Baskets of the Month

Due to some natural disasters and a little miscommunication between the three growers supplying Hardin's River Mercantile I've ended up sending 75 chickens to them instead of 50 for their Thanksgiving-themed baskets of the month. I had to promote a few birds from the "personal consumption" category and shrunk some of the family orders to make it happen, but at least this will mean more people will be introduced to Sandtown Farm. However, a few of those extra chickens may be of less than ideal cosmetic quality. From a food safetly and taste standpoint they're fine, but some of the ones that were processed first may have a couple of pin feathers remaining or some of the skin might be torn. We learned so much about producing a nice looking product by the end that there's really no comparison with the early ones. I hope the folks who end up with those crunchy-granola birds appreciate the authenticity of them and take great pride in participating directly in the birth and evolution of this new local food enterprise. At least that's what I would think if I were on the receiving end.

Anyhow, we worked most of the kinks out of the processing system by the 84th chicken, so next year all the birds that leave the farm should be fit for a beauty pageant.

I'm going to send out some farm propaganda a newsletter/order form this winter so people can reserve chickens for 2008 and so I can better gauge how many to raise. If you'd like to join the mailing list, just send an email to tim@sandtownfarm.com with "Mailing List" in the subject line and your name and snail mail address in the body. Look for the newsletters by mid-December.

Aahhh...

It's over. The chickens are frozen. My three stitches are out. Our hands are clean and our backs are resting. Sigh...

My trip to Falling Sky Farm on Monday paid off in many ways. The whole crew up there was very helpful and I was able to gain a lot of experience just by helping them for the day. Carl and Joel Felland from Chimes brought a semi-automatic plucker with them for me to use on my own chickens. While it's not quite a Whizbang model it's a vast improvement over hand plucking. I offered to rent it but they asked that I just find three more legs for it instead. Deal. Good folks those Fellands.

Mom, Dad, Ragan, and I spent parts of the next three days processing the birds with a little help from a pair of folks on Thursday who were in town to photograph Ragan for a book about young people causing change in rural areas. Cool. Unfortunately I ran out of time for distribution, so the cold ones will have to chill out in Mom and Dad's freezers for a while until I get back from a trip to NYC after the 10th. (Vanessa's boss has written a book about preservation in New York and I'm going up for the release party, among other things.) Until those chickens are gone I don't think it's going to feel like my first year's farming trial run is over. Some reflections on the past couple of months will follow soon.