Going for Organic!

Just wanted to let everyone know that we got our first load of certified organic alfalfa hay in today, and we are filling our our Organic producer application as we speak. We will have a transitional period of 1 year before our milk can be certified organic, while the cows have to eat all organic feed and obtain at least 30% of their diet from grazing. The best thing is we really don't have to change a thing, other than we cannot buy any new heifers that do not come from a certified organic farm. That is okay too, beacuse we have contacted the folks at http://www.clovercove.com/ and will purchase heifers from them if need be.

Here are a few pictures of the new heifers:


Anna - Brown Swiss


Polly - Brown Swiss/Guernsey


Agnus - Guernsey/Black Angus

2/24 Had a second to add some info I missed last night: We will also be certifying mom's 40 acres organic, and we will graze the replacment heifers and sheep up there. This also means that all of our fruit, veggatables, and eggs will be organic too! We will update more as we get further into the process.

Strawberries

In the summer when there is an abundance of cream and eggs we love to make strawberry shortcake from scratch around here.With all of the interest in cream and eggs being picked up at the farm, I thought what perrennial plant would compliment them better than strawberries! Last year we put in about 50 plants, and enjoyed quite a few berries the first year. They bloom early and often, which is great for the honey bees too! I have ordered 500 + plants to put in this year, so we can look forward to some this year and many more in the years to come!

Here is a recipe for Angel Food Cake from my mother in law LaDona McGowan:

12 egg whites
1 1/4 cups sifted cake flour
1 3/4 cups sifted sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 teaspoon cram of tartar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon almond extract

Let egg whites warm for one hour. Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
Sift flour with 3/4 sugar, resift 3 times.
Beat egg whites with salt and cream of tartar unitl soft peaks form.
Gradually beat in sugar.
Gently fold in extracts. Sift flour mixture over egg whites, gently fold in.
Push into ungreased angel food pan, cut through with knife twice.
Bake on lower rack 35-40 min.

Serve with fresh whipped cream and sliced strawberries.

More on the Dairy

The dairy cows truly are my favorite part of the farm, and milking is my favorite chore to do each day. We have had dairy cows on and off since 2004 when we first got married. Nathaniel's family has kept a dairy cow much of his life, and his dad has as well. Homemade ice cream is a birthday favorite around here.
The milk cow provides so much for the homestead - milk, cream, butter, sour cream, ice cream, and a variety of cheeses. Milk can be used to make a chemical free milk paint, rear ophan animals(we raised an injured piglet last month on frozen milk from our jersey, Daisy) and is a great fertilizer for the garden. Pigs thrive on milk and whey soaked grains, which makes their meat very juicy! In order to have fresh milk every spring, she provides us with a calf each year. A heifer that can grow up and remain in the dairy herd, or a bull calf to fill the freezer, or train as an ox. And then there is all of the manure to fertilizer the pastures and the gardens. What could be more versatile? Wait until you come out to get your milk and Daisy tries to slurp you with one of her wet kisses!
We are going to try to breed our cows to that they are more like the cow of olde - ones that provide alot of butterfat, and a calf that marbles like an angus! How are we going to do this? Enter the Normande.
The Normande is a breed imported from France that is better suited to grass based production, and has high butter fat. We have ordered Normande semen from http://www.normandegenetics.com/ to crossbreed some of our cows with.
We have also decided on two new heifers, one purebred brown swiss, and a brown swiss/guernsey cross. They both first calve heifers, one due in May and the other in June. The brown swiss/guernsey crossbred will be AI'd with our Normande semen, as will a shorthorn heifer we have named Spotty. Daisy will be bred to a purebred jersey, and the brown swiss heifer will be bred to a brown swiss bull, so that we can test the two crossbred calves against the pure american dairy breeds, and see where to go next in our breeding program. We have decided not to use any holstein in our program, as they are too closely bred and have too many health issues to work in a grass based dairy. Brown swiss are second to holsteins in production levels, but are a much hardier animal, often times living and producing into their teens.
My camera is broken, but I plan to get a new one this week and add lots of photos to the blog and our facebook page - I know that text without photos isn't much fun! I also wanted to throw out there - If there is anyone who needs/wants raw GOAT milk, let me know. We milked nubian does when our oldest son Eddie was smaller and couldn't digest the cows milk. We would be happy to add back a few goats to meet the needs of our customers! Please e-mail us at flowerfieldfarms@gmail.com with any questions.

Farm Club

I have recieved alot of interest from around the panhandle for fresh raw milk - very exciting! So far I have received inquiries or purchases from these areas:

1) Scottsbluff
2) Mitchell
3) Alliance
4) Lodgepole
5) Pine Bluffs, WY
6) Lusk, WY

In trying to make it easier for people to purchase raw milk at the farm, which is required by NE state law, I have decided to try and organize my own version of Sam's Club - called Farm Club. Whenever we have a relative that goes to Sam's Club, we send a list so we don't have to make the same trip that they already did.

That is the plan here. After people sign up for a cow share, or let me know they are interested in purchasing milk, we will try to organize people into groups that can take turns driving out for the raw milk. If you are interested in purchasing other products that week such as eggs or pork, you can email me and we will send those back along with your weekly milk.

So if anyone has been hesitant to contact us do to location, please keep this in mind. We will add other areas to the list as we hear from people.

2/10 Update: Added Lusk, WY to locations.

The Birds and the Bees...

Chickens and honey bees that is. With this crazy cold weather you would think that everything would be trying to hibernate like the pigs in their straw piles. Everything except the chickens and the honey bees that is. Out of 17 hens, we have gotten over a dozen eggs all week long. While out gathering eggs, I spotted a honey bee out and about. On one hand, I wish spring was already here, but on the other hand we have so much to do before it arrives.

I put in our first poultry order of the year this morning from Murray McMurray Hatchery. I ordered 25 pullets for laying hens, and let each of the kids pick a bantam that they liked. We decided to add some color to the flock and the eggs as well and ordered Auracana's. They lay a tinted egg anywhere from mauve to olive green. We are also going to order Cuckoo Maran's, which lay a dark chocolate egg, but they were out of stock until March. I am planning to experiment by crossing our White Rock hens with a Cornish roo to produce a fast growing meat bird that I can hatch here at home.

After ordering chickens, I also ordered some new GMO-free Heirloom seeds from Baker Creek. They have a really neat website: http://rareseeds.com/ and great customer service. My favorite is these Mexican Sour Gherkins, also known as Mouse Melons.
 

I want to try canning them up using my Watermelon Pickle recipe. Mother Earth News also did an article on these a few years ago that includes recipes.

Stay Warm!

Rylee

Dairy Plans

Since we first posted on PrairieBloom and Local Harvest that we were considering starting a 'micro-dairy' we have finalized our plans, and Flower Field Farm will be home to a new dairy! We have decided to remodel our old garage as it is the perfect size, a central location on our farm, and it will give us a huge head start on our construction. We are still working on finalizing our plans that have to be approved by the dairy inspector before we begin construction, but we are almost there.
Our initial plan was to have a pasteurizer so that we could bottle milk to sell at the Scottsbluff and Cheyenne farmers market. We keep getting the same question over and over, "will you be selling any of the milk raw?" This question makes sense to us, because we do not pasteurize the milk that we drink from these cows - our family LOVES raw milk. The problem lies in the fact that we cannot sell raw milk anywhere but the farm, nor can we advertise that we have raw milk for sale. At first we thought that only being able to sell milk here at the farm would leave us with very few customers - but the more we think about it, we would love to have you come out and get your milk because then you know exactly where it is coming from. You can see the cows, how they are milked, and watch the baby pigs and lambs at play, or help gather the eggs - way more fun than a trip to WalMart, right?
We are also going to test the water with a CowShareAgreement, our version of a dairy CSA. This has never been done in Nebraska, and there is no legal precedent for it - we would be setting the standard more or less. Here's how it works: You purchase an undivided share in our milking herd at the begining of the year. There will only be 10 shares available in 2011, Flower Field Farm will retain the remaining 10 shares for milk sales and cheese making. You pay a one time cost of $50 and receive a stock certificate for one(1) share of Flower Field Farm's dairy cow herd. You then pay a weekly fee of $4 for us to feed and milk your share of the cows. One share in the herd entitles you to one(1) gallon of raw milk per week, in quart glass bottles. Since you own a share of the herd, we are not selling you raw milk, but charging you board and labor for the cow. The benefit to the CowShareAgreement is you are guaranteed to have your milk every week during the milking season - it won't be sold out when you get here because that 'share' of milk is reserved for you. You will occaisionally be given new dairy products to sample and critique for us, before they are released to the public for sale. An example would be butter, ice cream, or a new variety of cheese. The other benefit would be the possibility that we *may* be able to deliver your share of milk to you at a designated drop off point such as the farmers market because you are not buying the milk, but receiving milk from your cow. This will depend on the interpretations by the Department of Agriculture Bureau of Dairies and Foods. If you are unsatisfied with the CowShareAgreement, you can sell your share back to the farm at the end of the milking season, or we may be able to help you sell to another customer.We will also begin making aged raw milk cheeses this summer. We hope to have a cheddar and a bleu cheese ready for market by the end of summer - but we will not sell any until we feel we have the recipes perfect!
For more information on Raw Milk, please visit http://www.realmilk.com/ Milk and cream will be for sale at the farm April - Nov in 2011. Raw, cream line milk will be $1.00/qt.     Heavy Cream  $1.00/pt. All milk and cream will be packaged in returnalble glass bottles for optimal taste. We will also have milk fed pork, lamb, honey, free range eggs, vegetables available here for sale.
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Please e-mail us at flowerfieldfarms@gmail.com with any questions.

Newsletters

We started out the new year by printing 100 newsletters to let our friends know what is going on here at the farm. If you didn't receive one, here is a copy for you to read, and please contact us with your name and address so we can be sure to add you to our mailing list.

January 2011 Newsletter
Dear Friends,
We took the liberty of adding you to our mailing list, to keep everyone we know up to date as to what is happening and available here at the farm. There is also room for you to add your friends and family so they can begin recieving our newsletters as well. If there is something you are already purchasing locally, please continue to support that grower
We had a really great start to our direct marketing approach to farming last year that began at the Scottsbluff farmers market. We were a little unsure if there would be a market for our products in such a rural agricultural community. To our suprise people thanked us for taking the time to provide them with fresh local food. We were given hope that it might just work and we have decided to really go for it!
We will again raise a market garden again this year, although we will be shifting our focus mainly to perrennials. We will be planting more strawberries, raspberries, asparagus, and flowers. We want to have a diversified, sustainable farm where all the pieces work together, and nothing is wasted. An example of this is the whey fed pigs being pastured in the gardens during the winter to glean what is left, and add fertilizer as well. Chickens will not only lay eggs, but will be our main form of organic insect control around the gardens and dairy.
Our first hive of honeybee's are doing well, and we are very excited to be adding 30 more hives in April. We will harvest honey on Labor Day weekend with Ernie Griffiths. If you need honey, please call him. We are planning to use the honey we harvest this year to make a 2011 edition Plum Lavendar Wine with the help of the folks at Table Mountain Vineyards. We will have a limited amount of honey for sale in 2012.
Our heritage breed of hereford hogs arrived two days before Christmas and are doing great! We are super excited for our first litter of hereford piglets, which we expect sometime in April. We also accquired several Tunis ewes, which will start lambing in April as well. This will enable us to have spring lamb for sale starting late in the fall.
We will be adding pastured Thanksgiving turkeys, and Christmas Goose this year. It would help us tremendously if you would pre-order the poultry and pork on the order form so we can make sure to raise enough for everyone. We have added more laying hens this year as well.
We are planning a micro dairy here at the farm where we can milk 10 head of cows that have access to pasture each day. We will have quarts of grade A pasturized creamline milk for sale in returnable glass bottles. We will also offer cream, butter, and ice cream as well as cheddar and bleu cheese, all made here on the farm! We are working on the building now and hope to be sellin milk this year. If not, it may be 2012 before we are able to bottle the milk, due to the facilities and equipment requirements. Please let us know if you are interested in these items on the order form!
As we transition from 'conventional' farming to direct marketing we are trying to make the farm more visitor friendly so you can feel like you are going to grandpa's farm when you visit. We believe in raising our livestock the old fashioned way - our pigs play in the mud and chickens free range every day. All of the seeds we plant are heirloom, non genetically modified or treated in any way. We don't feed ANY antibiotics or hormones, or spray our gardens with ANY chemicals. We go BEYOND ORGANIC to ensure you have safe food! "If you think organic food is expensive, have you priced cancer lately?" - Joel Salatin

Sincerely,The Folks at Flower Field Farms
Nathaniel & Rylee
Delaney, Eddie, Teagan, & Rayfe
Joy Huber
Noah & Kadan