Inventory update as of Tuesday 28 April

Today I made my normal Tuesday loop of Eastern NC to pick up product for the store.

Christy, our chicken farmer, had a Monday today. The truck wouldn’t start. The battery wouldn’t take a charge. The hog wouldn’t get on the trailer. Everything went wrong. Fortunately, I’d forgotten to pay her last week when I picked up so when she got out the truck over an hour late for our meeting, I reminded her that I was a deadbeat customer and had no room to talk (I’d paid her in full for both as soon as I saw her invoice this morning.)

It is all good natured and we do a lot of business together. I was happy to wait for her as she bends over backwards for us routinely.

The only chicken we received this week was a few packs (the last packs!) of ground chicken. We are still waiting on the first birds to be ready to harvest. Maybe next week. Maybe the week after. Depends on weather and whatnot. We did receive a good amount of rabbit and lots of ice cream. Christy also told me that she had lots of guinea hen in the freezer available, and that she actually preferred it to chicken. She said most people don’t think about guinea but maybe we should try it? I told her to be ready for an order next week. For those who are missing our chicken, expect guinea hen in good supply next week. The cooking and eating are nearly identical, except you get more white meat than on a comparable chicken. Poultry is going to be back on the menu next week!

While I was waiting on Christy, I inquired with our pork processor if any of our pork might be ready to pickup. Please? Maybe? Fingers crossed? Brooke said not only was some ready, ALL of it was ready. This is the pork I dropped off a few weeks ago after getting it from the processor down East. I didn’t think it would be ready yet so this was a great surprise.

I was able to pick up dinner sausages, breakfast links, BBQ, and I don’t know what else. It was about 600 lbs of pork so what would normally be two months worth of sausage. It’ll probably last till next week with what is going on currently.

I then went to visit our dairy farm and had a good visit with the lady who runs that. We received our full complement of milk, yogurt, butter, etc like clockwork. She’s amazing. I don’t tell her that enough. Have I mentioned how much I love our farmers and people we work with? They are all busting their humps to get us product so you can buy it.

When I got back to the store, I found a box of honey from our hives, all bottled, labeled, and ready to go. Jennifer had been by and it looks like the first honey harvest has already happened. That is awesome because with the allergies blowing around in the wind, we could all use a little local honey.

All of the below pics are prior to Jeanette restocking Wednesday before the store opens. All the product I brought home, except for the milk, is still in the stock room and not in these pics.

Onto our remaining stock.

The chicken freezer continues to be sad. We did restock on ice cream so at least we can starve to death happy and fat. Expect a big load of guinea next week.

We received our full order of eggs this week. Some may be a bit smaller than normal since some of these are from first time layers but I’d rather have smaller eggs than no eggs. Combine this with the other egg produces we have delivering on Wednesday and we should be good on eggs this week.

We put 800 lbs of beef in the freezer last Friday. There are already holes in the freezer where things are getting thin. We can only get so much, so fast, so this will have to last till the 14th when we drop off our next cow.

On a postive note, the test results came back from our processor where they had the COVID-19 scare. Only one worker had the virus and he’s quarantined. Everyone else is clean. The whole place is likely being doused with enough commercial cleaner to float a battleship and we should be in business for our next cow. Phew!

One thing we are getting like clock work is our normal supply of milk. In fact we are getting more pasteurized milk than ever so we should be in good shape on milk, both raw and not.

Don’t eyeball the yogurt (Jessie!) that is ordered for a customer.

This picture doesn’t include any of the pork I just picked up. But we are out of butts and most pork chops. We do have a pig at the processor right now and I expect to get those cuts next Tuesday when I make next week’s run.

The right side of the pork freezer is looking sadder than the left. Again, this is all before being restocked.

This freezer will be fully stocked when Jeanette restocks. The locopops are also fresh and just picked up so bring your kids, we have fresh snacks for them.

Our premium cuts freezer is still fairly well stocked. As is the pasta. We just restocked it and we are already ready for another order.

Our shrimp is about 1/2 way gone from the initial order from a few weeks ago. We have scallops coming next week I think. Might be time to get some shrimp coming too.

All in all, we are in about as good of shape as we can be considering what is going on. It seems that the world has gone crazy again and that grocery stores are getting wiped out again since Tyson foods President said to expect supply disruptions. I just had a state wide broadcast of a farmer trying to get rid of 4000 piglets because he had nowhere to take them and another farmer I met today was telling me of a friend who had long abandoned hog houses that people were trying to rent just to have somewhere to put their hogs because they cannot get them processed.

I thought maybe we were getting on the backside of this thing. Looks like there are more bumps in the road coming. Rest assured, we are doing all we can to keep things sane and normal here in our store.