Monthly Archives: October 2011

A misty morning today, feeding and watering all the animals in the semi-darkness. The woodstove is stoked and we wake up warm, with a pretty balmy 36 degrees outside. The ducklings cheep in their brooder boxes, which we made out of 3/4 sheet of plywood, a pretty good design for around 40ish ducklings. We’ll post instructions later.

Can’t see the sun yet, wondering if we’re going to get any shine today. This is the time of year when we reassess our priorities for the winter, and for next spring. It’ll be here sooner then you think.

The ground is wet and everything sticks to the soles of our boots. Time for milking.

We’re teaching a class in St. Paul, at Mississippi Market on Saturday, November 5th @ Mississippi Market! It’s all about SAUSAGE, and most specifically BRATWURST. We seriously have the most amazing brat recipe, and we’ll be grinding, mixing and stuffing homemade brats in this class. Come learn and eat! Register online through Mss Mrkt. http://www.eventbrite.com/event/2145962632

oh yeah! brats! we did it all from scratch, even cleaned the intestines to make authentic sausage casings!!

This year, 2011, has been the year of the apple. We have been up to our eyeballs in apples for what seems like months, because, well, we have. The pollination and weather worked out so beautifully this year to produce an applicious bounty on our farm. Trying to make the most of it, we’ve canned, sauced, jellied, buttered, juiced and wined our hearts out with the apples that bombarded our trees. And we had plenty more for our CSA members as well! Such lovely apples, all 100% organic. If our apple grinder concept hadn’t failed us, we’d have alot of hard cider going on, but we’re going to have to rework that plan for next season. We’re actually applying for a grant to make a community portable apple processing center to take advantage of all the apples around this region, many of which simply return to the soil year after year, due to lack of equipment. When one thinks of all the time & energy put towards gathering sap from maple trees to gather sugar in it’s pure form, you can’t help but realize apples are loaded with sweetness that oftentimes goes unharvested.

Update: Our apples are done for the year, the last trees are bare. let us know if you want to be on the email list for apples next summer and early fall!

This morning we noticed that there has been a voluntary recall of the Larry Schulz organic eggs because of an outbreak of Salmonella. This is a quote from the Minnesota Department of Agriculture: “Salmonella is an organism which can cause serious and sometimes fatal infections in very young children, frail or elderly people, and others with weakened immune systems. Healthy people infected with Salmonella often experience diarrhea, fever, and abdominal pain. Anyone who believes they may have become ill with Salmonella should contact their health care provider.”

As producers of shell eggs we are of course concerned about providing our customers with the safest eggs possible. We provide our flock of ducks with plenty of living space in our hoophouse and fresh bedding, as well as access to rotated pasture throughout the day. Our ducks live separately from the rest of our farm animals, in their own fenced in paddock which is more than half an acre.

Every day we inspect each egg for defects or cracks. We are very small scale and have a hands-on approach to every aspect of our farm.

We would like to remind all of our customers to cook each egg thoroughly to kill any bacteria that may exist, in order to prevent any illness.