Spring has Sprung!
Happy Spring Everyone!
Life is so grand and full of hope this time of year. It's crazy busy too on a farm. It's a time of babies, flowers, and optimism for the coming season. Our animal population is skyrocketing. We have been blessed with another uneventful lambing season. We have five new ewe lambs and one new ram lamb. We now have 3 generations of Shetland sheep because one of the ewe lambs from last year gave birth to two adorable little girls. I continue to be so impressed with the hardiness and excellent mothering abilities exhibited by this little breed of sheep. We have chicks ranging from 1 week to 8 weeks old and are expecting another batch of 100 on Friday. Turkey poults (babies) are arriving in another couple of weeks and some new packages of honey bees will be here Sunday. The first of the chicks that we have raised for the fast growing population of backyard chicken keepers have gone home with their new families.
The tom turkeys got totally out of hand with hormones over the last several weeks. One of them became so aggressive that it was not safe to let our daughters outside and I had to carry a stick to do any work in the yard. He always attacked from behind. The other tom would do his best to keep the aggressor away from us so they were fighting constantly. The behavior kept escalating until Julia got attacked by the turkey. I asked her what she thought we should do with him and she declared "EAT HIM!". He was delicious. That was the first heritage pasture raised turkey I have ever tasted and I can tell you for sure that I'm never going back to supermarket turkey again. Now the remaining tom doesn't know what to do with himself. The turkey hen is tired of him. He spars with his reflection in the car paint and in the windows. He also has decided that he is infatuated with me. He shows me his best courtship moves and is glued to my side when I'm in the yard.
Brandon, with the much appreciated help of his dad, has driven a lot of fence posts and hopefully we will soon have the marauding sheep permanently under control and I might possibly be able to plant a flower or two in front of the house and not have them dug up by dustbathing chickens. He has once again reconfigured our gardens (hopefully for the last time) and disked the freshly plowed gardens today. Lettuce is growing fast and is ready for harvesting this week. In fact, the lettuce is growing so fast that I've decided to make a trip to Independence this week on short notice so that you can share in the bounty.
I am planning on being at the courthouse from 5:00-6:00 PM on Saturday, April 10. Michelle Peluso will also have her delicious baked goods available for ordering. The following items are available from Nature's Harbor Farm this Saturday:
1. Grass Fed Eggs from free ranging hens: $3.50 a dozen
2. Romaine Lettuce: $3.00 a head- grown without the use of synthetic chemicals or fertilizers and protected from pests by an army of baby praying mantises (or is that manti?).
Products from Michelle Peluso:
1. Jumbo cupcakes: $2.25 a piece- She makes three different delicious varieties. Specify whether you would like caramel frosted blackberry jam cupcakes, amaretto cupcakes, or fuzzy navel cupcakes. Minimum order of 4 of one variety.
2. loaves of buttermilk honey bread: $4.00
3. Crumb topped blueberry muffins: $2.25 per muffin-minimum order of 4.
Please email me back by noon on Saturday with your order for eggs and lettuce. Please email back by Friday at 6:00 PM with any baking orders for Michelle so that she has plenty of time to work her magic.
Wendell Berry, Wes Jackson, and Gene Logsdon will be speaking at Xavier's Cintas Center Sunday at 7:00. The event is free to the public and I predict it will be wonderful. They are among the greats of sustainable farming and well worth the time to listen to. http://www.xavier.edu/campusuite/modules/calendar.cfm?cal_id=29136&grp_id=2516
Get outside and enjoy spring's beauty and we hope to see you all soon.
Sincerely,
Heather and Brandon Redden.
www.naturesharborfarm.com