What is local food?

What is local food?

From a farm blog, "it is entirely possible to buy live animals (or seeds) from out of State and finish them for a short time on specialty rations (or fertilizer) in a local facility and claim local." Its important to know who your farmer really is! Are they overseeing production or even a part of it? Where are the inputs coming from?

I found this topic to be very interesting when reading the blog. Some Farmers are making great strives to have all their products on site. The fact is most Farmers buy their Poultry from out of state MASS hatcheries and grow them up and call them local...Hatching your own breeding livestock requires thousands of hours preparing in the winter, especially caring the birds eggs for incubation and then hatching the thousands in a very precise environment with extreme attention to detail.

Farmers need to think about all these inputs because they are directly relating to their overall cost of the food. Businesses can not run without analyzing the expenses and farming has its share of expenses. The last four years of feeding poultry has reminded me that the need to integrate into these fields are what needs to be done to have any control over the final cost of the product. Otherwise the farmer is left with the going price is of grain, alfalfa and so on.

Our mission is to have every animal breed, born and slaughtered on site, which they are currently and this next year will be the first year we are setting out to produce a crop of grains for the ducks and chickens, making our animals truly 100% all farm grown, zero inputs, the real local food! There is no middleman just a farmer and the food.

What can be done is getting into the back-end of production, the breeding can be taken up easily by concentrating ones efforts to a specific dual purpose animal or crop. We sell just about everything from a single product or have thought of ways to market certain things in every form. For example Heirloom tomatoes, Heirloom tomato chips anyone? Thinking outside the box is important with the products grown on the farm. Learn what is going to be naturally produced like seeds when grown veggies and learn to start saving some.

Oh Farm life, how we love it! 2012 Here we come!

It never stops around here. We have a bunch of new natural skin care products coming out this year you will love them. Keep watching the websites for updates!

Our Heirloom seeds have new retail packaging this year, they will be out and about in stores after the Holidays.

Selected Eugene, Albany, Corvallis and Portland stores will also be carrying our duck and chicken eggs this year look for location updates in January 2012.

Duck and Chicken broilers are available for pick up for Christmas on the 23rd and throughout the new year at the farm by appointment.

We are busy rotating the ducks around trying to get a good feeling for all the new layers this year and still have many males to cull for the year. We had some late hatches so some are still growing to 20 weeks.

We have Ancona, Saxony, Bantam Appleyard ducklings and Delaware chicks available in April. Be sure to get on the list by reserving the babies on our website here.


We always look forward to the Farm conferences at the beginning of each year and the OSU small farms conference is stacking up to be a good one this year, some are not the best, this wont disappoint with all the new legislature going through about the Oregon's new 1000 bird limit and the canning bill!

What a great year its going to be!

The "blaireau" Pyrenees

"blaireau"

Amalie is a Tan Pyr with a black eye

Grey or tan markings that remain lend the French name, "blaireau", (badger) which is a similar grizzled mixture color seen in the European badger. More recently, any color is correctly termed "Badger" or "Blaireau".^[1]

Amalie's Daughter Kiwi is very White with very little of any color

Both blaireau and white Pyrenees show equally in the ring. The lack of double dew claws on the hind feet are grounds for disqualification. Pyrs use the claw like a thumb to help when climbing on rocks in the Pyrenees Mountains. 

 

"It is no coincidence that the Great Pyrenees is approximately the same size as the European Grey Wolf."^[1]

These dogs are meant for guarding pasture and keeping territory in that pasture. It is better to get a dog and have it establish its territory before wolves can establish theirs. In Montana they are having issues with wolves I cant figure out why cant they get Great Pyrenees if they are losing 90K a season from predators!  

Pyrenees make excellent dogs to guard just about anything they are put to the task. It's about the time and attention one is willing to put into the training.

Lola ducks, not the real deal

Lola ducks are a cross breed of a pekin and mallard duck being marketed as a Heritage breed by a New York farm.