The Rodale Institute works with people worldwide to achieve a regenerative food system that renews environmental and human health working with the philosophy that "Healthy Soil = Healthy Food = Healthy People ®

• New Farm (Rodale Institute)
• Helping consumers, brokers, restaurateurs and other farmers find the farm services they're looking for.

Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education
The Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SARE) program has helped advance farming systems that are profitable, environmentally sound and good for communities through a nationwide research and education grants program.

National Campaign for Sustainable Agriculture
The National Campaign for Sustainable Agriculture is a diverse nationwide partnership of individuals and organizations cultivating grass roots efforts to engage in policy development processes that result in food and agricultural systems and rural communities that are healthy, environmentally sound, profitable, humane and just.

National Sustainable Agriculture Information Service
ATTRA provides information and other technical assistance to farmers, ranchers, Extension agents, educators, and others involved in sustainable agriculture in the United States.

Family Farm Defenders
The FFD mission is to create a farmer-controlled and consumer-oriented food and fiber system, based upon democratically controlled institutions that empower farmers to speak for and respect themselves in their quest for social and economic justice.

The Center for Food Safety
The Center for Food Safety (CFS) is an interest and environmental advocacy membership organization established in 1997 by its sister organization, International Center for Technology Assessment, for the purpose of challenging harmful food production technologies and promoting sustainable alternatives.

ETC Group
ETC group is dedicated to the conservation and sustainable advancement of cultural and ecological diversity and human rights.

Environmental Working Group
EWG specializes in environmental investigations. They have a team of scientists, engineers, policy experts, lawyers and computer programmers who pore over government data, legal documents, scientific studies and our own laboratory tests to expose threats to your health and the environment, and to find solutions.

WorldWatch Institute
WorldWatch is an independent research group working for an environmentally sustainable and socially just society. An excellent book published by WorldWatch institute is by Brian Halweil, Eat Here: Reclaiming Homegrown Pleasures in a Global Supermarket, 2004.

Union of Concerned Scientists
UCS is an independent nonprofit alliance of more than 100,000 concerned citizens and scientists. We augment rigorous scientific analysis with innovative thinking and committed citizen advocacy to build a cleaner, healthier environment and a safer world.

Institute of Science in Society
ISIS promotes science responsible to civil society and the public good, independent of commercial and other special interests, or of government control and a science that can help make the world sustainable, equitable and life-enhancing for all its inhabitants.

Organic Consumers Association
OCA is building a national network of consumers promoting food safety, organic agriculture, fair trade and sustainability.

Organic Center for Education and Promotion
OCEP generates credible, peer reviewed scientific information and communicate the verifiable benefits of organic farming and products to society.

Food and Water Watch
FWW is working on issues such as food and water safety, mad cow, sustainable agriculture, irradiation. Also has a factory farm campaign which aims to change government policies that promote factory farms, fight corporate control that forces farmers "to get big or get out," and encourage sustainably raised meat.

United Poultry Concerns, Inc
UPC is dedicated to the compassionate and respectful treatment of domestic fowl.

Sierra Club
(Including a toolkit for Factory Farm Pollution Activists)
The Sierra Club's mission is to explore, enjoy and protect the wild places of the earth. Practice and promote the responsible us of the earth's ecosystems and resources. Educate and enlist humanity to protect and restore the quality of the natural and human environment. Use all lawful means to carry out these objectives.

Beyond Factory Farming
Beyond Factory Farming is a coalition of citizen's organizations from all across Canada that share a vision of livestock production for health and social justice. Their mission is to promote livestock production that supports food sovereignty, ecological, human and animal health, as well as sustainability and community viability and informed citizen/consumer choice.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA)

Wegmans Cruelty
Video showing what goes on inside a factory chicken farm. Includes news and events.

Humane Society of the US
The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) has worked since 1954 to promote the protection of all animals.

Humane Farming Association
HFA is an animal protection organization. Campaigns against factory farming and slaughterhouse abuse. Also home to the world's largest farm animal refuge.

Compassionate Consumers
Compassionate Consumers was founded in 2003 by a small group of people concerned about animal welfare in the food industry.

FYI, Many of these links already reside on the sidebar of this blog
 

Happy Spring

We are enjoying our first full day of spring. it is 70˚F right now, mostly sunny with a stiff 15mph breeze.

Despite the warmth, it is not really the best condition to get done certain garden tasks such as thinning out and transplanting spinach plants so they can grow big (but we can do this during rainy days which it sounds like we will be getting several in a row starting tomorrow afternoon).

It is a good day to plant seeds and hoe beds and a little of both has been done today. We got most of the beds that will be planted with onions hoed up as well as beds for the second pea planting. I made soil blocks and planted 4 kinds of zucchinis-Costata Romanesque, green tint Patty pan, Sunburst Patty pan and Zephyr which is our best selling zuke (it's 1/2 green and 1/2 yellow).

This morning went to see the oral surgeon so he could check out the implant he put in my jaw 2 weeks ago. He said everything looked excellent and if I keep healing the way I have been I should be ready for the fake tooth in 3 months. My next appointment is June 20th.

Went to the Streit's to pick up our milk after getting my jaw checked out. They had just weaned a calf off of one of their milk cows and he was pitifully mooing for mom. Weaning is not a pleasant thing but a fact of life on any farm that breeds animals and pretty essential in the dairy biz. We saw Joe and talked a bit about the fact the ODA has dropped its suit against the Schmittmeiers who were told to cease and desist from selling raw milk about a year ago. I guess the new ODA head is not as adamant about prohibiting the sale of raw milk in Ohio as Fred Daily was . This is great news.

now it is time to fix dinner. tonight we are having sloppy Joes made with locally grown hormone/antibiotic free beef, Sloppy joe sauce I made last fall that was supposed to be homemade catsup, some onions and garlic we grew last year and peppers from the freezer. for a vegetable I will either cook up the chard we picked for market last Saturday that I kept back or I will go get some lettuce from the hoophouse and make a salad with the marked down organic maters I found at the Eaton Kroger's. I'm leaning towards the salad. I picked lettuce last night and it was really really good. And the bed does need some thinning so the rest of the lettuce plants get big.

Seed Starting

Onion seedlings beginning to poke out of the soil

Late winter is when we start the first of our seedlings. Right now we have a lot of onion and leek seeds on the light tables. We also have been doing lettuce on a regular basis. next week the early zucchinis and cucumber seedlings will be started along with cabbages and broccoli.

Eugene watering the seedlings on a light table

Eugene is thinking about changing how we do the cabbages and broccoli. For the past 12+ years we have started them inside under lights using soil blocks. last summer Eugene direct seeded the last planting of cabbages and they were about the best cabbages we have ever grown. likely because direct seeded plants are always stronger and healthier than transplanted seedlings because the direct seeded plants do not undergo transplant shock which really weaken plants but its something you do not notice if all you do is grow seedlings inside for a particular crop. what he is thinking of doing is planting the broccoli in a raised bed built last year for spring mix. While we will have to transplant the seedlings they will be grown outside which should make them a lot heartier than indoor grown starts. And if some don't get transplanted they can grow in the raised bed as there do not seem to be any other plans for the thing.

March Winter Market Day

Me at market in Oxford, OH this morning before we sold out of most things

Went to market this morning to sell dried herbs, garlic and leafy greens. Sold out of all the leafy greens we took, sold about 20 heads of garlic and a few packets of herbs.

there were a decent amount of vendors selling all sorts of things from bread made in a brick oven to veggie seedlings to meat to eggs to soap to apples to goats. yes goats, Deborah Bowles brought two buck kids to market and was selling them for $35 plus a feeding bottle and instructions. They were way cute. One started bleating when Crossan Curry (old family friend, artist and former goat man who was made to give up his goat herd due to age infirmities) showed up. I guess the one knew when a goat devotee is in the house

It was clear but cold with a brisk wind careening through the market. After it being in the seventies earlier this week no one seemed to appreciate the invigorating breeze. I believe we are all more than ready for spring to come on in.

Saw 3 of my canine friends-Skye the Scottish deerhound, Gilligan, the Heinz 57 and Stormy, the chocolate lab. Saw lots of human friends as well.

Bought a months' worth of meat from the Filbruns and was happy to Evelyn, the matriarch of the farm. She does not often come to the Oxford Market, usually it's Dale or some combination of their kids. I also bough eggs. I don't have to buy veggies as the garden is providing them regularly now.

Scott, the guy who sells apples and cider next to us, told us about a weasel that has been getting into his chickens and killing them. The weasel is driving him crazy because he cannot find it to kill it. Says the thing has got him muttering things to himself. Varmints will do that to a person.

Our bane, once again, is voles. The little bastards are having a fine time eating our snow and snap peas we have planted in a hoop house. Eugene way over planted the peas so they would survive the onslaught but I am wondering if there are enough peas on the planet to feed these voracious rodents. We do have a decent stand of peas and they are getting big enough to with stand the vole onset but they have over grazed fairly large areas and every morning we find more vacant area. We have traps in the hoop houses and the dogs have been busy all winter hunting moles and voles and have been getting 2 to 3 a day so we know the population is steadily getting smaller. Someday they will be under control.

Oh yeah it looks like I get to manage the Tuesday market for this year. I will be working with someone named Derek on getting vendors to come to this market. It will be officially known as the Tuesday Mini market. Sounds a bit like a convenience store only one that does not sell beer or cigarettes. Deborah Bowles said she was willing to help with this too. I was hoping, 3 years ago when the OFMU took over the Tuesday market, I would not have to be manager any longer but last year things went south on the market and it almost was killed off. I now realize this is my baby, I have been with this market since its' birth and if I want it to succeed I am going to have to spend a few more years nurturing it. But, at least this year it sounds like I have some support other than my buddy Jules who was the real originator of this market and who came out retirement last summer to keep it alive with me. Hopefully this will become a wonderful, growing, weekday market.

Luv that Springtime Weather

Yesterday it was in the mid seventies and today the tempuratures are in the low thirties. Gotta love that springtime weather.

Out of the Ashes

One of the blogger farmers in mt list of farm blogs had a devastating fire recently. But out of the ashes has risen a lot of good community things like his CSA members and church helping him out in a myriad or ways and the Internet communities to which he belongs have also come forth with offers of money to help him re-buy seeds, tools etc..

Marlin you may not have a house but you seem to have excellent Karma and I think that your God's message to you is community is far more important than stuff.

Go read his story

GMO's Killing Bees?

Could genetically modified crops be killing bees?

John McDonald, Special to The Chronicle

Saturday, March 10, 2007


With reports coming in about a scourge affecting honeybees, researchers are launching a drive to find the cause of the destruction. The reasons for rapid colony collapse are not clear. Old diseases, parasites and new diseases are being looked at.

Over the past 100 or so years, beekeepers have experienced colony losses from bacterial agents (foulbrood), mites (varroa and tracheal) and other parasites and pathogens. Beekeepers have dealt with these problems by using antibiotics, miticides or integrated pest management.

While losses, particularly in overwintering, are a chronic condition, most beekeepers have learned to limit their losses by staying on top of new advice from entomologists. Unlike the more common problems, this new die-off has been virtually instantaneous throughout the country, not spreading at the slower pace of conventional classical disease.

As an interested beekeeper with some background in biology, I think it might be fruitful to investigate the role of genetically modified or transgenic farm crops. Although we are assured by nearly every bit of research that these manipulations of the crop genome are safe for both human consumption and the environment, looking more closely at what is involved here might raise questions about those assumptions.

The most commonly transplanted segment of transgenic DNA involves genes from a well-known bacterium, bacillus thuringiensis (Bt), which has been used for decades by farmers and gardeners to control butterflies that damage cole crops such as cabbage and broccoli. Instead of the bacterial solution being sprayed on the plant, where it is eaten by the target insect, the genes that contain the insecticidal traits are incorporated into the genome of the farm crop. As the transformed plant grows, these Bt genes are replicated along with the plant genes so that each cell contains its own poison pill that kills the target insect.

In the case of field corn, these insects are stem- and root-borers, lepidopterans (butterflies) that, in their larval stage, dine on some region of the corn plant, ingesting the bacterial gene, which eventually causes a crystallization effect in the guts of the borer larvae, thus killing them.

What is not generally known to the public is that Bt variants are available that also target coleopterans (beetles) and dipterids (flies and mosquitoes). We are assured that the bee family, hymenopterans, is not affected.

That there is Bt in beehives is not a question. Beekeepers spray Bt under hive lids sometimes to control the wax moth, an insect whose larval forms produce messy webs on honey. Canadian beekeepers have detected the disappearance of the wax moth in untreated hives, apparently a result of worker bees foraging in fields of transgenic canola plants.

Bees forage heavily on corn flowers to obtain pollen for the rearing of young broods, and these pollen grains also contain the Bt gene of the parent plant, because they are present in the cells from which pollen forms.

Is it not possible that while there is no lethal effect directly to the new bees, there might be some sublethal effect, such as immune suppression, acting as a slow killer?

The planting of transgenic corn and soybean has increased exponentially, according to statistics from farm states. Tens of millions of acres of transgenic crops are allowing Bt genes to move off crop fields.

A quick and easy way to get an approximate answer would be to make a comparison of colony losses of bees from regions where no genetically modified crops are grown, and to put test hives in areas where modern farming practices are so distant from the hives that the foraging worker bees would have no exposure to them.

Given that nearly every bite of food that we eat has a pollinator, the seriousness of this emerging problem could dwarf all previous food disruptions.

John McDonald is a beekeeper in Pennsylvania. He welcomes comments or questions about the bee problem at mcbee_77@yahoo.com. General comments to home@sfchronicle.com.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/03/10/HOG5FOH9VQ1.DTL

This article appeared on page F - 4 of the San Francisco Chronicle

Spring is Here

It's over 70 degrees so I have the windows open and my shoes off!

The buzzards and red winged blackbirds are back so I think the whistle pig was correct in predicting an early spring.

Did some work in the garden this morning. Pulled all the cabbages and put them on a new compost pile. Weeded out the spring mix so it will be pickable this Friday for the Winter market on Saturday. Transplanted a few heads of lettuce that were growing too close to other heads of lettuce so they would all have room to grow to full size. helped Eugene weed out a bed of spinach than thinned/transplanted a lot of spinach to fill out the bed. Need to do this to 6 more beds, transplanting/thinning, that is, not weeding/hoeing as that has been done.

Since I am out of shape I quit the garden after 3 hours of work. Hung out the laundry on the line and made some lunch. Than I made up 6 bags of catnip and 16 bags of roasted squash seeds. I will likely do more bags of squash seeds. They are so good. I coat them lightly in virgin olive oil than lightly season them with our garlic powder and a salt and roast them. Yum!

Now I am blogging and baking chocolate chip cookies.

Time Change

Today those of us who live in the United States of America sprang forward and set our clocks ahead 1 hour.

Now I have no idea what time it is. The clock sez 12:34pm but my body sez it's 11:34am.

I hate the spring time change and now the GOP congress of last year has made the damn thing 3 weeks earlier. Hmmph.

Chicken on the Brain

I have chicken on the brain today. Actually I have been doing a lot of thinking about how we sell chicken ever since we gave the pastured poultry workshop at the OEFFA conference this past Saturday. Ever since we got into growing chickens for commercial purposes (that makes us sound like big time producers when we raise well under 1000 birds each year) we have sold whole uncut birds only. And we generally sell out but than we are not selling a whole lot of them so it is not too hard to sell out of them.

at the conference we talked to several people who have been doing this for a couple of years and sell a lot more birds than we do and all of them sell cuts instead of whole birds. I was intrigued at this and than Tuesday afternoon we visited my friend Linn Stutts to pick up some home grown grapefruit sent to her by a mutual friend of ours who lives in Florida. While we spent time Linn's kitchen talking, the Food Channel was on in the background and both Eugene and I noticed that literally all the chicken used in every recipe on every show was boneless skinless breasts. This really caught Eugene's attention and he started making a lot of comments about how these shows were doing nothing to teach people how to deal with a whole chicken. I mentioned to him that boneless breast have pretty much been the standard for well over a decade. Linn mentioned that while she appreciated a whole bird because you can do so much with them (and she is an excellent and accomplished cook) it is true that most modern Americans have no clue what to do with a whole bird and skinless breasts are incredibly easy to deal with.

Me, being a slow foodie, I forget that not everyone is willing to take 12 hours to cook a great meal completely from scratch and most people are into this whole kinda, sorta from scratch using a lot of processed/pre-made food type of cooking. The kind of cooking that made Rachael Ray famous. And while this is not my bag baby, it is how about 80% of our customers cook and these meat eating people have not been buying our whole chickens like they are going out of style. Despite the fact our chickens are about as good as you will get in the USA. These are the Rolls Royce's of poultrydom. The meat melts in your mouth, the flavor is to die for. I have never had better.

I believe it is the combination of raising them on pasture, feeding them top notch organic feed and the fact we raise them with love and respect during their short lives. Allowing them to live the best life possible, running around on green pasture in sunlight eating clover and chasing bugs.

Okay, so for the past 11 years I have had no problem dealing with whole birds. I can cut one up in about 1 minute but, generally, I just roast the birds because I am too lazy to to cut them up when I can quickly rub them with kosher salt and garlic powder and maybe sage and rosemary put the bird in a roasting pan and pop it into a 350˚F oven for a couple of hours. And for years I have assumed my customers felt the same way.

Today I found out how wrong I was. You see after the conference and watching the Food Channel at Linn's we here at Boulder Belt Eco-Farm started coming to a realization that perhaps we should start offering something other than whole pastured chicken. So we got to talking about what we could offer. We came up with Cornish hens, big whole roasters, skinless breasts and other cuts. Than Eugene had a great idea-what if I were to write an email asking our customers what they wanted from us and send it out to everyone on my emailing list. So this afternoon I did just that and have gotten a far better response than I imagined. So far I have gotten 10 responses and I expect many more over the next few days. The overwhelming verdict is yes people want cut up chicken and most are intrigued by the thought of Cornish hens.

Now we have an idea of where we want to go with the pastured meat birds this summer. It looks like we will be raising a lot more than last year and by packaging them in a way people like we should make money on the birds instead of just breaking even.

If you live in my local area and have an opinion about our chicken leave an eludication. Hey, even if you are not in my local area go ahead and tell me how you feel about our chickens.