Farmers Market

Below is a picture of our rooster, Elvis (pronounced El Vez by the kids).

It's pretty much been decided by default.  We are going to need to do the farmers market on the weekend in town.  I love variety and therefore I will plant variety.  To get variety you need to order many different packets of seeds and although it's cheaper to buy in bulk the same varieties, it just won't work for me.  So to be able to plant 160 varieties of tomatoes, 30 varieties of basil, 70 varieties of peppers, etc, etc we either need a really huge CSA (and we only want a small one) or we'll need to sell our extra tomatoes at the farmers market.  I also plan to sell the small heirloom tomato plants as well as that will then help pay for the cost of the seeds.

So this should be a fun summer project! It will definitely get us out of bed early on Saturdays.

The tally on sheep is up to 15.  We purchased 10 more sheep from the flock that Frank used to herd.  Herding 15 sheep looks a lot easier than 5 sheep.  It is so cool to watch the way Frank can sense the pressure point of the flock and steer them.  The 2 flocks are not totally merged because they quickly separate into the flock of 5 and flock of 10 (we can tell because the 10 are blue painted and the other 5 are pink).  You spray then with a dye that will come off when their hair falls off so you can tell which ones you are selling, lambing, etc. so one set came pink and the other blue.

The next month will be busy for Mike.  He needs to build another 1-2 egg mobiles, get the fencing, get sorting equipment and stalls ready for our March lambing, get whatever stuff you need to have on hand for lambing (gulp-- we'll be reading a lot), have the Belted Galloway delivered.... and that's just January!

We ate 4 different cuts from the Belted Galloway tonight and wow was it fantastic.  I've never had grass fed beef at the same time as a regular grain fed piece of beef, but I'll have to try that sometime because it sure tasted like it had a lot more flavor.  Mike would tell me"of course the grass fed beef tastes better" but I'd like to be objective about it and find out for sure.  I already know pastured chickens taste 300% better but I'm curious about the beef.