Ancestral paddocks
Here at BOTL Farm, we run a birth-to-slaughter operation. That means that the animals we raise for meat are born on our farm, live their whole lives on our farm, and only leave once when they go to the slaughterhouse. Operating a farm this way is somewhat normal for sheep and goats, but rare for pigs.
Because we rotationally graze all of our animals, including the pigs, the sows (mom-pigs) are used to moving around the farm. They’re curious and happy to follow us to new paddocks and down the road to other parts of the farm. Piglets, on the other hand, are born on pasture and they start learning about our fencing immediately. We don’t want them, even when very small, to be able to sneak out to neighboring paddocks because their moms can’t follow and they might be naughty around fences when they grow up. We’ve learned a lot over the years about fencing in curious piglets and we’re pretty successful at this point. In point of fact, the piglets are so respectful of fence lines that when it comes time for their first move to a different paddock, they’re extremely reluctant to move across. They remember the place the fence used to be and will stand on their side, anxiously sniffing and snorting, but not cross. Meanwhile, their mom has sped past and is happily grazing fresh grass on the new side, sometimes even out of her piglets’ sight.
A group of our spring piglets had their first paddock move recently and we’re happy to report it went surprisingly well. We’ve learned that mussing up the soil under the fence line helps, as well as giving them plenty of time to sniff and snort and get ready to make the first move across. Their curiosity often gets the better of them and they’ll go explore their new paddock.
Farmers and honest food labels
This past winter we were invited to present at some farming conferences. One of us thinks public speaking is wicked fun and often gets signed up by the other for these sorts of things. These talks can sometimes be rather technical (aka boring) to non-farmers, but one of the presentations ended up being really well-received by non-farmers and farmers alike. The talk is titled “Farmer’s Guide to Label Claims & Animal Welfare.”
It may sound like a snooze, but it covers lots of stuff you may see in the grocery store or on signs at farmers markets and have questions about:
Does “free range” mean the same thing as “pasture raised” for eggs?
Is “cage free” a meaningful animal welfare claim for eggs? Chicken meat? Both?
What’s up with Whole Foods and their GAP certification for meat?
BOTL Farm has Animal Welfare Approved on their signs but I’m not familiar with it. What does that mean?
And more
People had to pay to see this presentation (!) but we sweet-talked the conference organizers into letting us share the recording with our loyal fans for free. It’s available here (2nd video on the page), but be sure to block off some time because it’s over an hour. Or watch it at 2x (chipmunk mode) and it’s only 34 minutes and 52 seconds!
The latest farm-grown product: lip balm
We’re excited about our latest new farm product, lip balm. This is another thing we’ve been making for ourselves for years and are finally ready to make for sale. As part of the final product testing, we challenged ourselves to make a version of the lip balm that doesn’t use plastic packaging and only uses ingredients that grow on our farm. Plastic-free containers were pretty easy to source, we found super-cute metal tins that are just slightly bigger than the volume of a regular ‘stick’ chapstick. Farm-grown ingredients were going to require some thinking.
The main lip balm ingredients, lard and beeswax, are pretty standard for us but we were a little stumped on what scents we could make/extract/distill from our farm. After a few bad ideas like spring onion or bacon (bacon+onion sandwich?), we decided on some (slightly) more traditional options: lilac, mint, and rose. For lilac, we picked fresh spring blossoms from the lilac bush that the previous owners of our house planted and we haven’t managed to kill. Mint comes from our herb/cocktail garden (honestly the garden just has one herb [mint] that we use for cocktails. Whatever). The rose scent comes from an invasive briar bush, multiflora rose, that used to overrun our farm but now has been largely tamed by our ruminous herbivores to the edges of fields and hedges. Although not a fancy cultivated rose, it is in the rose family and the blossoms carry the same scent.
Our fourth version of lip balm is unscented for the more adventurous and mostly smells like beeswax, with a tiny little hint of lard. Yum!
The display freezer of our dreams
As we continue to build out our on-farm store (aka garage), we always dreamed of having a big, beautiful upright display freezer. Customers and visitors could see our meat cuts and not have to order off a paper menu and then wait while someone behind the curtain magically picked the packages out of chest freezers and brought out the order.
After three years and more unfunded grants than we care to look up and count, we finally have the upright display freezer of our dreams. It’s big, it’s beautiful, and it’s filled with delicious meats. It fogs up when it’s humid, just like our glasses. We’re in love. Can’t wait for you to come to the farm store and meat meet our new freezer.
Thanks again to FACT for being an absolutely awesome supporter of small, animal-welfare-focused farms and funding brave projects with their grants! We couldn’t have done it without them.
Find us this month
Very exciting one-time Boston area drop-off (July 04): This is in conjunction with Assawaga Farm's July 4th Farmers Box. You don't have to buy the veggie box to pick up meat from us (but we hope you do). This is a pre-order/pre-pay only pickup. Product will not be available to purchase without a pre-order. Pick up will be at Brookline Farmers Market Parking Lot AND Pagu restaurant, from 8:30 am until 10:30 am. All of the orders will be pre-packaged so all you need to do is show up and grab your box. Pre-order only
On farm store: Tuesdays noon - 2pm, Saturdays 1 - 3pm. Pre-order
On farm self pickup: Everyday 8:30am - 8pm. Pre-order only
Assawaga farm market: Every Saturday from 9am to noon starting May 25 until the weekend before Thanksgiving. We’re there (mostly) every other week. Dates we’ll be there in July: July 13, July 27. Pre-order
Sturbridge Farmers Market: Every Sunday from 9am to 1pm starting June 02 until October 13. NEW THIS YEAR we will be at Sturbridge every Sunday! Dates we’ll be there in July: July 07, July 14, July 21, July 28. Pre-order
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