Good Morning from your farmer,

Once a quarter we have a month with 5-weekends instead of 4. That gives us an extra weekend (2 total) between deliveries. Last weekend I was taking it easy because of my wisdom tooth extraction Friday morning - which went really great! This Saturday we have our annual Simmons Family Reunion. It is always good to visit with out of town family and catch up.

On the farm our definition of "Things That Go BUMP In The Night" may be different that for those who live in cities. We mostly think of fox, opossum, racoons, coyote, pigs, and maybe someone's lost deer dog.

However, there is the occasional sighting of something larger.

About 10 years ago (while I did not see the actual predator) something killed one of my calves that weighted 150 or so pounds. The first night the rear half of the carcass was eaten. The next night the predator returned. It carried the carcass up and over a 5' tall net wire fence and finished eating the front half. To date this is the only such incident we have had on our farm.

In 2018 while clearing the property next to our home someone stopped to tell me they had seen a panther cross the road about a 1/4 mile from our home a few nights back when on their way to work.

Then, a farmer friend who lives next to the Desoto National Forest near the Wiggins area sent me this picture taken September 25th (Monday).

For sure it is not Yogi bear advertising the dangers of forest fire! But, it is definitely a bear....

Then Tuesday, I was sharing this with our team during chicken processing and the ladies all shared that bears have recently been spotted in Jones, Harrison, and Pearl River counties. Who would have thought?

The bottom line is sometimes we do not know what all is really out there in the dark.... maybe the least we know the better? Just saying....

GrazeCart - as you know GC powers our website. Currently the developers are making some enhancements - a nice way to say code is being written to make the product better. Well, it has also caused some new problems. For example, when customers edit orders (to add or delete items) sometimes it will cause inventory errors that affects the actual inventory available. This issue is now supposed to be corrected.

Another issue is sometimes customers are able to place more than one order per delivery period. GC says this should be corrected within the week. That's great as it has caused a lot of confusion when packing orders.

One of the biggest problems is created by customers who start an order, but do not finish it. Many of our regular customers do this as they are waiting for an item they want to be restocked. Then, when they go to add the restock item, they discover some of the other items are no longer available. Inventory sitting in a cart is NOT allocated to your order until the order is Placed.

The best way to know that your order was Placed is our website will immediately send you an email titled "Thank You For Your Order". If you do not receive this email then we did not receive your order and you will need to go back into your account and complete the order. Once your order is Placed, you have the option to edit the order until the Wednesday at midnight prior to your scheduled pickup date.

I'm sure you know that we pack your order on Thursday prior to your scheduled pickup date. Once your order is packed, our website will immediately send you an email titled "Your Order Is Packed". Included is a summary of your order, final total, and delivery details.

OK - that's just about covers it. Be sure to check out our Product Availability updates below.

** Product Availability Update **

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

Chicken - Restocked September 27th. Next restock is October 18th. We currently have about 850 broilers on our farm. Processing will continue for twice per month for the balance of the year.

Turkey - We have a few on pasture now and received a batch of 25 poults July 29th. The hot & dry weather has really affected them as over 75% died and others are not thriving. We have a new batch of 40 that are five weeks old and doing great.

Eggs - Restock each Wednesday.

Beef - Restocked September 22nd. Next restock will be October 27th.

Pork - Restocked fresh pork Sept.13th. Cured items like bacon, ham, hocks restocked Sept 27th. Sausages restocked Sept 28th.

Lamb - Restocked September 13th. Scheduled to process about 12 lamb in November just in time for Christmas