Ninja Cow Farm LLC

A few posts back, I told you that someone at our beef processor had tested positive for COVID-19. They isolated that person quickly and sent them home. They then tested everyone in the building.

I checked back with the owner as soon as the results came back. Only that one person has the virus and everyone else was clean. They are not back to normal there yet, but they are slowly getting there. All indication are that we will be getting our cow processed this month on schedule. That is fantastic news and I just wanted to share it with everyone.

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.

Traditionally we’ve only sourced our protein from one source. Beef and pork from Ninja Cow Farm, chicken, rabbit, quail, etc from Brittany Ridge Farm, goat from Cooterville Farm. Things like that. But with the times we are living in, we are having to do things we’ve never done before.

I called this week to schedule another couple of hogs for the processor. I’m already using a processor that is hours away due to farming details that you don’t want to hear. Well when I asked if I could get in Monday, like this coming Monday, I was told I could bring two hogs, only two, on May 11th! And the next hogs would be June. Yikes! We need pork now, not a month from now.

And even if we scraped by from now till May 11th, it would not work to have no pork till June after those two hogs.

And we are getting short on hogs, period. Like, we don’t have enough to process and put in the freezers so we are going to run out no matter what.

So with all that in mind, I reached out to a farmer I know to see if he had any hogs he was willing to sell.

“I just dropped one off at the processor this week. Do you want him?”

Yes!

So that is the good news. Pork will be here shortly.

The bad news is, these are more conventional hogs. They are farm raised, local, all that stuff. But they have a diet of corn, not a diet of produce like our hogs here on this farm. That means the meat is going to be different that what we normally sell. They will be labeled under our farm name because we are buying them as live hogs going forward. I’m not sure how I’ll label them. Ninja Cow #2? Ninja Cow Emergency Backup Meat? I don’t know. I’ll come up with something so you can tell them apart. I’ll be able to tell them apart just looking at them.

Because they are more conventionally raised, we are going to just discount them from our normal prices to offset the difference in meat quality. That is probably more than you want to know but we don’t want two sets of items in the point of sale system. It would make checking out a nightmare. So we’ll just ring up pork chops and pork chops and put these new cuts down as on sale.

We are still working on producing more pork here. I found an old customer who purchased breeding stock from me a while back who is now breeding his own piglets. I just bought out his recent litter to give us more pigs going forward. I’m also working some other angles to get us back into higher production on pork here on our farm. In the meanwhile, we’ll bring in this other pork to fill some holes in the freezers till things level out.

As always, we are keeping you abreast and fully informed. I know some of you won’t want only our pork and I sincerely appreciate that, really. We are doing the best we can with what we have. If we have a price difference, and an availability difference, maybe some others will pick the lesser priced pork which will make our limited pork more available for those the choose it.

Today was going to be touch and go on our getting our beef back in time. If we didn’t get it before open today, we were going to close the store. That is how barren our shelves are right now. No sense having you good people come out only to be disappointed. Things were tense and the processor has been having a crazy time of it trying to get through everyone’s needs. I called at 0700 this morning.

“Please answer, please answer, please..”

“Hello?”

Thank goodness! I explained that I was checking to see if my cow was ready. Before I tell you the answer, let me explain. The processor and I aren’t friends from way back. We didn’t got to different schools together. He’s not my cousin. We don’t hang out after work. But I’ve been taking cows to him for years, once a month, like clock work. I also try to be people’s favorite customer. I don’t want to ask for more than can be delivered. I don’t whine we they can’t do what I wanted. I don’t loose my mind when something goes wrong. I tell them I’m disappointed, but I appreciate their efforts, and move forward. We have a good relationship.

“Uh, it isn’t ready yet, but I’m getting your cow cut first in line. I’ll have you ready before we shut down today.”

Yes!! First in line. Not only will we get it back today, we’ll have it in time to get stocked and ready to open at 2pm! We had a great looking cow dropped off, and now I’m getting it back on time. We are good to go and it is going to be another beautiful day at Ninja Cow Farm. Woo hoo!

That is the good news.

“I gotta get yours done, because we are shutting down early.”

“Why are you shutting down early?”

“This damn thing going around. We had someone test positive.”

Wait, what?!

Our processor, where we get all of our beef processed, had someone test positive on the cut floor for the corona virus. Insert foul language here.

We’ve already spent considerable time going through this internally, so rather than rehash it here. I’m going to give you all the summary.

1. The person who tested positive was on the cut floor. Our cow was not on the cut floor prior to that person going home.
2. All the people in close contact with that person had already been sent home.
3. The sanitize the crap out of the cut floor between animals.
4. The owner himself cut our cow this morning, not one of the regular line workers.
5. According to the CDC, there is no evidence to support the transmission of COVID-19 via food either via packaging, take out orders (this is why we can all still get takeout) etc.
6. The USDA inspector was onsite (I know him too) and while I was there I talked to him. He wasn’t worried at all.

With all that said, here is what Ninja Cow Farm is doing.

I handled all the meat from their freezer with gloves and an N95 mask (I’m not bragging, it was covered in all kinds of gunk from being left in the shop for who knows how long. Remember when they were just stupid masks and not a critical item?)

When I got home, we mobilized a team of people to handle the intake of the meat.

Jeanette, the Mrs, and I devised a plan on what we’d do. We tasked Jeanette’s son Cody to bring in the meat one tub at a time, into a clearing area in the stock room.

One tub at a time, and one package at a time, the girls took each package of meat and wiped it down with a solution of bleach per the CDC’s guidelines.

Each package was thoroughly wiped down and then allowed to dry for at least one minute, also per the CDCs guidelines.

Then Jeanette would take the now clean tub into the store and stock everything in the freezer.

So your meat has come from an inspected facility, cut by the owner himself, cleaned in bleach (the packaging, not the meat itself), and frozen. And the CDC says you can’t get it from warm food handed to you in a box from Bojangles. I think we’ve done all that we can.

With that said, some of you may not feel comfortable. Some may want to switch to MREs from the fallout shelter. My asparagus is coming up. Maybe some of you want to start living out of your gardens. Whatever you want to do is fine by us. But as we’ve always done, we are being transparent about what we do, where your food comes from, and how it is handled. As for this month’s cow, I think it is handled. Next month, I have no idea. I assume the processor will be shut down for 14 days before everyone is allowed back to work. We have a cow scheduled to be dropped off in, you guessed it, 14 days. That means that best case scenario, we’ll be dropping a cow off on day 1 of them being back to work. When everyone is out of practice and the whole system will be messed up. Whatever mess that might be, that isn’t even taking into account the massive backlog that will be waiting when they do return to work. From all the farmers who were scheduled to take animals over the next 14 days. Remember, it takes about 90 days to get on the schedule with the processor.

And while we are all worrying about ourselves (me included in this), let’s remember that our processor is a family run business and they are about to go at least two weeks with no revenue. And their employees are all about to be sent home for two weeks. The average employee at a meat packing plant doesn’t have two weeks of funds in the bank.

Looks like COVID-19 just hit a little closer to home.

So like I said, good news, and really bad news. But we’ll keep doing what we do and being here for you, and keeping you in the loop.

As usual, I took my Tuesday drive to go pick up goodies for the store. Since we are running at such a pace I thought it best to continue to update everyone on what we have in the store. This isn’t exhaustive, but if you see something missing, that is probably because we don’t currently have it.

I basically just took pics of the freezers so this is just like looking in the door to see what is available. Of course this is live as of yesterday so once the doors open, all bets are off.

We did get our normal compliment of milk, raw milk, cream, chocolate milk this week so that is fully stocked.

We didn’t get our full compliment of eggs this week. 25 dozen instead of 40. They will sell out over the week but not by much. Hopefully with warmer weather we’ll get more next week.

Thanks to Jeanette and Cody, we were able to get shrimp back in the store, finally! Scallops are supposedly to arrive next week.

We were almost out of ice cream so Christy brought us a good load to get us back to relatively normal stock.

Beef is probably what is everyone’s question right now. We take a cow per month to the processor. it is normal that we get low on products towards the end of the month, but not this low.

We are out of hamburger, almost all steaks, and a number of other things. Below is what we have.

The good news is we should have our cow back this Friday so if you were coming this week, plan on Friday or Saturday for your visit.

Pork, which I just restocked, is already starting to dwindle. Most of our pork went to our processor to make things like BBQ and sausage so the hope was that some of it would be available this Tuesday. Alas, it will be next Tuesday at best.

Chicken, and other items we get from Brittany Ridge, are pretty slim. We received no chicken this week, and were told that we were still a couple of weeks away from processing any new chickens. If the weather will warm up, we’ll see some growth so it is coming.

Once we do get chickens to process, they will be whole chickens only for the first few weeks. Those of you looking for boneless skinless breasts are going to be a while till we have them again.

One thing we still have plenty of is rabbit. If you’ve never stepped out and tried a different source of protein, now is a good time to expand your horizons.

Again, we are getting a cow back this week. Should be Friday. May be Saturday. We won’t know till the processor calls us. I hope to get some pork back next week as well. Chicken we are still a few weeks out but it will start coming in before too long.

Thank you everyone for your patience as we work through this once in a lifetime event.

For the past several years we’ve been rendering lard and tallow for customers. We used Ball/Mason jars that between Jeanette and I we already had laying about. Now we’ve reached a point where we are fresh out of jars. A lot of our customers can/preserve routinely and of course reuse their jars, but I’m sure there are people out there who have jars laying about gathering dust. If that person is you, please bring those pint and quart mason jars by the store. We’d sure be appreciative.

This morning first thing we loaded up two cows in the trailer.

One was one of our finished cows for our store. As usual, we finish one cow per month and therefore once per month somebody takes the ride to the great pasture in the sky so that we can have steaks in the store.

But also this month, we had a new candidate for taking a ride off of the farm. A few weeks ago, and I just realized that I never posted about this, we had a Ninja Jr episode.

Roxy, our new rescue dog, has decided that nothing is more fun than chasing cows. She’s actually really well trained, but for whatever reason I haven’t been able to break her from her interest in chasing cattle. Really she will chase anything. Squirrels, birds, sticks, balls. Anything. So a cow running is just another game to her.

Well the Mrs and I had run to Lowes to pick up some plants, because, stay at home order meant gardening. We had a friends son over since they had volunteered to deliver medical supplies to first responders all over the state. Their son had inconveniently just fallen through a ceiling and maybe, maybe not, had broken a rib. We were given strict orders to make sure he took it easy. Taking it easy on a farm means you get lighter work, not no work, so we went to work on mulching the garden.

With the morning’s work completed, we left the kids to go fishing or whatever, while we went to Lowes. After shopping for plants, we returned with Grandma, the wife, and I and pulled up to the garden. I saw the kids were indeed fishing, and were coming up to the barn, to say hello I guess.

I hopped out of the truck, and into the backhoe so I could put it away. Grandma and the wife both started unloading plants and futzing about in the garden. Just as I got the tractor cranked, I saw a cow go shooting across the yard. I slammed the backhoe into top gear and raced across the yard, right by the garden at full speed. I could see kids, and a dog, running behind the cow. I made it to just in front of our house and cut the cow off with the backhoe. The cow, as cows will do, wanted to go its own merry way.

I had to do the job of being a cutting horse, with a backhoe, which coincidentally still had a bucket full of chips. Backhoes are not known for being graceful animals. I made it about 4 back and forths before the cow finally made it around me and took off into the woods.

By this point, Spork had locked Roxy in the store, The Princess was in hot pursuit through the woods, and our broken ribbed, please take it easy with him son #2 was booking down the driveway so fast I never saw him.

I took off running because the cow was heading for the front gate. I ran all the way down and manually pulled the gate closed before the cow could arrive. With that done, I collected the Princess and tried to figure out where the cow was and from whence it had come.

As I asked what had happened I learned that the dog had decided to chase the cow while the kids were fishing. To put this in perspective, the last time the kids went fishing, the dog decided that water was fun and jumped in, only to “nearly drown” before the kids could pull her out of the water. At least that is what I was told. 30 minutes later we received a call that “I have your dog.”

Huh? Where are you?

Across the lake in a subdivision. The dog that 30 minutes prior “didn’t know how to swim”, had swam all the way across the lake and walked up on shore to these people to play with them. Never have I ever had a dog end up on the other side of the lake.

So now the same dog, just a few weeks later, had chased the cow and the cow jumped the fence and had escaped, not just the pasture, but then out of the pasture, into the barnyard, out of the barn yard, and into my yard, then into the woods.

About this time, I receive a call from our missing second son who says he’s out on the road, having chased the cow out there. Ugh, I don’t even know how the blasted thing got off the farm!

So I load the kids into the truck and race down to find my borrowed son standing off the side of the road, with some minor bleeding. He’d apparently tried to turn the cow around a few times, and at some point the cow had decided to just run him over. Great. How am I going to explain this to his parents.

So I’m in the truck with a rented kid who is bleeding, and two kids that belong to me, neither of which are wearing shoes, because, farm kids.

I notice that some Latinos are standing out in front of the trailer park and as I proceed down the road I find a group looking back towards our fence. I pull into a old road we are fixing up on that part of the farm and go see that the cow is standing at the bottom of a ditch, on the wrong side of the fence, relatively surrounded by Mexicans. I go down to where the cow is and think to myself,

“Self, if we can get the cow to go back over that relatively broken down fence and onto the farm, we’ll be good. But if that cow comes out of that ditch, it’ll end up in the road and that will be bad.”

So as I ease down towards the cow, he decides that my addition to the numbers means that staying in the ditch is no longer viable, and he decides he’s coming out my way. As he starts coming up, I head down and we meet in the middle, I want the high ground for this shoving match. I push him back a few times trying to get him to turn around. He makes it clear that, “Thank you for your suggestion and guidance Sir, but I’d like to go out the way that you are blocking, so apologies, but I’m going to go through you now.”

When it devolves to that, I grab one ear and knock/push his head aside and body tackle the cow to the ground. I’ve bulldogged cows down before and if you can get them off balance, it is doable. So like any 18 year old would, I went in full force and body checked the cow while controlling his head and wumphf! We hit the ground in a tangle. Easy peasy.

Except I’m not 18 anymore. When I hit the cow, I heard, and felt, a *SNAP*.

Oops. That can’t be good. A rib let go in the collision. We’ll have to worry about that later.

As I’m wrestling the cow who is now trying to get back up, I feel a big weight fall on him. I look back and one of the Mexican men had jumped on his back half and was helping me hold the cow down. Sweet!

We wrangled around with the cow a few minutes before we finally let him up and now between the two of us pushed and shoved the cow till he hopped back onto the farm.

I tried to pay the neighbors who had helped me and despite the language barrier they were clear that no money was needed or wanted and they were happy to help. Great people and I’m appreciative of them.

Now that I was off the ground, it was time to start hurting. Breathing hurt. The rib was definitely broken. My legs were shredded from rolling on the ground in shorts and flip flops (official farmer apparel) and I couldn’t run to chase the cow any longer. Heck I couldnt’ run to do anything. I started walking back, with son #2, while son #1 took my truck and drove it back on the road and down to our main entrance. This was without a license since he’s 15 but in a situation like this you do what you have to do. I do recall something about being able to operate a farm vehicle on the road without a license when moving from one farm property to another. It’s been a decade since I read that statue, but surely it applies in this circumstance.

The cow ended up in our pasture, but not the one where the rest of the cows were so he was standing in the corner alone. We locked down all the gates and exits as best we could and I hobbled over to the house. It was about this time that the wife came up and said, “Hey, what is going on?”

Grandma and the wife were so enamored with their plants in the garden, they were completely oblivious to the entire thing. The backhoe doing 30mph across the yard, the yelling, the running. All of it. I explained that I’d broken myself, the cow was back, and that I needed to sit down. Just as I sat down, son #2’s parents pulled up from their long day of driving, tired and ready to collect their son we’d be “keeping safe.”

Oh no.

Fortunately his parents are the cool kids, and they just rolled with it, bleeding son and all. Just another adventure day on the farm.

So that was a couple of weeks ago. Today, Miguel had a calf he wanted to send off the farm along with our normal monthly cow. He wasn’t performing well and basically didn’t meet Miguel’s standards. I didn’t even ask. My mantra is love your neighbors, forgive your enemies, but do neither for your cattle. One strike and you are out. I didn’t even listen to his reasons, if he wanted him gone, load him and I’d drop him off at the sale barn on my way to the processor. You can imagine my surprise when I looked in the trailer and saw this.

Despite rolling around on the ground with the cow, I couldn’t quite remember what the cows ear tag number was. 147 is what I though I remembered, although maybe it was 143. But regardless, my first guess was 147 and look who is looking back at me when I look in the trailer. Miguel had no idea, he didn’t like this cow for different reasons but I certainly had no qualms about taking him to the sale barn to be someone else’s problem.

I wonder if he’ll end up as someone else’s Ninja Cow?

A few weeks ago I took some hogs to the processor because we were already running short, even though I’d just taken hogs a few weeks before. This is the trip that takes about 5 hours total so we try to make it as efficient as possible.

This time fit the bill. The hanging weight of our hogs was about 2000 pounds and our cuts came back at almost 1200 lbs. I received word late Friday that our hogs were ready to be picked up so I went down first thing Monday morning to get all our porky goodness. I filled up every freezer on the trailer with no room to spare!

On the way home, I stopped by Dean Street Processing to see Brooke (Hi Brooke!) and drop off cuts like ham, trim, etc. These will be made into sausage, BBQ, things like that. Cuts like Boston Butts, bacon, and pork chops all came home to go in the freezer to be ready to sell when we open tomorrow.

So we are still somewhat stocked on beef. There is a cow going to the processor this Friday so next Friday we’ll be fully stocked again, assuming they are finished on time. Things are crazy at the processor right now. There is still hamburger left in the store along with a number of cuts. Don’t ask for ribeyes, we don’t have those during normal times, but there is beef for dinner. Pork has been restocked, and sausage and BBQ were already in good supply.

Chicken, well, our chicken farmer is sick (not Covid 19!) and I couldn’t meet her today but I’m planning on seeing her tomorrow. Then we’ll see if she can scrape up anything for chicken this week, but I don’t have high hopes. Maybe next week she’ll be able to process some birds.

We are open our normal hours this week, and Jeanette will be back from vacation so anyone that was looking to talk to her, stop by and see her.

I keep getting emails from really smart people asking, “So um, with the zombie apocalypse and all, are you guys open like normal?”

The answer is, yes, we are open like normal. Well as normal as we can be right now. We are limiting our patrons in the store to 5 people at a time. We are also pretty thin on chicken and some cuts of pork. Beef and other items are still fairly decent. Seafood is starting to look a bit thin but it looks like there is still a selection. We have eggs a plenty (thank you Christy, Tamryn, Jeanette, and Bill) who are all contributing everything they can to help meet demand on eggs.

The Princess is working this week, giving Jeanette some time off. She’ll be glad to help you when you stop by.

We have had some people asking if we are doing preorders and curbside delivery. Because we are staffed by one 13 year old, the answer is no. We just don’t have the staffing to have curbside delivery but we are wiping everything down repeatedly, and requiring that everyone wash their hands before they enter the store.

We are happy to see you Friday and Saturday during our normal hours. As always, we appreciate your support during this crazy time.

I made my rounds today to pick up milk, chicken, pork, eggs, and lamb. Everything went as planned, except for chicken. Actually I guess chicken did go as planned because I was pretty sure we wouldn’t get much. And I was correct. We’ve tapped out our chicken farmer for at least 2-3 weeks when some new birds are ready and on the ground.

But milk and eggs are in good shape. Both coolers are full and look good. We also got some more lamb in, and pork BBQ and kielbasa sausage.

So overall we are in good shape. But chicken is going to be thin for a few weeks.