Orders Galore
We have had a surge of orders this fall, causing us to run short of some products. For us, this is a good problem. It’s a problem, because we are committed to the very best service for our customers. We strive to fill every order promptly. When one of the items on an order is out of stock, we either have to make substitutes, delay delivery, or get whatever we have to you, pending a further delivery later on. That’s the problem. The good part is that we see a growing demand for our products. To know that so many people appreciate what we’re doing here, and to hear the great reviews of our meat is very rewarding.
What’s new on the farm?
When it comes to livestock husbandry, no news is good news. What the farmer wants is for life to go on uneventfully, with the animals happy and healthy, reproducing, growing and going off to market in a continuous cycle of life. There are all kinds of things that can go wrong, and they are usually preventable, so every year we try to analyze our progress, and figure out what changes can be made to make things run more smoothly. Since we began this mixed farming adventure using old barns that have been jerry rigged to their present use, there seems always to be need of some further improvement in facilities; another gate or fence, better access to feed and water, draining a mudhole or cementing a patch of ground where traffic is heavy, and so on.
This year, as the pasture season ended, based on advice from some fellow organic farmers and following their example, we weaned our calves and kept them at the same farm where the mothers are. They have the very best high quality hay and an outside yard where they are nose to nose with the cows. This change was motivated by the observation that last year, those beautifully well grown calves, taken off pasture in late October as pictures of health and vitality, did not continue in that vein, but seemed to stall and by Christmas time, looked scruffy. It had been our practice to separate males and females, taking them to their respective winter accommodations where they would mix with the older members of the same sex; the cattle born 1 year earlier. This we realized, was adding stress to the already difficult weaning process. Smaller animals were having to compete with their older brothers and sisters and some were getting bullied. So the new arrangement keeps them in a group all the same age, and allows us to give them the nutrition that is needed at that stage of life – the very best high protein, high energy hay that is needed to replace mother’s milk.
We had a beautiful, long autumn, unusually dry for the months of September and October, which made fieldwork easy. The fall colours in our hardwood bushes were stunning and November was progressing nicely with no snow until – all of a sudden – winter came upon us with a vengeance. The first snowfall was almost 2 feet in one night and we were caught unprepared, scrambling to get the snowblower mounted on the tractor, to clean our laneways and make paths needed to feed the animals. But it didn’t stop there! For the next week it seemed that every day was filled with shovelling and blowing and working in falling snow that didn’t know when to stop. This is Chepstow, the snow capital of Ontario! With 2 weeks to go until Christmas, we already have more snow than at any time in the past 10 years.
Upcoming Deliveries
| Toronto | Saturday, December 21 |
| Kitchener-Waterloo / Cambridge | Friday, December 20 |
| Everywhere else | Before Christmas |
Gift Cards – Give the gift of great food!
Virtual Gift Card
Send a gift card to someone you love! The perfect gift! This is not a physical card. Instead, it will give you a code that you can give to whoever you want. Our system can send it for you, or, if you chose, you can email it to yourself and design something fancier!