Babies!
Here at BOTL Farm, we don’t have kids (we’re not talking in farmer jargon for baby goats, we mean actual human children). Over the years people have assured us that we would regret not having kids. Surely one day our parental instincts would kick in and we’d wake up with one thought: “BABIES.” We’re, uh, doing fine so far, but we do occasionally wake up in the morning, look at each other, and whisper “BABIES?” in a special voice. But, it’s when we’re on piglet watch because one of our sows will soon give birth. This month we’ve been whispering a whole lot because we had two sows give birth, right on time. Moms and piglets are all doing well, despite the relatively cold temperatures we’ve had. Sows have incredibly strong instincts about the architecture of nest building for farrowing (farmer jargon for pig birth).
This was Astrid’s (one of our new sows) first time farrowing, and she’s never lived with any older sows who would have shown her the ropes or given ‘birds-n-bees’ talks, but she still built an expert-level nest. She kept her wet, freshly born piglets out of the elements and provided them with dry, warm, family-sized nest. Even other pig farmers are surprised that our sows birth out on pasture all year round, but we believe that’s where they feel most comfortable and have the most control over their environment, as well as the materials to build their ideal nests. Babies!
Informational
You may not have noticed that we have structured thematic sections for our newsletters, BUT WE DO. This section is always (usually) “informational.” We’d like to let you know this newsletter is being delivered on Cyber Monday (a high-email-traffic day), so we’ve cut out this section to make our newsletter shorter and more palatable. Does writing about cutting this section count as having this section? Cheers.
Soppressata is back
We try to keep soppressata in stock all year round, but this year it didn’t work. If you haven’t had it before, it’s our hard slicing salami that’s shelf stable. It’s made using an old-world sausage fermentation process that involves many weeks of slow curing. This is a delightfully natural way to develop complex flavor, which means that no two batches taste exactly the same and we’re always excited to get a batch back and see what microbial magic happened. This latest batch is as good as ever, with a tad more prominent heat from chile flake than the previous batch.
Soppressata is the only BOTL Farm product you can buy from someone who isn’t us! You can find our soppressata for sale at these great local businesses:
Deep Roots (distillery and eatery in Sturbridge, MA)
Meatworks (retail meat store and also our large-animal slaughterhouse in Westport, MA)
Treehouse Farm and Fermentory (brewery and cidery in Woodstock, CT)
Tutti Quanti (Italian specialities store in Sturbridge, MA)
Westford Hill Distillery (distillery in Ashford, CT)
Change is hard but here we go
We’ve had the same on-farm store hours for years and we originally avoided days of the week when we had slaughter drop offs. Since then, the slaughterhouse has modified their schedule and now pig drop offs interfere with our farm store Tuesdays. We set our Saturday farm store hours to mesh with the farmers markets we were doing years ago, but those have changed as well. Hold onto your hats, but we’re about to change our farm store days and times.
Survey fatigue is real, but if you have opinions on what days and times we switch to, fill out this 42-second poll. We won’t make changes until next year, so we’ll announce the results of our deliberations and the poll in our next newsletter.
Find Us
On farm store: Every Tuesday noon - 2pm, every Saturday 1 - 3pm. Pre-order
On farm self pickup: Every day 8am - 8pm. Pre-order only
Wooster Square Winter Market, New Haven CT: This market runs every Saturday from 10am - 1pm until the end of March. We will be there every other week. Dates we’ll be there in December: December 06 and December 20. Pre-order
Sturbridge Monthly Winter Dropoff, Sturbridge MA: This is a once-a-month dropoff starting October and ending February. Location is Deep Roots Distillery in the old mill building at 559 Main Street, Sturbridge, MA. The December dropoff date is December 13. Pickup hours are noon - 8pm. Pre-order only
Ask a Farmer Anything, Virtual Question Sessions: Thursday December 11 from noon - 1pm and Monday December 22 from 8 - 9 am. Registration free but required
It's too many dates! Save me!
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