Blog - Nature's Gourmet Farm

Farm Updates

WHEW! Thank you Lord Jesus that we were not impacted by Hurricane Sally. While the winds were not forecasted to be that significant, the 10-15 inches of rain is enough to present major issues. We started preparing Saturday afternoon. Sunday, I contacted my USDA rep to see if we could schedule our Wednesday chicken processing for Monday afternoon - that way we would not risk a batch of chicken if the weather turned for the worse. Fortunately, we have great inspectors to work with and our processing team stepped up and made it happen. Then, Sally turned North on Tuesday and went through Mobile Bay. This put us on the west side of the storm and all the forecasted rain dwindled to zero!

Product RESTOCK Status

Spring and early Summer were really crazy times that impacted us all - and to some extent still does. When the industrial food processing plants started closing due to COVID-19 many grocery store shelves quickly went bare. That forced folks to look elsewhere for their weekly groceries. Farms like Nature's Gourmet Farm were quickly overwhelmed with business. Fortunately, we had scheduled our beef & pork processing dates for the year which really helped. Now, things have settled down and we are somewhat back to pre-COVID operations. One of the outcomes for our farm has been generating a "rhythm" in what we do. For example: the beef we process the first Monday

A Busy Week At The Farm

So, have you ever wondered how "your" farmer spends his day? Believe me, we wear a lot of hats here! The first hat would be daily chores. You know, the things you have to do everyday - regardless of the weather, anniversary, birthday, day of the week, etc. This includes taking care of the baby chicks in the brooder (as well as cleaning up the brooder, waters, feeders, etc. to prepare for the next batch), then moving, feeding, and checking water for the pasture chickens. And, there is feeding the pigs (twice per day & about 250# each time) and making sure their needs are met and they have not destroyed something. Lastly, would be checking on the cows that all is well and moving to the next paddock if needed.

Farm Activities

Here on the farm we feel very blessed to have missed the damaging effects to two storms this week that eventually impacted Louisiana and Texas. There are numerous vulnerabilities in our operations. Top of the list is lack of electricity for an extended period of time to keep our product frozen. We do have a generator backup, but that could be stressed in an extended scenario. Next, I would list our pastured chickens. The pens we move each morning are light - weighing only 100 pounds. They shed less than 30 MPH wind really good. And I have made metal pins to stake each corner down so they don't slide and injure chickens or go airborne like an empty one did back in January.

Hens & Eggs Farm Update

Nature has certain rhythms! Spring brings flowers, new growth, and wildlife give birth to their young. Summer is a time of growth for forages, trees, etc. that feed new life. Fall is harvest and time to prepare for cold weather. Winter is a time to hunker down. Farm sales have periods of highs and lows. Typically, July and August are slow times because folks are on vacation, etc. September through early December as well as Spring are our strongest months. Each year we rotate out an older flock of hens and bring in a young flock. The new flock are about 17 weeks old and typically start to lay about week 21 or 22. Their first eggs are medium in size, but will jump to large quickly.

Gratitude!

It has been a busy week here at the farm. While we have seen a slight slowdown in order volume like with eggs, we continue to sell out chicken within days of processing and most cuts of beef and pork before we receive the next product from the processors. August has brought dry weather to our farm which means I am able to get into the pastures and take care of some much needed "maintenance". For instance today, after Beth & I packed the Jackson Metro orders, I spent about three hours removing smut grass. First, I gather all the seed head stems in my left hand and then very carefully cut them off with a pair of scissors. The seed heads are then put into a bag that will go to the dump. Objective here is to kill the offspring!

Annual Cattle Roundup

Every year we bring the mama cows, bulls, and calves up to the corral where we "work" them. Since the day starts early, we move them into the pivot pasture late the evening before. That way we know we have everyone the next morning. So, what is involved in this "working" of the cows? Well, it is basically a modified cowboy wrangler day. You know, where the cowboys on their horses would bring up the cows and separate out the calves that would then be roped and tied so the expert could brand, castrate, etc. Except our method does not involve horses. We move them by walking them into the corral where we sort them and move them a few at a time. We don't use ropes to catch and tie them up- our tool is called a head gate/squeeze shoot. We use this to catch the calves just behind the head and hold them still.

Food as Medicine!

“Let food be thy medicine, and let medicine be thy food.” This famous quote is often attributed to Hippocrates. But, as research by Diana Cardenas in 2013 shows, this quote can not be found anywhere in Hippocrates' writings. Diana Cardenas discovered that the quote started to emerge from 1926 onward, and really started to get popular in the 1970's. There are good reasons for the quote to go round, though. Hippocrates considered nutrition one of the main tools that a doctor can use. More than that, dietary measures play a lead part in the original oath of Hippocrates.

Building Resilience In Farming

Every person on earth needs food every day. Every day, food is tended, harvested, transported, stored, and served up on our tables. In a very real sense, food cannot be separated from life itself. And so it has been said that changing the way we grow and eat food is one of the most powerful tools we have for changing our economies and society as a whole. So when we ask: what will the farms of the future look like? We should really be asking — what do we want the future to look like? And then answers may begin to emerge. Resiliency is NOT industrial monocultures - those big farms where you see acres and acres of corn or soybeans, not to mention the giant cattle feedlots or huge pork & chicken confined feeding operations. These are systems that degenerate, they die, over time.

A Customer's Request

Good Morning and hello from the farm, Last weekend one of our Gulf Coast customers asked me to write and compare our farm with companies like ButcherBox. My objective here is NOT to be critical of the ButcherBox (BB) model, but to simply provide information and my thoughts to help you make an informed decision. While I have heard of BB I must admit that I did not know much about them. So, like you, I went to their website. They were founded in 2015 and are headquartered in Brighton, MA (Harvard Square). So, BB is NOT a farm nor do they own the land or animals. They are basically a sales and marketing company that buys meat for resale to consumers. Their staff all appear to be office staff which mean they outsource things like warehouse, packers, logistics, etc.

Farm Updates

June is an "extra" busy month on the farm - especially for Beth - as that is when our garden vegetables are ready. As you probably guessed, when it is ready you have to make time to harvest and then comes the canning, etc. You cannot procrastinate or simply put off till another day. When it comes to varieties like zucchini an extra day or two past optimal and you have an overly large specimen that is typically shared with the hens. Now that July has arrived, most of the garden is only a memory.

Farm Announcements

Today, I want to let you in on three important announcements from Nature's Gourmet Farm. As a way of introduction, back in the 1990's i was introduced to a man named Joel Barker through his best selling business film titled "Paradigms". One of the illustrations he used in the film was of an elderly couple walking on the beach when they came upon a young boy who was picking up up the many starfish that had washed ashore. They stopped to ask him how he ever expected to make a difference as there were so many. As he picked up another starfish and tossed it into the surf he looked up at them and said "it made a difference to that one."

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

Nature's Gourmet Farm