As you probably know, the 2007 drought continues to take its toll on the farm. Coupled with the excessive heat, everything is suffering from plants, to animals, to farmers. Hay will be in short supply this winter and is already double or triple the normal price. Many farms are short on water since the streams and many pools are dry. There are practically no vegetables unless a farmer is lucky enough to have water for irrigation.
We are fortunate to have adequate water for the animals but not for irrigation. There is enough green forage (crabgrass and Johnson grass) for the chickens. We have been providing the cattle with green leaves, green corn stalks, and green pea vines as substitutes for grass which is almost nonexistent in the pastures. We do all this by hand (quite a job). After all, they are supposed to harvest their own forage! But in extreme conditions the farmer does what he has to in order to care for his animals. We believe in the benefits of green forage so we put out the extra effort. Some farmers are feeding hay and others are supplementing with grain, but we don’t want to do that. We feed hay in the winter but also plant winter crops for green forage.
There is the possibility of rain in the next few days. We are in desperate need of it too. Besides grass growing before winter, we need the moisture to get the fall and winter crops up and growing. How nice it would be to see everything green and growing again!
We have whole chickens this week after being out for some time. As you know this has been one of the hottest summers on record and we couldn’t grow them because of the heat. For those who will want to stock up on chicken for the winter, we plan to have two flocks in November and one in December. When all these are gone we will not have any more until about May of next year.
We also have most cuts of beef and we have pork sausage.
Hope to see you at the market Friday (9:00 to 1:00) or Saturday (8:00 to 4:00).
Blessings,
Joe Peterson