<< Back to main
News from our Farm for June 12
Posted 6/12/2009 9:41pm by Heather Redden.
Greetings Everyone!
It sure has been a busy time for us lately. I can't really figure out how to fit it all in. It seems that the animals have decided that they should make things even more exciting by misbehaving! Our three Icelandic sheep have been evicted from our farm. They decided that they needn't stay in our fences any longer. We were so excited to see that one of the little peach trees that we had planted two year ago had about 9 peaches on it. At least it did until the sheep decided to eat them! Then they got into the garden and ate the tops of the corn plants. The final straw though was when we found out they were leaving our property and visiting with the neighbors. Fortunately for them, they all have names and are the friendliest sheep we have so they are living at Brandon's dad's house where there is a much taller fence instead of meeting their other possible fate.
The honey bees have also been testy. The swarm Brandon caught a few weeks ago did decide to stay and is busy establishing it's new hive. One afternoon last week though the bees somehow all got their wires crossed and started robbing each other's hives. The foraging bees tell each other where a food source is by going into the hive and performing a dance. This dance gives the other foragers information on the distance, direction, and size of the food source. It is an amazing ability but does have certain limitations. If a food source is less than 300 feet from the hive, the directions can only say "food is nearby" which sometimes causes the bees to go into another hive and steal honey from them instead of going to the blackberry blossoms next to the hive. This robbing can set off a feeding frenzy and escalate to all out war between the hives. The only thing that a beekeeper can do is suit up and try to close off all but a small opening on each hive so that the guard bees in the hive have a better chance of defending the entrance from intruders. The only thing that stops robbing completely is night. The bees all go back to their own hives and by morning it is like nothing ever happened and they all go about their business again.
We will have a new product for the market on Saturday. The first batch of chickens are ready! These are red broilers which are a cross between the Cornish and New Hampshire Red. They have a body type more like the Cornish Rock cross used for commercial chicken production but grow more slowly and forage more on pasture. They have been raised without antibiotics or other medications and with access to fresh grass and all the bugs they could want. They are available whole or cut up. They range in weight from 2-3.5 lbs. The whole chickens are $4.25/lb and the cut up chickens are $5.00/lb. We had fried chicken on Tuesday and it was the best I've ever had!
Thanks to all of you who are so devoted to our free range eggs. We are going to have to expand our laying flock to keep up with demand. It takes awhile to raise a new hen and we are working to expand as quickly as we can without doing anything detrimental to the birds we already have. Please arrive at the market as early as you can on Saturday if you would like to get eggs.
Sincerely,
Heather and Brandon Redden
www.naturesharborfarm.com
It sure has been a busy time for us lately. I can't really figure out how to fit it all in. It seems that the animals have decided that they should make things even more exciting by misbehaving! Our three Icelandic sheep have been evicted from our farm. They decided that they needn't stay in our fences any longer. We were so excited to see that one of the little peach trees that we had planted two year ago had about 9 peaches on it. At least it did until the sheep decided to eat them! Then they got into the garden and ate the tops of the corn plants. The final straw though was when we found out they were leaving our property and visiting with the neighbors. Fortunately for them, they all have names and are the friendliest sheep we have so they are living at Brandon's dad's house where there is a much taller fence instead of meeting their other possible fate.
The honey bees have also been testy. The swarm Brandon caught a few weeks ago did decide to stay and is busy establishing it's new hive. One afternoon last week though the bees somehow all got their wires crossed and started robbing each other's hives. The foraging bees tell each other where a food source is by going into the hive and performing a dance. This dance gives the other foragers information on the distance, direction, and size of the food source. It is an amazing ability but does have certain limitations. If a food source is less than 300 feet from the hive, the directions can only say "food is nearby" which sometimes causes the bees to go into another hive and steal honey from them instead of going to the blackberry blossoms next to the hive. This robbing can set off a feeding frenzy and escalate to all out war between the hives. The only thing that a beekeeper can do is suit up and try to close off all but a small opening on each hive so that the guard bees in the hive have a better chance of defending the entrance from intruders. The only thing that stops robbing completely is night. The bees all go back to their own hives and by morning it is like nothing ever happened and they all go about their business again.
We will have a new product for the market on Saturday. The first batch of chickens are ready! These are red broilers which are a cross between the Cornish and New Hampshire Red. They have a body type more like the Cornish Rock cross used for commercial chicken production but grow more slowly and forage more on pasture. They have been raised without antibiotics or other medications and with access to fresh grass and all the bugs they could want. They are available whole or cut up. They range in weight from 2-3.5 lbs. The whole chickens are $4.25/lb and the cut up chickens are $5.00/lb. We had fried chicken on Tuesday and it was the best I've ever had!
Thanks to all of you who are so devoted to our free range eggs. We are going to have to expand our laying flock to keep up with demand. It takes awhile to raise a new hen and we are working to expand as quickly as we can without doing anything detrimental to the birds we already have. Please arrive at the market as early as you can on Saturday if you would like to get eggs.
Sincerely,
Heather and Brandon Redden
www.naturesharborfarm.com
1 Comments »
S.Carter said,
Those chikens are absolutely great. For starters, when you open the package it's so clean and neat you forget you're about to prepare a chicken. There's no fat or slime to pick away like grocery store chickens. The meat and skin look so healthy and have such a healthy color to them. Once, you cook it the flavor is so, so, good! It actually has a flavor! The meat itself has such a good texture to it and the dark meat is not actually dark. It is almost as light as typical white meat. I must agree, this is the best chicken I've ever had and I'm sure I will be disappointed when I eat chicken from any other place!