A farms final exam

OMG piglets

Here at BOTL Farm, we regularly remind everyone that we often have a problem: not enough pork. As enterprising and able young(ish) farmers, we aim to learn from our problems (opportunities) and thus we are looking forward to the next problem we’re creating for ourselves: too much pork.

We reckon the first step to having too much pork is to have an enormous number of piglets at once. We already had four sows’ worth of piglets (sow is farmer jargon for Mom Pig) on the farm at various stages of growth, but we just had three more sows give birth! Welcome to our newest 27 piglets! Here’s to you.

Farm audits: final exams or dorks unite

Last month we talked about preparing paperwork for our annual Animal Welfare Approved (AWA) audit and now we’re glad to report that the audit took place. For us, the AWA audit feels like a final exam: we have to show proof that we’ve learned all our lessons, can do all our calculations, did all our paperwork, and our animals are living their best lives. But it’s not really a final exam — the AWA auditors are here to make sure we’re doing everything right, but we share the common goal of raising animals in the most humane ways possible. The audit is more like an extremely technical farm walk with lots of dorky talk about inches of roost bars, square footage of shelter footprints, and the methods of calculating the precise time of sunrise year-round so the chicken door opens correctly (ready to look at the health plan yet?).

We totes passed the on-farm audit with zero non-compliances. Now the auditor just has to pull up his britches and read our 35-page health plan that *no one* wanted to read after we advertised it in our last letter. Tee-hee.

Markets update

It’s official! We got accepted into the winter Coventry farmers market. If you’ve already heard, just try to act surprised. Our first day there is November 13 and someone (important) has a birthday on November 14, so please stop by and say happy birthday. The market is being held at the Coventry high school.

Sturbridge farmers market is over for the season, but we’re doing a monthly, pre-order only drop off. The next drop off is November 12, so it’s not too early to order now! Honestly, you should order early just because we’re currently have the problem ‘not enough pork’ (see above). Use the order form here. Note: this order form works for on-farm pickups at our twice-a-week store hours as well! #options

Tolland farmers market and the Assawaga farm stand run until the weekend before Thanksgiving, so we’ll be there twice more since we vend every other week.

Pricing change

As a lovely old man once asked us, “How do you set prices for your products? Throw darts at a wall?” Turns out, we haven’t tried that method. We have spreadsheets on spreadsheets, accounting software, farm databases, etc. where we track inputs, harvests, growth rates, reproductive rates, and other such things. We use this data to set prices and sometimes wonder if we can throw in labor costs for ourselves or pay ourselves any wages, but we’re not there yet.

Aaanyways, we’re in the same boat as everyone else and have been experiencing cost increases that feel catastrophic and beyond our control. We’ve held out as long as we can hoping it was temporary, but for the first time ever we’re re-pricing our pork. Most of the prime cuts have, not surprisingly, gone up in price a bit. But, as a simultaneous nod to 1) reality and 2) our dream of truly nose-to-tail sales, we’ve actually lowered the price on a few things — mostly heads, bones, skin, and fat. Keep it weird, ya’ll.

For egg pricing, we’re doing a complicated, but hopefully useful, thing. The price of eggs is going up to $7.50 loosie dozen and $8 with carton. But we’re happy to offer a discount for people who are able to pay with cash or check, of 50 cents per dozen [which means the price is the same as before!].

Lamb and goat prices remain the same for now. We’re sold out of lamb, but will continue to sell goat at the same price until it’s gone (which will be soon). We’ll be out until next fall and will re-evaluate pricing then.

NCO dealer call: totes!

As New Country Organics resellers, we heard an update that NCO is now offering totes and half-totes of feed (2000 and 1000 lb) as resale items. We’ve never been able to offer totes to our resale customers before but now we can. Let us know if you’re interested.

Also, let’s talk about hemp bedding. It’s rough out there in the hemp bedding world and we just can’t get any in stock. Neither can NCO. Currently we’re substituting other (we think perhaps just a teeny bit inferior) bedding types (but it’s just not the same, sorry). We hope hemp bedding will be back in stock (and awesome) in the near future.