Greetings,
Spring is well under way and many crops are already in the ground. Soon, we hope to be offering a bounty of naturally grown, pesticide free vegetables. Wouldn’t a ‘real’ homegrown heirloom tomato sandwich be great?
All of our animals seem to be happy and enjoying this nice season. The cows are completely contented with the abundance of grass. And it looks like there will be a good crop of hay this year. The chickens are busy taking sun baths and supplementing their feed with tender green forage. The pigs actually have some mud holes to root and wallow in!
With the world-wide increase in fuel and food prices, all of us are feeling the pinch and some are really suffering. But the thing is there are simple solutions to some of these problems. However, it is not in the government or industry leader’s interest to pursue them. So we will just have to take the initiative. We have some ideas we want to share with you as we go along.
We are between seasons with most of our vegetables so there is not much from the garden this week. We will have plenty of delicious limited-spray strawberries from down close to Julian, NC. From our little greenhouse, we have heirloom tomato plants and several varieties of herb plants.
Our freezers are well stocked with Pasture Finished Jersey Beef and Homegrown Pork. By the way, our Jersey beef is the best quality beef available unless you want to buy Kobe beef at around $100 per pound.
Many of you have been asking about Pastured Chicken and we will have them this week. Since all the inputs to bring them to market have increased sharply, prices will be about 20% above last year. If you have tried them you know the quality. One customer said she just couldn’t eat store chicken anymore, even those labeled organic, because ours are so much better. Our production process is difficult but the end product is ‘el Grande’.
The high cost of fuel affects all of us and adds to the cost of our products. But there is something we can all do to help. If you use cooking oil (especially if you own a restaurant or know someone who does) every bit of it should be saved and recycled into biodiesel. Neighbors, family, or friends could put their used home cooking oil together and accumulate enough to make it worthwhile to transport. Biodiesel is considerably less expensive than petro diesel. If everyone would do this we could make a huge dent in our dependence on foreign oil and the huge corporate oil companies. If you have questions, want more information, or have used cooking oil, please contact our good friend Karl Fry at Gortman Biofuels, Winston Salem, ph. 336.253.9680.
We will be at the Piedmont Triad Farmers Market Fri. 9:00 until 3:00 and Sat. 8:00 until 4:00. Our booth is #73 in Farmer’s area #2. We hope to see you this week!
Blessings,
Joe