Well, my friends, there is much in the way of news on our little farm. After wondering if we would ever get to the point of having regular sales, we have just sold out of our chickens! Except for the 2 USDA chickens we are holding for People’s Pharmacy in Austin, I sold the last 3 today at Bastrop 1832 Farmers’ Market. We have less than a dozen of the locally processed chickens~ at least 5 will be delivered to places and people in Austin next week… and today at the market several other customers indicated they may come out to farm and pick one up. I love it when that happens, because I can then show folks where their meat is coming from, so we can feel good about it together.
[ By the way, in Texas a piece of state legislation that was apparently meant to support small poultry producers had regulations attached that contradicted that intention. Now, unless you have your own processing facility on your farm property, you cannot sell to stores, restaurants or at markets; you must have your poultry processed at a USDA facility. Part of our approach to raising food in sustainable fashion is not to try to do it all, but support existing small farmers by paying for them to process our chickens. It’s like everyone on the block having their own lawnmower~ we would rather not see resources used this way and would rather share and cooperate. And so we have some chickens processed locally and sold off our farm and the rest done at a USDA certified plant. After searching extensively for a USDA processing facility anywhere in the state, we found one~ yep, just one!~ that will take birds from other people’s small farms. We are incredibly grateful to them for taking us on at a challenging time for their family! I will maintain their privacy on the website until I hear from them that it’s okay to thank them individually by name. We hope that changes someday, so we can address another of our goals, which is to keep all our farm business as close by as possible, especially when it involves moving animals.]
Back to our news…. We’ve sold out but you will not have long to wait to be able to purchase our chicken at the Bastrop Market and at our home.
We have listened to our customers and are striving to have smaller chickens available. In order to make a living from them, our goal is that they will weigh between 3.5 and 4 pounds. We also hope to have some of them cut at least in half, if not fully parted into breasts, legs and thigh sections. I’ll let you know when we know.
Chickens will be available starting Friday November 7th, 2008 and should remain available consistently available at least until spring, depending upon demand and our decisions about when or if to take another pause in brooding during the coldest month, January.
Another opportunity for buying a chicken is to reserve one or more or our famous large chickens for the holiday season. We will hold back chickens for people who want a fresh, never frozen big roasting bird the Tuesday before Thanksgiving as well as the Tuesday before Christmas. If you celebrate another holiday at the this time of year, let us know and we will see if we can make it work to have a fresh chicken ready for you; it may be that we can offer a large roaster but that it must come to you frozen.
Contact us to reserve your holiday roasters~ send us an email, give us a call or come visit us at the Bastrop Farmers’ Market on Fridays and Saturdays. Only those who have reserved roasters will be able to purchase them.
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