Restock Dates: Please see our Farm Blog where we post our weekly newsletter for the latest updates

Market Changes

written by

Ben Simmons

posted on

January 7, 2024

Good Morning from your farmer,

Last week our newsletter was a look back at 2023 here on the farm. It's hard to believe we have been at this since 2010 when we sold our first grass fed beef (notice I did not use the word "finished" because we did not know what that really meant then. All we knew was that Alan Nation said when the steer reached 1000 pounds it was ready for slaughter. haha

Those first several years I can truly say were not our best beef for sure. Yet, many folks stuck with us! Supporting and encouraging us.

Ben-&-Beth.jpg

Our first booth Sept 2010 at the Mississippi Pecan Festival, Richton, MS.

Then, beginning in 2016 - 7 years ago this month - we set up our website through GrazeCart, switched our focus from only selling halves to selling by the piece. Included with that was making our first deliveries starting September 2016.

Back then I had no idea what doors The Lord would open for us - nor would I have imagined we would be serving so many families last year with about 74,000 pounds of beef, pork, chicken, and eggs.

Two groups of folks I would like to express my deepest gratitude for: First, our committed customers! True, many people come and go. However, we still have a few of our original customers from 2010 and many from when we started our website & making local deliveries. Second, are the folks who help us here on the farm. Some help only with slaughter and or processing beef, pork, and chicken. Others focus on eggs. While others primarly help with soil health, grazing, feeding, maintenance, etc. that make this all come together. Beth and I are very grateful and truly blessed.

Friday, I was forwarded an email that Remington-Lott Farms was going out of business. This saddens me because Mississippi desperately needs many more farms raising food to feed its citizens. No, I do not know the reason for their decision. But, I do know they made a positive difference in the communities they served.

Over the holidays there was a big discussion on the Pastured Poultry email listing about an Arkansas farm named Cook's Venture. One of the members is from NW Arkansas and sent an email that CV abruptly shut down all operations and told their "contract" farmers to kill all the chickens and bury them - reports say up to a million chickens.

CV is a venture capitalist farm - you know, money guys that use their money to hire others to do the work. Other members provided details that CV sold product as "pastured" chicken and that they hired field managers from the big poultry integrators who swung production back to conventional CAFO-ish stuff in order to improve profits. However, the contract growers were existing farmers who once grew for the likes of Tyson (their barns were no longer up to Tyson specs) and reverted back to rainsing them the Tyson way vs. pastured.

They did sell through their website, but with a million chickens they most likely sold wholesale to grocery stores, restaurants, etc. as well.

Get this! They are needing government bail outs to chean up their mess!!! That's taxpayer dollars.....to bail out CV bad decision(s).

Sadly, this whole thing is a pointless tragedy. In Decatur, AR, where CV is based, nearly everyone is involved in poultry some way... then companies like CV comes in with big money and promises of an easy path to a promised land that stirs everything up and disrupts communities. In the end people are worse off than they started and there's a lot of heartache. Needless to say it was a difficult holiday season for many.

What our country needs are thousands of small family farms serving their communities with healthy food raised naturally and sold locally.

** Product Availability Update **

NOTE: Restocks are made about 6 PM on the dates indicated below!

Chicken - Next restock will be January 24, 2024. Yes, we will be raising chickens throughout the winter months. NOTE we pushed out the Jan 10th restock as the chickens are growing slower with the weather changes

Turkey - Whole turkeys are sold out. We will use our jan 9th USDA slaughter date to harvest some turkeys. Be on the lookout for pieces and ground turkey next week

Eggs - Restock each Wednesday. Received 950 new pullet hens Thursday, Nov 9th. Starting to get small to medium eggs

Beef - Fully Stocked. Next restock will be January 19, 2024

Pork -Fully Stocked - except for bacon

Lamb - Restocked September 13th. Scheduled to process lamb in November, but this has been delayed. Probably Mar 2024

More from the blog

Website Changes Coming

About two months ago Seven Sons announced they had SOLD Grazecart to POS Nation in Charlotte, NC. Our farm was in the top 5 to signup to use Grazecart back in December 2015. Back then it was very hard to set up... you had to work with the IT guy to program your site. Basically, flying by the seat of your pants. I had learned about Seven Sons and Grazecart during my time on the Board of the Grassfed Exchange Conference where Blaine was also on the Board. Additionally, you may remember that when we decided to add hens to our farm Beth & I visited Seven Sons to check out their operation. But, they (and we) perservered and today Grazecart is very functional and easy to "program" using widgets. So, the sale really saddened me because one of the compelling reasons we chose GC was that it was developed by farmers for farmers who market and sell direct to consumers. A little statistic - last year Grazecart supported about 450 farms. Our farm was in the top 25 largest users of Grazecart coming in around 22 or 23 if I remember correctly. There was no reason(s) given for the sale! The next communication came about a month ago stating POS Nation would transition Grazecart Stripe credit card process to POS Nation Stripe - again, no reason given. Farms were instructed to create an account on the new site and be ready for the migration to happen. All of this we have done. We are prepared, but have not yet been migrated. Then, this week several farms who had been migrated expressed disappointing results and lack of visibility on payments, payouts, reporting, etc. on the POS Nation site. I know when I checked my account status I could not log in. It took 4 email conversations over a 12-hour period AND then a couple of phone calls Friday morning before the issue was resolved. Late Friday afternoon the VP of Grazecart (POS Nation) emailed customers that the migration was put on hold until complaints were resolved. Additionally, this week - DRIP that powers our email marketing function communicated that Google & Yahoo email were cracking down on emails like our newsletters that are not delivered into inboxes. There are many reasons for this, but mostly folks are searching the internet and come across our website. They sign up to "check us out", and after awhile, decide to move on. Most never make a purchase. Some will make only one purchase and probably decide this is not what they are used to and fall away. Instead of using the "Unsubscribe" feature found at the bottom of our newsletter, they "Block" our email delivery. These are the ones that Google & Yahoo are after because these go into Spam folders and not inboxes. I am sure this is a big deal for email providers that cost them big money considering the shear volume of emails sent on a daily basis. That said, next week we will "Deactivate" about 288 DRIP accounts from ever receiving any of our emails. Well, enough of that for now! Remember, we showed pictures of the 23 registered Red Angus cows purchased from a ranch in WY? Well, they have started calving. Two of them this week. Here is a picture of the FIRST one. So glad we can celebrate this birth with our customers. At Nature's Gourmet Farm, our intent is to create a community that evolves around one of the most intrinsically important things of the ages, and that’s the provision of sustenance. That's our passion - to raise healthy food to nourish families and strengthen immune systems. If you are new to our farm then maybe you have been looking for premium ALL NATURAL GOODNESS of beef, pork, chicken, and eggs raised on pasture as God intended - with emphasis on Regenerative Principles and NOT conventionally raised animals (with growth hormones, drugs, chemicals, and antibiotics) - and where animals are treated humanely - then you have come to the right farm. Our delivery schedule and product availability are listed below along with order buttons that will take you to our website where you can browse over 90 product choices and place your order from the convenience of your home. It's that simple! ** Product Availability Update ** NOTE: Restocks are made about 6 PM on the dates indicated below! Chicken - Restocked May 8th. next restock will be May 23rd. . Turkey - Only have ground turkey and turkey wings available. Eggs - Restocked each Wednesday. We are well stocked on eggs - especially large at this time. Beef - Restocked April 19th. Next restock will be May 17th. Pork - Restocked fresh cuts Wednesday, May 8th followed by cured items (bacon) about 12 days later. Lamb - April 17th lamb did not work out. They were only 50 lb live weight or about half the weight needed for slaughter.

Updates & Musings From Farmer Ben

Last week I announced that we continue to have strong demand for our half beef custom orders, and that we have scheduled a harvest date for 6 "custom" beef with Homestead Farm & Packing in Lucedale, MS. Here are the key dates: April 27th 6 beef (12 halves) added to our website for orders. First-come, First-served. Customer pays deposit to reserve order. June 1st Cut-sheet due not later than this date. Best practice is to complete within a week of placing order. Cut sheet can be found at this link - scroll to the bottom of the page https://naturesgourmetfarm.com/custom-bulk-orders. June 3rd I will deliver the cows to the plant.

Do You Need A Half Beef? Must Read

Before I get into the main topic, let me share that our new mama cows are going great. They are settling in and now curious when we come around. For example, last Monday Jared picked up a load of chips for our chick brooder bedding and while unloading they eased up to see what we were doing. Very cool! Next, we want everyone to know that we are mostly FULLY STOCKED on beef, pork, eggs, and chicken. Its been a long time since we were last able to communicate that. Exceptions are filet, flank, and hanger steaks. Who bought all of those filets?