Cheese and butter making class at Ninja Cow Farm

Summer time fresh tomato not includedKate, our dairy farmer at Blended Family Farm has agreed to come to the farm and teach a butter and cheese making class. It will be taught in the shop area directly behind the store (in the barn), on 17 December at 1pm. All students will need to bring is themselves and a willingness to learn. Everything else will be provided.

Each person attending will learn to make cheese and butter from raw milk from a full time farmer and cheese maker. They will also receive product from the class to take home.

Class size is limited to 12 people.

We are charging $25 per person who wants to attend.

Signups are first come, first serve. We will arrange payment after your signup.

The form for signups is located here.

Standing rib roasts are available for pre-order

With turkeys behind us, it’s time to start talking standing rib roasts for Christmas.

A standing rib roast is the same cut as a bone in ribeye steak. But instead of steaks, we have the processor cut a juicy, amazing roast. Usually you order by the pound or number of bones. 3-4 lb roasts are the norm but we can do larger.

The real takeaway is that we only have so much ribeye to go around. We sell out of these things every year. So if you want a roast, you need to order it earlier rather than late because once the 3-4 roasts per cow are gone, they are gone!

The price, as always, is the same price as our ribeye steaks, which right now are $26.00 per lb.

To order, call the store, 919-322-1097 and put a deposit down. Yes we can take your deposit and order over the phone if you call during the week. On Saturdays we often have one of the kids working and they don’t really do credit cards over the phone.

Once we are sold out, we are done so get your order in early.

It’s turkey day!

Jeanette asked me to spread the word for our turkey folks.

Tuesday, 22 November is the day that turkeys will be available for pickup. We’ll be open from 2pm to 6pm so everyone who ordered their fresh, never frozen turkeys can stop by and pick them up. Of course we’ll be open for regular business as well if you need something to go along with your turkeys.

Jeanette has also called around to everyone to tell you the same info, but in case you are like me and never get your voicemail, now you know.

Raw milk is stable and in stock

Raw milk in stock

With all the change we’ve had over the past few months, with our main milk farm having to shut down temporarily, and then us being able to lease a new farm just as we were wrapping up, to then having both farms up and running for a few weeks, to now having just the one, new farm up and running, we’ve had a lot of ups and downs on milk availability.

But this week we are starting to hit our new normal. Pictured above is our milk cooler after today’s delivery of milk. We have about 30 gallons of milk in the cooler right now, all cow milk. We’ll be restocking on Friday with another 15 gallons or so, meaning we now have a steady supply of raw milk and we’ll be restocking more than once per week.

Since we started with the two milk farms, we have lifted restrictions of milk purchases. You can now get all the milk you want when you stop by.

We are open today, tomorrow and Friday 2-6. Saturday 9-1. Stop by and get milk, beef, pork, etc.

Hurricane sale on raw milk

I never thought we’d have a sale on raw milk, but having two farms pumping out milk is causing us to overflow.

From now till Saturday, it is buy one, get one for 1/2 off. This lasts till the hurricane shuts us down, or we run out of raw milk.

We still don’t know how long our one milk farm is going to be milking so again, if you ever wanted to freeze some raw milk now is the time.

Or make cheese.

Or make butter.

Or ice cream.

You get the idea. Come enjoy our boon on raw milk, before its all gone.

Thanksgiving turkeys finally have pricing, hamburger is on sale, and milk has zero restrictions this week

Brittany Ridge Farms Thanksgiving turkey
Brittany Ridge Farms Thanksgiving turkey, this is a Google image, this was my dinner last year.

Some of you have already put your $40 deposit down on turkeys this year despite us not knowing what the price will be from our turkey farmer. Good news, even with record inflation she’s only gone up $0.25 per pound this year so our price is $8.75 per pound. As someone who buys two turkeys every year, I’m thankful for that!

The process will be the same as previous years, a $40 deposit to be paid in store. You tell us if you want a small, medium, or large turkey. Then we will receive the turkeys a few days before Thanksgiving, the day she tells us they are ready.

We will have a mad scramble to figure out where all these turkeys will fit because they are not, nor have they ever been frozen so we have limited space for them. That means we’ll be asking you to get here ASAP to pick up your bird.

The weights will be plus or minus what we are expecting. Some years, they are bigger, some years they are smaller. Welcome to small farm farming. Growth depends on the weather, if this hurricane hits us this weekend, if there is another one between now and Thanksgiving. Stuff like that.

Also as usual, we will be taking deposits until she cuts us off. We don’t know when that is. We just get the “no more turkeys” text at some point and that is it, we are done. We can take people on a waiting list as sometimes she figures she has a few extra after all the craziness, but that is all we can do.

And no, you can’t have my turkey. My wife would murder me. That girl loves her some turkey.

Ground chuck packet of beef
Ignore that it says ground chuck, I’m too lazy to walk over and get a pic of hamburger

Jeanette has informed me that we are having a buy 5 lbs, get 1 lb free sale on hamburger this week. I think my lack of buying her a new freezer is the root cause. I’ve been promising one for months, but I keep getting bogged down in other stuff and not getting her a new freezer.

In my defense, the one we are replacing IS the new freezer, which has already had more repairs than the other freezers combined. And freezers are heavy. And my boy is off at college so I can’t use his muscle. And the sun was in my eyes… Yeah, ok. I need to get a new one. Till then, hamburger is on sale in the store this week. Come help us make some room in the freezers for this next cow.

Finally, till our first dairy farm shuts down, we are running TWO DAIRY FARMS at once!

It feels kind of like this. But with milk.

So we have PLENTY of milk this week. Next week, dunno. But if you’ve ever wanted to freeze some milk for when we inevitably dry off, now is the time. You can get as much as you like when you come in this week.

We have plenty of raw milk in the store

Cooler full of milk
As of this Saturday morning
Our new milk farm is stocking the store! We have plenty of raw milk plus raw milk butter for our herd share members. And lots of raw milk cheese.
We are open till 1pm today and should have plenty of milk for your needs. It would be a good idea to stock up as our primary milk farm is going to be going offline shortly, as we told you in a previous post.

We have a great solution for raw milk

In my last post, I let everyone know that our milk farm manager was going to need surgery again. Meaning we were going to be out of milk shortly.

But a wonderful thing happened. Jen, from Jen’s Elderberry, one of our long time partners in the store, reached out to a friend who is also milking. Several phone calls, texts, and meetings later, we’ve entered into an agreement with another local producer to lease her farm and farm production. This means several things, all of them positive.

We will not stop having milk in the store in a week or so as we previously thought.

We will be picking up milk from the new farm on Friday as we ramp up. That means fresh raw milk is now in the store on Wednesdays AND Fridays, meaning you don’t have to be here Wednesday afternoon at 1:59pm waiting for the store to open.

We will be able to lift the limit of one gallon per customer as we are effectively doubling our production. Meaning you can now stock up on milk. Not sure we’ll let 5 gallons out the door with one person but we can certainly be less restrictive and still be fair to everyone.

Long term, with two farms in production, hopefully we can finally not have a dry off period where we are out of milk during the winter.

Our pricing is not changing.

This is all great news. I hope this is a welcome change to everyone and reason to come and see us more days of the week than just the rush we have on Wednesday.