Harvest
Here at BOTL Farm, we wonder what you eat during the winter. No really, we wonder about this a lot.
Speaking of goats (?), we keep our breeding group of goats year round. Their kids used to be born in the spring, like sensible animals, but since we allow them to breed according to their (sometimes puzzling) instinct, we now have baby goats mid-winter. Based on the breeding we saw this fall, we're likely to have kids by the third week of January.
This past month, we took this year's kids in for harvest (a polite euphemism for slaughter). The goat meat is back from the processor (slaughterhouse) just in time for all of our summer farmers markets to end. We so rarely or briefly have goat meat left during the four months that the Sturbridge farmers market runs that we're pretty sure our customers there don't believe we actually raise goats for meat, we just have 'GOAT' in big letters on our market tent.
Well, this section was short, but gear up, we're saving everyone's attention spans for a (deeply fascinating) longer screed towards the end.
A quick tale about nose to tail
Related to our goat harvest, we now have more good-for-pet items. If we're not using the whole animal, it's not raining, or something like that (don't think about it too much since we're in a drought). We put tons of effort into using every last bit of every carcass, much to the annoyance of our slaughterhouse.
All of our pet treats go to our “Lab” for testing, that is, we see if our part-Labrador farm dogs are excited about eating them. They have given all our pet treats two paws up, would-do-again ratings.
But seriously, the pet treats are mostly just parts of dead animals and depending on your pet and what they like to eat, your mileage may vary. We have lots of repeat customers for pet treats, so they do work for a lot of dogs but we have also heard that some dogs will refuse some treats or make disastrous piles of fur inside their owner’s nice living room. We always recommend feeding treats outdoors and supervising the first time.
The parts of goats we delineate as better for pets than humans include horns, hoofs, tails, and testicles. Yum?
Farming goal unlocked
We're fascinated by the slow, deliberative process of fermenting and curing pork into shelf stable items. We used to do home-scale meat fermentation (yes, we had meat hanging in our attic and often played the game 'is that the right mold or the wrong mold'), but once we became serious farmers we needed to develop avenues to make legally salable items. We worked with New England Charcuterie (NEC), a USDA inspected facility, for several years and they made our pork into soppressata. Much like our perimeter farm fence, we wanted this relationship to last forever, but alas. NEC got bought by an Italian meat conglomerate and working with New England farmers was much less of a priority. It was time to look for the next chapter in this salty story.
That took us to Short Creek Meats (honestly, some of their staff used to work at NEC) and after some introductory shenanigans, we're totes pals. They've already been making our beloved snack sticks, and now they're re-making our soppressata. It's the same recipe, although in a new facility, and with old, natural, microorganism-driven processes there will always be batch to batch differences (especially in a different facility). But, it's real close and delightful.
Annywaayss, the point of this was pupperoni [Editor notes that this item is not named after our dog Pup] pepperoni.
Back on track, Short Creek had a solid recipe for pepperoni and we have delicious pork and fat, so marry that together and it's bliss. We've dreamed over the years of having a pepperoni for sale, but we were held back by worries of "will people find it sliceable and snackable or just cook with it" and "is it versatile enough as charcuterie" and now that we have it in hand, the answer is YES. We're so excited about it. Get you some soon.
Surprise, surprise: we don't feed our animals New Country Organics
Dedicated readers of our newsletter and website may know that we haven't fed our pigs and chickens New Country Organics (NCO) since 2021.The rest of you think that we still feed NCO. Okay, most of you don't know or care who we buy our feed from.
Back when we were getting our farm started, we already had a deep conviction to use feed for our monogastrics (chickens and pigs) that was both corn and soy free. The first feed mill we called in CT told us that if we weren't going to feed our chickens corn and soy, we "might as well shoot them" [Editor notes this is an actual quote]. Luckily we're not dissuaded by other people's dumb opinions and kept looking. We had to look as far as Virginia to find a feed mill that would supply us a custom corn and soy free feed, but NCO was our first mill.
A few years ago we got a surprisingly awkward, sort of spammy email from a feed mill in Hudson, NY called Stone House Grain. They were interested in growing [pun intended] outside of their valley region and were willing to mill custom feeds for small farmers. We explained our feed requirements (besides the corn and soy free, we had a specific mineral, probiotic, and vitamin mix [hey, Fertrell!], as well as it had to be certified organic). We worked through some initial recipes with nutritionists and arrived at our ideal rations. Our beautiful journey since then has been one of love and mutual growth. We even have a cool Stone House sweatshirt they sent us.
Stone House has committed to not only milling organic feeds, but growing them on 3,000 acres they manage in the Hudson Valley. We've talked about this before, but going organic is a huge leap for a feed mill to take. On top of that, growing much of their own grain makes them a rare bird, indeed.
Okay, everybody who doesn't buy feed from us can skip the rest of this section like you normally do, it's technical stuff for feed customers.
Although Stone House is not completely soy free, they have a dedicated soy-free layer mash line. They also have a soy and corn free line (that's actually the custom feed that was designed for us). We're stoked to start offering both of these layer feeds for resale by the 50 lb bag.
On that note, NCO has raised their prices over 10% across the board. As always we have to pass these increases on to our feed customers, so now's a good time to try out Stone House. It's closer (so it travels less miles to get to us), it's grown by the mill, we recommend it, and it's less expensive than NCO. Cheers.
Find us
On farm store: Every Wednesday noon - 2pm, every Saturday 1 - 3pm. Pre-order
On farm self pickup: Every day 8am - 8pm. Pre-order only
Wooster Square Pickup, New Haven CT: Sunday November 22. Pre-order only
Assawaga Farm Market, Putnam CT: This market runs every Saturday from 9am - noon from now until Thanksgiving. We will be there every week. Dates we'll be there in November: November 07, November 14 (birthday!), November 21. Pre-order
Sturbridge Winter Pickup, Sturbridge MA: We're doing monthly pickups at Deep Roots Distillery this winter from noon - 8pm. Date for November: November 21. Pre-order
Ask a Farmer Anything, virtual question sessions: second Monday of every month from 7:30 - 8:30pm and fourth Thursday of every month from 8 - 9am. Dates in November: November 09 and November 26. Registration free but required
It's too many dates! Save me!
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