Hay Making

Hay making is always an exciting time. Making high quality dairy hay is what I would call an art or science. We like to get 4-5 cuttings a year and each cutting before the alfalfa flowers. This is the second one of the year.

The healthier the soil, the more nutritious the hay, the healthier the animal, and the more nutritious the food we produce. Every year we take measures to build the life of our soil and it is coming along nicely.

Watching the weather and the alfalfa the men pick a day to mow. A sunny, low humidity forecast is great.

MAHLON USES THE HAYBINE TO MOW THE HAY

 

Next it is time to rake. The rake flips the hay over to help dry the bottom side and puts it in windrows ready for the baler. Usually it needs to be raked twice. The smell of drying hay is wonderful!

After much discussion and walks to the hayfield the hay is declared ready to bale. Now the fun begins!

Everyone likes to be part of the process!

CHEWING A PIECE OF THE FRAGRANT HAY IS JUST MANDATORY





They guys love to show how strong they are, and we love to watch them. This cutting is of great quality and will be ideal for our dairy cows this winter. Notice the lovely green color below!

 

To the shed to save for winter days.

 

Stacking.....

Looks like Courage found a bale just his size!

 

Soon another favorite day on the farm ends. Everyone is tired and thankful to God for his blessing of good hay in the shed...a great feeling.

Chicken Processing Day

As morning dawns the chicken butchering crew had been long up preparing for the exciting day! It's a long, yet rewarding day. All the time, effort, and care of the broilers for the past 8 weeks culminate today to provide superb nutritious food for our patrons. Extra help is always appreciated and adds to the fun. Today Grandpa and Grandma Steiner are here and then a surprise crew from IL shows up to lend a helping hand!

The scalding water must be at just the right temperature and the defeatherer ran for the precise number of seconds. This is Mahlon's area of expertise.

Titus removes heads and legs next. Then the bird is on to the degutting team. For some reason this is a favorite job of many. Daniel and Joseph star in this area. The broiler now needs to be in a cold water about one hour before what we call detailing!

Above one of our surprise IL helpers details a chicken. This involves a going over it for unwanted feathers or innards previously missed. This is the most time consuming part of the process. Then the broiler goes on to the ice cold holding tank to await weighing and packaging.

The broiler is weighed, packaged, and taken to a large refrigerator in our garage to await a fortunate patron. Every part of a pasture raised, organically fed broiler is nourishing for your health: the naturally occurring healthy, flavor giving fat, delicious meat, and mineral packed bones for broth will impart health and strength to our patrons.


Soon our patrons arrive and we enjoy catching up with them and meeting first time customers.

From our Natural Farm to your plate!!!!

Fresh milk

Homemade cottage cheese

Sugar Snap peas

Roasted beets

REAL CHICKEN

CHICKENS: Available & Uses

Have you signed up for your June chickens?...Mahlon is working one getting his list organized and it looks like we still have June broilers available!!!! They are $3.00/lb. The health benifits and taste of pasture raised broilers is unsurpassed. We invite you to look at our value vs. cost page comparing our broilers to factory ones.
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We have a new option for you!
For $4.00/lb  we will cut up your chicken for you. You may then seperate it and freeze it in portions that you wish.
Let us know if you want to change your order or increase it to include this option.
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SOME WAYS WE LIKE TO USE OUR CHICKEN!

We like to cut up many of our chickens and then bag the legs and thighs in the number we wish for a meal. The wings can also be bagged together to make a special BBQ or hot wing meal. We love to have the breasts also bagged seperately and lastly the remaining bones can be bagged and frozen. If we are short on freezer room they can be boiled to make wonderful healthy REAL chicken broth. This broth may be canned or frozen.

*marinate chicken breast, grill, slice, and keep warm. Serve on a lettuce salad...maybe a ceasar salad. This is a favorite summer meal!
*Easy Favorite Crockpot meal (see recipe page)
*Grilling is always great! Either the pieces or whole chicken on a frame made for that purpose...the famous pepsi chicken.
*Easy healthy winter meal...Real Chicken Noodle Soup
          (see recipe page)
*chicken strips with honey mustard sauce
*Chicken salad, Buffalo wing chicken salad
*Chicken Fajitas
*Baked whole chiken
*Chicken ala king...the list goes on and on....

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LAST CALL FOR YOUR TURKEY ORDERS!
We will soon be ordering turkey chicks and need to know how many you want!
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MAHLON AND BLESSING WORK ON A PASTURE SHELTER FOR THE BROILERS,
GIVING THEM MORE ROOM AS THEY GROW

Farm Fun Day Pictures

*We are having some computer problems so there is some odd spacing...but wanted to get this blogged any way before it is too out of date!

Farm Fun Day 2012

Some enjoyed the rope swing while we waited for more people to arrive. Then it was off to visit the farm.








The horses enjoyed being fed many carrots! Their names are Bonaza, Dakota, and Blackie.

Next it was on to the ducks. We have 3 young ducks that stay near their pen and pool and one adult duck that wanders around the farm.

Mahlon and Mike talk about the cows. Daisy, Liberty, Annabelle, and Blossom relax in the pasture.






A walk through the garden helped find some of the scavenger hunt items....then a peek in the hoophouse at the tomatoes and peppers.

A visit to the egg mobile to gather the eggs and hold the hens.

HOLDING THE ROOSTER!!!!!

So far this rooster has not turned mean. He even let us hold him!

Our tour then brought us to the Large Blacks. They were a little muddy from a romp around the farm earlier that morning!

A look in the portable pasture shelters where the broilers are growing. At this stage they are not the most beautiful, but growing well! Some of the pastures also did not look the most beautiful as we had just baled up hay that had been on the ground for about 2 weeks on account of the rain!

A rain shower sent us running for shelter!  The last stop amid rain drops was the 6 day old black hen chicks. Children learned the art of holding a chick just right...gently yet securely.

We changed plans and ate lunch in the garage during the rain shower. The menu consisted of barbecue pork sandwiches with the optional toppings of alfalfa sprouts and garden lettuce, radish dip, baby carrots, Sun Chips, apples, cow/pig sprinkled sugar cookies, and homemade strawberry ice cream.

Prizes were given out including a Mother's Day prize from Caleb's Local Honey and the grand prize: a November Turkey!

For those who had time to stay, milking Blossom was next!  We had lots of helpers!

Horse rides for young and old.

We had a very enjoyable morning with a great group of people! We hope you all had a good time! Thanks for coming out!

New chicks & Veggies Available

This week from our house or Mepo Market (Saturday 8:30-11:00) we'll have spinach, mixed leaf lettuce, chives, mint, mixed radishes, and alfalfa sprouts! Prices the same as last week with the addition: mint$2/baggie, chives sm$1, lg$2.


Thanks to all who visited Mepo Market last Saturday! It was a great day for vendors and shoppers alike.


The garden is very wet and growing weeds are begging to be pulled as soon as it is dry enough. This gives us time to work in the hoop house staking and stringing up the tomato plants! Our poor hay has been rained on several times and is now only good for horse hay or garden mulch. We hope to finally bale it tomorrow.


We hope many of you can come Saturday for our farm day! See previous post for  details.

    







New chicks came in today! These will be egg layers next fall. It takes about 6 months until they are old enough to lay eggs.

Farm Day

We hope you can come to our Farm Fun Day Saturday, May 12! Come see where your food come from and get to know your farmers better.

Here’s the planned schedule of events:

9:00 Farm Tour   Enjoy new chicks, young ducks, watching the pigs graze, tromp through the garden or hoop house, see inside the egg mobile, gather eggs, ask any question...etc.

10:00 Farm Activities   Milk a cow, line up for a horse ride, revisit your favorite farm animal, swing on the high rope swing if you dare, etc. who knows what we’ll think of by then….or just play in the big sand box

11:00 Lunch Time!!!   An informal lunch will be available. Bring a lawn chair or sit at our picnic table, blanket, or hay bales.

Make sure you sign up for our give aways and prizes.

 

The first Mepo Market is this Saturday, May 5th! Find us on Main Street Mediapolis from 8:30-11:00. Hope to see you there!

Fresh garden lettuce is such a treat. We have all you need to make a delicious spring salad: Mixed lettuce, spinach, radishes, alfalfa sprouts, and homemade whole wheat croutons. Best of all, it’s all grown chemical free using organic methods. This cool rainy weather makes the lettuce and radishes especially good.

Contact us if you want to pick up any veggies from our home.

Mixed lettuce or spinach

• 6 oz (fairly full gal. bag), washed      $4
• 3 oz (1/2the amt), washed                 $2
• 6oz straight from the garden             $3
• 3oz straight from the garden              $1.50

sprouts baggie-$2, radishes-lg bunch $2, sm $1, croutons-$2

Grazing Pigs and A Pet Duck

We really enjoy watching the animals graze the pastures. It’s not uncommon to see our men ‘listening’ to them graze especially when they are let in a new paddock. You actually hear a crunching and munching and they call it a beautiful sound!
Here are the large blacks enjoying a new paddock. They have become quite friendly and are thriving in their healthy environment.
        
Ducky Boy has been a favorite around the farm for over a year now. He wonders around at will not causing any problems at all. At night he roosts in the lean to with his friend a a black chicken. Well…. one day we found a different looking egg…and came to the conclusion that Ducky Boy needed a new name. We now call our her Ducky Gal.
                 

It’s been a busy week here at the farm…..broiler chicks were moved out to pasture, more garden planted and weeded, hay mowed, a visit from IL Grandparents, and town mowing and landscaping jobs are a few things that come to mind. Titus and Courage were sent out to dig 20 thistles each yesterday (deeply to get the long roots). After while they came in and reported they dug a total of 300! They dumped them to the horses who actually ate them!