Farm Updates

We are in full swing now! Orchard growing, cattle rotating, mulberry picking, sheep now in the woods, and plenty more! The orchard is in! Thanks to help from Tiffany and Fiona, plants are in and we will see how everything grows. There may be a few loses due to some late planting, but the high value items went in very early and the plants that don't make it will be a learning experience. As I write this, Tiffany and Beckett are out collecting mulberries. Even the fruit of the trees that are usually just okay, are excellent. The mulberry flavor is stronger and not 'watered down' due to a lack of rain as they ripen. A couple times this week I was without my water jug, and mulberries helped get some fluids and ease a dry throat. Yes, cattle are rotating and they can't keep up with at the grass we had earlier in the month. Honestly, a lot of grass headed out way earlier than normal and the cows and sheep usually bypass the long stalks. Should mow it down, but not the #1 priority at the moment. The ground was getting very hard over the last week and the rain on Saturday (1/2 inch) was great, but unless we get some more rain the growing might slow a bit.

I am going to go into a little more detail of the sheep going in the woods. A lot will apply to the pigs as well, and you could say that the pigs link to the woods is stronger, but playing favorites today. The sheep have been grazing the pasture or farm lawn the last couple of months, but now the eleven ewes and sixteen little lambs (most born about five months ago) have moved to the forest. Our decision was influenced by the heat index readings over 95 and 100 degrees. We do have trees that encircle our pastures, but some pastures are rather big and it's difficult to give them much relief. We do plan to get trees into the pastures, and there are a few out there now, but that will take time. To get out of the sun is great, but the farther you go into the woods the more comfortable the animals are going to be.

It is more labor intensive for us in the woods because the electric netting we use to keep the sheep in their area gets tangled and caught on every little twig, stump, and pricker plant it can find. Setup probably takes three times as long as in the pasture, but there are a few advantages. Right now, I think the forest offers a more diverse smorgasbord of tasty treats than we have in some pastures. In the pasture the animals basically have their heads down and are eating the grasses. In the forest the sheep are eating grasses and "weeds" at ground level, then there is the shrub level with eats such as honeysuckle and gooseberry, and then I also may pollard trees for the leaves. When I pollard, I cut the younger trees to about hip level, so the sheep can chew on the new branches and leaves that will shoot up from the trunk (google for more info). When I coppice a tree or shrub, I'm basically cutting it to the ground and the shoots from the stump will come up as tripping hazards, but also food for the livestock. I am fighting the urge to give more info on nutritional value of the leaves vs most grasses, but some other day. Before you doubt, think about the giraffe and elephant and the large size at which they can grow while eating mostly leaves.

I'm going to touch on one more topic that is not fun at all: livestock processing. This is my least favorite part of my job and it's not even close. We raise animals to improve the land and also to sell meat that you know when it was a living and breathing animal, it had a better life than most. There is a sadness and thankfulness for the animal's life with us on processing day. Also, a major frustration is getting livestock into the process since COVID. Pre-COVID, I could get sheep, pigs, cattle, into my favorite processors about three months out. Now? In 2020, I had take pigs down to the St. Louis area. Some places are booked two year out. Why did this happen? During COVID, the factory farming pig growers had COVID outbreaks, closures or limited labor, and they basically gave their pigs away to the public that would have been processed privately at their own plants, and now were being processed in the small public processors that small growers like myself use. That is why I ended up in St. Louis with my pigs, and others were caught without a processor at all. I couldn't get a cow on a trailer for a processing day last fall (smashed a gate, was not going on) and I was out of luck and had to wait four months until my next date and lost significant income. Now, small guys like myself are panicked and try to get dates way in advance to avoid the possibility of not finding a date. June 1st, I had to call the processor for sheep, cattle, pigs, for 2023! I dialed 23 times and got them scheduled! That right - my sheep are not even pregnant yet and I have to guess how many and when the lambs will be ready. I need to find piglets that match dates.

Up until this week I've told customers, 'at least the chicken processing has been largely unaffected.' I just got a note that the processor will only do 150 cut up chicken parts (boneless breast, thighs, wings, etc) per day - first come first serve. Staffing issues. They process about 800 birds a day, and I usually bring about 250 and normally get about 175 cut up for parts (I sell two times more parts than I do whole chickens). I really don't know what will happen. I think I'm going to load up my chickens at 10 PM and then get to Sterling, IL at about 1:30 AM and hopefully sleep in my truck until they open at 6:30 AM. What if someone gets there earlier and now I have 250 whole chickens (I sell about eight per week) instead of the various cuts? Then I need to be back in Sterling around 5 PM to pick up the processed chicken, and then put everything into our freezers, which is usually not finished until 10 PM. The other option is an Amish processor in central Illinois that is 3.5 hrs away. I've thought that processing more chickens could be a great way to grow our farm and possibly hire someone to help out around here, but now that might not be realistic.

We do our best to keep items in stock by guessing when I will run out of "X or Y" items and matching processing dates months in advance, but a few big sales can cause some shortages as you may have experienced. Sorry the last few paragraphs have been a bit negative, but I think it is important to know about the satisfaction we have after a sheep move and a head rub with our favorite ewes, but also the challenges that come along on the farm.

PLANT OF THE MONTH

Jan Bush Cherry - We had this plant in Glen Ellyn, and now we have some in Marengo! It is a tart cherry bush that grows to about 3' x 3' and is COVERED in light pink flowers in the spring for beauty and pollinators. The cherries are slightly smaller than a sour cherry, but still plenty of meat and way easier to pick on a shrub than a 15' tree! I think the Jan, Joy, Joel cherries also make lovely edible landscape additions to any home, but you do need two different varieties to get fruit. There are newer cultivars coming out that may improve on the bush cherry, but Jan is still a great addition!