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First Calf

written by

Ben Simmons

posted on

January 28, 2017

Tornado strikes Hattiesburg and Petal - we want to say thank you for contacting us after a deadly & destructive tornado hit Hattiesburg & Petal last Saturday before daylight. We are blessed that our farm was spared. However, we do have customers and friends that had significant property damage.

So, how will you spend your overcast and cold weekend? How about placing your February order for beef and pork! The order deadline date is only 8-days away. We have plenty of the 10# and 25# Ground and Variety Shares as well as Half Shares. We are also taking deposits for Pork Half Shares – Custom Processed that will go to market mid-March.

Customers that have been with us from the beginning know we have worked very hard to expand our farm capacity by focusing on soil health, clearing new pastures, and buying a neighboring farm. We now have more product than customers!

Thus, we are soliciting new customers. Just this week we contracted the services of Laruen Richards to manage our farm facebook page. She made a few Page updates and will make several post per week. Since Wednesday the number of “Likes” has more than doubled. She has really been a breath of fresh air and has filled the gap in a marketing weakness. She is also talented with integrating videos and such so, look for wider use of videos and pictures down the road. Thanks Lauren!

We have completed agreements with three large organizations that will give us much broader exposure and should expand sales. I will share more about this at a future date.

Bottom line – nothing works better than satisfied customers who share our farm with their family, friends and coworkers. We appreciate you spreading the word and ask you let us know how we can better serve you.

The strong low pressure system that fueled the tornado also kicked off the start of our calving season. See the short 2-minute video.

More from the blog

Farm Visitors

Since we started selling via our online store in 2016, the number of visitors to our farm increased. Then, building the on-farm USDA poultry plant in 2019 spurred a lot of interest from folks who were interested in raising pastured poultry and were looking for a way around the MS Department of Ag regulation limiting the number of chickens per farm to only 1,000 per year. Most of the folks visiting were potential customers looking for naturally raised meats to feed their families.

Farmer Musings!

Beth & I hope you enjoyed your Thanksgiving - and turkey if you purchased one our our pastured turkeys. For our family the turkey did not disappoint. I spatchcocked (removed the backbone) so the turkey would lay flat. Beth then brined it for a day before smoking. It turned out tasty and juicy. Before our Thanksgiving meal each of us shared something we were thankful for. Beth's sister Debra shared the following:

A Day Processing Ground Beef!

Overall rain this week on our farm was about ONE inch! Not a lot in the big scheme of things, but very appreciated. It was enough to make a difference for our winter grass as you can see from this picture. In some areas of other pastures it appears that the seedlings died after germinating back in October. An observation that the heavy dews was not enough to keep them alive.