Category: News, etc.

Every year we have the pleasure of picking our own grapes. These grape vines were old when I moved to this farm, and that was nearly 40 years ago. Today they are doing better than ever and they give us an annual treat in late August/early September.

This year I wasn’t able to be there for picking because I was committed elsewhere. Normally that means we’d just wait for another day but we were leaving to go out of town so SWMBO and the kids took time off from school and instead picked grapes. The only thing I did to help was to remind the kids of the one and only rule of grape picking, which they all knew off the top of their head, “One for the basket, one for your mouth!”

All the grapes were waiting for me in the kitchen when I got back. As usual, I juiced all the grapes and made pulpy muscadine grape juice which is our house favorite. We carry crystal clear grape juice in the store, but the stuff we make ourselves has a lot more body to it. We only get it once per year and it’s a real treat.

This year we produced about 3 gallons of juice. As usual, it didn’t last long.

This coming weekend we will be closed for normal tours as we are going to be one of the host farms for the Carolina Farm Stewardship’s Eastern Triangle farm tour. If you’ve never been on the farm tour, it is a great way to meet and discover local small, sustainable farms.  The tour is from1-5pm both Saturday and Sunday next weekend. We are on the orange route but you can mix and match any farm you like to visit. All you do is buy a ticket for the entire tour and you can visit any and all the farms that you’d like for one price. The price is per car as well so grab some friends and make a day of it.

It looks like the weather is going to be perfect so plan on getting out next weekend and seeing some local farms. And stop by and see us. We’ll be giving walking tours, cooking sausage samples, and generally having a large time meeting lots of new folks.

Oh, did I mention the girls will have cookies?

We are now taking deposits on farm raised, pastured, non-gmo, no antibiotic, fresh turkeys for Thanksgiving. Our chicken farmer, Brittany Ridge Farms is doing turkeys again this year and we will be bringing them in for folks who plan ahead. In talking with Christy, she already has more requests than she has availability but she’s holding spaces for us since we are regular customers. That means you need to get your name on the list before someone else does!

Turkeys range from 15-20 pounds and we can try to pick more to your size you need if you let us know your preference but there are no guarantees you’ll get the exact size you ask for.

If you want to get a turkey for Thanksgiving, the price is $6.25 per pound and you’ll need to put down a $40 deposit to get on the list. I can take your deposit remotely if you want to reserve yours before you can swing by. Just email/text me and I’ll get it handled for you.

Now you can stop by the farm till 6pm, on your way home from work. Lucy has been getting some requests from folks who’d like to leave work at 5pm and still stop by the store and do some shopping.

In response to these requests, we’ve changed our Wednesday and Friday open store hours to now be 2pm-6pm. The gate schedule has been modified to now close at 6pm so you’ll be able to drive right up to store and do your shopping with no issues.

We are implementing this schedule as of today so feel free to stop by and pick up some goodies till 6pm.

Also, Lucy just let me know that we have two packs of ribeyes that have become available, so another reason to pop in today!

We have a new product in the store today. Some people who make crazy good hamburgers (Drew, I’m talking to you) like to take cuts of beef and grind them themselves. I first heard of doing this from the master himself, Alton Brown. Alton buys a chuck and a sirloin and grinds them for his Burger of the Gods recipe.  I’m not crazy enough to grind my sirloins but the chuck has already been done for you.

In addition, this ground chuck is priced at $10.50 per pound. Since a chuck roast is $12.99 per pound that’s a pretty stellar deal. We are just trying it out to see how it does so come get some and try burgers this weekend.

We also have Denver cut steaks as well. They are a new steak we are carrying and they are $14.99 per pound.

Tomorrow I’ll be heading to Siler City to pick up our latest load of fresh beef. I’m doubly excited because we actually have room in the freezer now that the beef freezer is working again.  That means easy shopping where you can find everything you are looking for.

Expect all the cuts to be in stock. I’ll even have some oxtail, I think. If it’s not all spoken for. Steaks, hamburger, all that stuff will be fully stocked so plan on coming by between 2-5 on Friday, or 8-5 on Saturday. Lucy will be working the store both Friday and Saturday so come and get your recipe fix from our in-house chef. We’ll be open so there is no appointment needed to shop in the store.

Also, we are going to have our pork sale again this weekend. I’m still needed to make some room in the pork freezer. We have Boston butts aplenty and all the sausage goodness you expect. Plan on coming by and stocking up.

I wrote previously about how we lost power at the barn and in the process lost not one but two of our freezers. One freezer was a backup freezer so no big deal. The other however was our beef freezer in the store. This is one of the two commercial freezers we use to hold the majority of our product.

To say it was a pain in the posterior having this freezer dead is an understatement. We had to cram everything into out backup freezers to get it to fit, which we did. The downside to that is now everything is disorganized and hard to find. Kuddos to Lucy who worked hard to keep everything shuffled so we could find our product as best we could.

The worst part of the freezer being down was not that it happened. No, the worst part is that it took from June 24th to yesterday to get the part in to fix it! A month and a half to get a 2″x5″ circuit board for a major brand commercial freezer. Guess which brand I won’t be buying next time!

However yesterday my friends at Fowler & Sons called me to let me know the board was in. We’d gotten to be on a pretty chummy basis since I’d been calling them about every other day asking when my board would be here. They did the best they could, this was a manufacturers issue. Anyway, I swung by and picked up the board and in about 30 minutes had it replaced. Then it was time to power up and see if it burst into flames or started working.

I closed my eyes and flipped the switch. If the board blew again, that meant something else was wrong so we’d have to fix that problem, then order another board that would be another 1.5 months. Thank God it powered right up and went to working.

Lucy came right up and with the help of the Princess pulled all the beef from the back and got everything restocked. It was just in time too as I’m picking up a new cow on Friday from the processor. We’ll be back to full speed on beef by Friday afternoon so plan on getting your beefy goodness this weekend.

I need to make some room in the pork freezer. Today only I am putting all pork products on sale at 10% off! That includes pork chops, Boston butts, sausage. Everything except bacon. Sorry, bacon is always the first to go.

We are also still having our buy one get one free sale for liver, kidneys, bones, etc. That means if you get pork bones, you get BOGO AND 10% off. You dog lovers need to stop by today!

No appointment is needed to shop in the store today, plus Crystal is back in town so come and ask her how her two months in Mexico was.

Lucy is organizing this afternoon and has found some steaks hiding in the freezer. We currently have ribeyes, NY strips, sirloins, filets, flat irons, and flank steaks all sitting out front now ready for the first ones through the door. She’s open from 2-5 today, no appointment needed.

I also just brought back a new load of pork from the processor as well so we are loaded with bacon, pork chops, sausage and a new product, salted fatback (you Southerners know what that is).

Come see Lucy and get some goodies. I’m leaving to go restock on wine for the store.

Before we get back to the store, I have to tell a few funny things that happened on the tour.

First, one of the big bull bison apparently likes to use the tractor as a scratching post.

SWMBO had been asking me if there was any way we’d have bison on our farm. “Nah, not on our place.”

“Well not an entire herd, but maybe a couple. Think what a neat part of the tour that would be.”

“We’re not really set up for bison.” I was trying to be polite in front of our hosts.

Then this bull starts pushing on the tractor moving it, and our 40 foot long trailer like it’s nothing. Really rocking it back and forth. Terry, our driver, is yelling at him to go away and he’s pretty much ignoring him. Terry I notice, won’t set foot on the ground around this bull. Only swatting at him from the safety of the tractor. An angus bull I’d hop down and shoo away. Not this bison. SWMBO sees the same thing.

“They are aggressive, aren’t they?!”

“Yep.”

I’ve been asked about raising bison before. Some years back, they were all the rage. They new super meat. Everybody got into them, and then the market collapsed. We had small kids at the time and I knew I didn’t want anything to do with an animal that would turn on you and charge if it felt threatened. We missed that little train wreck, thankfully. But seeing this 2000 pound bison push a tractor around like it was nothing just trying to get a scratch was pretty funny and a good reminder why I don’t want bison.

The second thing that happened on our tour, especially in this election year, was we saw Donald Trump.

We made it back to the store and SWMBO and I promptly fell into their meat selection. On the tours on our farm, we end the tour by giving what we call the “inside tour” which is taking you all around our store and telling you what we sell and where it comes from.

On this tour, when you made it to the parking lot, it was over. We kind of invited ourselves into the store to go shopping. However we paid about $65 for this tour whereas on our tour it’s $20 total so maybe for them the tour is the income whereas for us it’s just the way to get you to the farm.

Once we got inside, we found something interesting. They only stocked prime cuts of meat like ribeyes and sirloins, and of course ground meat. We asked where the rest of the animal went and they said most of their meat was sold as primals to restaurants. I guess they held back some prime cuts for direct retail sales and the rest is wholesale. For us, our whole business revolves around our little store, for them it seems that the wholesale market is their main business. Just another interesting difference.

Also interestingly, they only kept their meat freezer at 30 degrees meaning the meat was barely frozen. We keep ours at negative 10 degrees so it’s hard frozen. Being at 30 degrees would be handy for someone who wants to buy today and eat today. But it would be terrible for someone who wants to buy today and make the 45 minute drive home with safe meat (or for us the four hour trip home). I wasn’t sure if I saw an opportunity or a problem. I also wasn’t sure our USDA inspector would like us being that close to a problem temperature by hovering just below freezing.

Luckily for us I had my new Yeti cooler so we could transport our meat home safely. They were very kind and let us fill up on ice from their ice maker and pack away our meat. We bought bison ribeyes, elk hamburger, pork bacon, and some kind of jerky. The meat was cheaper than our meat which was interesting since it’s an exotic animal. I guess the bison market really hasn’t recovered since it’s collapse.

All in all it was a great trip. I know some things I want to try, and I know some things I’m glad I’m not doing. I got to work a bit on my vacation which made me feel better and got me back in gear to come home and go to work.

SWMBO planned and executed this vacation. She made sure we were busy, we had down time, and we had time for dad to work. Thanks SWMBO for being a great mom and wife!