As farmers, we have to be good a variety of jobs, but blogging is something that I just have not been excelling at.
This blog post is a little summary of SOME of the things we have been up to this spring. A bunch of busy bees. Doing a bunch of different things. None of them blogging.
While Steve and I compliment each other in many ways: he’s quiet and thoughtful, I’m loud and laugh at my own jokes; he can build anything and think systematically about how all things can improve all the time, I can blame inanimate objects for my own abject failures (but really I can chock those up to lack of sleep due to toddlers for a little while longer, riiiiight????).
Anyways. We’re different. But we both have a very strong sense of work ethic, and a desire to get work done, so together we make a pretty special team.
He builds animal shelters and plans pasture rotations, I wrangle children, photograph all of my cooking, write newsletters in record time, and make sure that our bills get paid. But neither of us is much of a blogger.
Our Website’s Blog
So every once in a while I have a look at our website, and I notice how if I scroll down to the bottom there are a few typos, and there is also the ‘recent’ blog post. Five months later. Six months later, and now 10 months later.
We planned to take January of this year off from sales to do some work on the farm and on our business that is long overdue. We also just took a breather, a much needed break full of not feeling stressed about getting newsletters, invoices, and orders out, while trying to plan on how to improve our production, where to focus our energy on the farm, and in our production. Steve reorganized our office, I got closer to completing our end-of-year bookkeeping than I had ever done before February. We took a break, but we also kept running the farm, doing some business planning programs,
Here goes.
Spring 2020
March: We start feeding all of our pork Certified Organic feed from a local feed mill, starting with a bunch of corn that didn’t make the cut for human consumption. COVID hits.
April: Fresh Valley Farms has a busier April than ever as meat plants shut down across the country, people scramble to find local, secure, trustworthy sources for food. Our phone is ringing off the hook, everyone who calls gets A LOT of background noise because there are two toddlers everywhere we go (no childcare – COVID) We process our first small flock of chickens.
May: Chickens are on pasture in the movable structure Steve built in 2019, complete with drip waterers, and an automated feed system that runs off of an electric drill. Steve loves putting things together that run off of small batteries and save us time and burning fossil fuels. Pigs are enjoying early greens on pasture, beef finally get to go roam and eat the good green stuff (a wet spring delayed them getting on to pasture where their hooves would dig into the soft wet earth and stunt growth). Annnnnd we get our first Certificate for Organic Status! The farm, and poultry are all certified organic immediately, the pork is in transition, and the beef as well with a longer transition because of the longer gestation/life cycle.
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