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Here are some views of the animals on the farm – goats, cows, pigs, calf, and chickens – and a look at the tulips, opened and closed.  Enjoy!

March 23 – Once upon a time (heigh-ho, the dairy-o) the Farmer took a wife.

The Farmer’s Wife not only gets to cook all the great farm food, but also helps keep track of farm records. This is in addition to volunteering for her church, working part-time for a small homeschool curriculum producer, homeschooling her children, and maintaining a household.

And the big push now is to get our tax forms done.

Here is The Farmer’s Wife’s Nerve Center. Does that look like organized chaos? Well, if The Farmer posted a picture of his work area, you would see complete chaos.

April 8 – And taxes are done, submitted, and accepted! YEA!!!

And our pork is back! YEA!!! 🙂  We have frozen meat:

• Smoked pork – $7.00 / lb.
  • Bacon – around 1 lb each
  • Ham slices – These are 1 each in a package and they are about 6 in. ovals with a small bone in the middle and some fat around the outside – around 1 lb. each.
  • Smoked pork chops – 3 smoked chops in a package, each package about 1.25 lb.
  • 1 smoked ham roast – This will have a bone down the middle. It weighs about 4 lb.
• Fresh pork (unsmoked, frozen) – $6.00 / lb.
  • Steaks – These are 2 / package, are about 5 in. long and 3-4 inches wide. They weigh about 1.75-2.0 lb.
  • Chops – These are 3 / package.  They weigh about 1.25 lb.
  • 2 shoulder roasts – These have a bone in them and are about 4 lbs. each.
  • 2 loin roasts – These have a bone on the side and are about 4 lbs. each.
  • Ground pork – This is bulk ground meat that is in a tube and weighs about 1 lb.  Each tube is $6.
  • Spare ribs – This is a short rack of ribs, about 2? lb.
• Sausage – This is bulk sausage in a tube and weighs around 1 lb. – $7 each.
  • Pork sausage or breakfast sausage – This is pork, salt and flavorings, primarily sage.
  • Sweet Italian sausage – This is made of pork, salt, sugar, white pepper, fennel, paprika, anise and coriander.
  • Hot Italian sausage – This is made of pork, salt, crushed red peppers, sugar, fennel, black pepper, and paprika.
• Other pork parts
  • Liver – This is about 1 – 1.25 lb.  $4.00 / lb.
  • Heart and tongue – Both of these items are frozen together.  They weigh about .5 lb. $4.00 / lb.
  • Feet – This is 2 feet / package and weighs about 2 lb.  $2.00 / lb.
  • Lard – This is unrendered pork fat in frozen slabs.  A bag is 5-10 lb and is $2.00 / lb.
  • Bones – These are $2.00 / lb.
  • Heads – This is the pig skull with most of the meat trimmed off. $6.00 each

These items are available from the farm or through the monthly Meat Subscription. Email me about what you would like to purchase.

Congratulations to Sara L. on winning our 2018 Local Food Challenge.  During the winter and spring she and others regularly commented on the food challenge for that month.  Yesterday, her name was drawn and she won a $50 gift certificate to the farm.  Congratulations, Sara!

It is time to send the pigs to the butcher. We purchased these pigs from another small family farm and have raised these pigs out of doors and fed them non-GMO grain, milk and cultured milk from our cow and day-old produce from a local grocery store and from our garden. They have been allowed to root and act like pigs.  The plan is to use the location where they were as the start of a garden bed.  They have done the tilling and fertilizing, we will do the planting and growing.

We have several sides available as halves or quarters.  1/4 side would take up about half the freezer over a refrigerator. We sell pork in bulk for $200 / quarter + processing costs (last time it was about $80/quarter).  The total would be around $280, depending how much smoked meat and sausage you get. Assuming you leave most of the bones in, it would be about 35-40 lb. of meat.   If you contact me by Monday, January 7, you can choose how you would like to have your pork cut up and what (if anything) you would like to have smoked or put into sausage.  Payment can be made in late January when you pick up the meat.

Email me if you would like to purchase a quarter or half a pig or if you have questions.

In February we will again have pork available by the cut – $6 / lb. for unsmoked meat, $7 / lb for smoked meat and sausage.  If you have cuts that you would like me to request from the butcher, please email me about that.

While reviewing his news sources recently, The Farmer saw a reference to a comparison of fertilizers on soil health.

In a study that spanned more than a decade, researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison used varying levels of manure on one field and varying levels of inorganic fertilizers on another. Yet another plot received no amendments, acting as the control.

Soil samples were taken in 2015 to assess how the soil fared with the different protocols used. And in September of this year the results were published by the American Society of Agronomy (ASA). The executive summary states:

Core Ideas:

*Long-term annual application of manure maintained the soil pH but inorganic fertilizer decreased it.

*Manure application increased soil organic carbon (SOC) and total nitrogen (TN).

*Higher manure rate helps in improving the water stable aggregates compared to inorganic fertilizer at 0- to 10-cm depth.

There was also a warning that higher electrical conductivity readings in the manure-fertilized fields could indicate salt levels being too high.  But since The Farmer is not a member of the  ASA, he cannot get the report details to read the specifics.

As someone whose farm includes animals, and whose animals provide much of the fertility for garden, this is a heartening study.

This post’s bottom line: using what comes out of your animal’s bottom will help your farm’s bottom line…or, the power of poo keeps your soil from bottoming out.