First Lambs

Our ewe named Molly was the first one to have her lambs. She had triplet lambs, two ewe lambs and one ram lamb. Ruth is holding the ram lamb in this picture. Pretty exciting that the first ewe to lamb had triplets. Temperature is in the low 20's and windy but we have a heat lamp installed in the lambing pen. All the lambs seem vigorous.

New Products, New Outlet

Gourmet Central has made up some new products for us. They are Blackberry Syrup, Strawberry Syrup, Apple Cinnamon Syrup and Hot Pepper Jelly. We stocked inventory in a new outlet this week, Dillon's Country Treasures. They are located in a remodeled house on Route 50 just East of Romney. They have a lot of craft and home decor items also. In the old kitchen area of the house they have prepared a display of food items for sale. A lot of travelers through town stop there. They will be having a Spring Open House so a lot of folks will get to see our products on display. If you're passing through town, have a look!

Aroma's Coffeehouse Display

This is the very nice display that Aroma's Coffeehouse in Moorefield, WV (www.aromascoffeehouse.biz) set up for our jarred products. As you go in the front door, these shelves are on the left.

Ice and Wind

Last weekend, I think we had everything that mother nature could possibly throw at us packed into one single day; rain, sleet, snow, freezing rain and high winds. Before it all really started we had some high winds and coming back from Romney, Ruth captured this photo of the tree on the power line in Three Churches. Our power was out for 4-5 hours while the tree branch was removed. Amazing that it didn't pull the line completely down in which case our power probably would have been out for several days. The photo was used in this week's Hampshire Review.

Romney Farmers Market Web Site

For 2008, the Romney Farmers Market itself will have a new web site. Ruth and I are doing the web site on a volunteer basis and the first version is now live. Check it out at www.romneyfarmersmarket.com to see our results so far. This will give other local web sites such as the Hampshire Visitors Bureau and cometohampshire.com a link that they can use to support the market. The biggest challenge will be to compile the overall list of local farms and growers. The Farm Service Agency and the WVU Extension office will be helping collect that data and we'll continue to refine and add to the web site over time. It will give consumers a good resource to find Hampshire County's local farms and growers. This will help local farms connect with consumers that are interested in the growing local foods movement.

WV Places Video

A Couple of Local Finds

Hello everyone, If you are traveling locally and want a nice lunch stop, I have two places to tell you about. The first is called Trout Provisions in Wardensville, WV (www.troutprovisions.com). We took them some samples of our jarred products recently. There are a lot of facets to Trout Provisions. Its is a combination coffee shop-bakery-general store-art gallery. It is located in what was historically a dry goods store on main street in Wardensville. There you will meet pastry chef extraordinaire Monica Cassell. She makes a lot of what is called a crostata. I had to look it up on Wikipedia. This is a pastry with different fillings. Monica is able to be very creative with these. For example one is ginger-sweet potato-apple filled. Ruth had a cheese-potato-bacon crostata as a breakfast pastry. Then we moved on to the homemade croissants such as spinach-feta cheese and I eventually succumbed to a dark chocolate one. If they are interested, we'll get Monica some fresh and local materials to work her pastry magic with in 2008. Her eyebrows raised at the possibility of getting our fresh local red raspberries this season. The art is comparable to what you find at the Mountain Made store in Thomas, WV (www.mountainmade.com) You are free to browse and enjoy the entire place. When we were there, a nice combination of locals and travelers came in. One of the owners, Carolyn, greeted most of the locals by name. Very friendly. They have been sourcing fruits and vegetables from PA as they got up and running. Hopefully as they learn the area, they will see that much of what they want and need is available locally in WV.
If you are in Davis, WV be sure to stop at Hellbender Burritos. Its right in the middle of town. A Hellbender is a large salamander that is native to Appalachia. Its about 2 feet long and also called the Allegheny Alligator. There are big plans to build a waterfront park in Davis, see www.daviswva.com for details. Traveling to Davis, you'll see dozens of windmills now. Davis is over 3000' feet in elevation and close to the ski resort at Canaan Valley as well as Blackwater Falls. Much of Davis is still rustic but that is changing. Proprietor, Rob has built a nice cozy place; you'll likely be sitting by the wood stove while you eat your lunch. Rob is the type of person that values high quality and fresh ingredients. What I admire in both places is the vision and work required to take an existing building and create an inviting space to warmly welcome visitors. In speaking with them, I sense that would much rather serve fresh and local ingredients as opposed to relying on the standard food service deliveries. For example, any place that would serve a tasteless food service tomato when fresh and local ones are available in season just doesn't get it. These are places that the locals know, and a bit under the radar. When we are traveling this is exactly what we look for. They are unique and special, truly a cut above the standard fare travelers would find at a chain restaurant. At a chain, say Olive Garden, its just mass production of a standard product using the cheapest possible ingredients. At a small town place, the person that prepared your lunch will personally ask you how you liked it and truly want to know if they have met your expectations. When we sell at the farmers market or at the farm, we feel the same way, and try to ask to make sure that we are meeting expectations.

Jersey Boy

The latest farm resident is a small Jersey steer calf that we've been calling Jersey Boy. He came from a grass based Jersey cow dairy near Berlin, PA. He's still being fed milk replacer at this point. This is the youngest calf we've ever gotten. But he seems to be settling in just fine. As you can see in the photo, the donkeys seem to have simply added him to their list of things that they check on and watch over.

The Meatrix

There are two good web sites you need to know about. The first is www.eatwellguide.org and the second is www.sustainabletable.org If you do a search for our area code, 26757, we are the only farm listed. You can get to either site from the other one. There are short animated films called "The Meatrix" which of course is a title variant of "The Matrix" films. The films have won all sorts of awards and discuss how to avoid the industrial meat production system. Another nice feature is the harvest cooking videos where a chef teaches you how to make and use seasonal foods. Check them out. Lastly, sustainabletable.org has a good blog you can subscribe to via email or your news reader.

USDA Meat Inspection - Recent Events

Recently, an article in the Washington Post described the plight of a small farm near Charlottesville that was selling uninspected pork products. They also were using Certified Organic labels without authorization. The real irony here is that most of the food borne contaminants such as ecoli are coming from the industrial food system, certainly not from small farms. The Beans at Double H Farm in Charlottesville were butchering their pork on the farm. Even though small farms have been butchering their own pork safely for generations for their own use, this is clearly not permitted when the meat is to be resold. As far as the organic certification, most producers have simply dropped it due to the cost of the regulation and because of the fact that its nearly impossible to verify that any purchased feed is truly "organic". There was another story last June in Britain where 89% of "organic" chickens were contaminated. So just because organic feed was used, there is no assurance that the processing was done cleanly. For grass based operations, feed is less of a consideration anyway. Joel Salatin has been processing poultry on the farm for 2 decades without incident while there have been countless incidents of problems with commercial chicken. While meat products are not our leading farm products, I wanted to do this post to clear the air in light of recent news items and any future news stories you might hear related to meat processing and small farms. Our beef is currently processed, and our first lamb will be processed next year, at a USDA inspected facility, Emrick's Meat & Packing Co south of Hyndman, PA. Their address is 1966 Hyndman Road, Hyndman, PA 15545. Phone 814-842-6779. They also have a small grocery store at the same location. A USDA Inspector is on site at their facility on the days that animals are processed. You should visit them if you have an interest. For chicken, its not as strict. There are exemptions for small producers, 3000 birds in VA and 1000 birds in WV and on farm processing is permitted. However, we have not gone that route. Our poultry is processed at Berry Blossom Farm in Waynesboro, PA. This is a smaller scale Amish run commercial poultry processing facility and we transport the birds there. Their address is 14116 Hollowell Church Road, Waynesboro, PA 17268. Phone: 717.597.4945 Again, if you have an interest you should visit them. The you can visit a large poultry factory, and contrast the difference. So, I hope this fully documents any processing that our farm has done for meat products. Most people, except for enlightened consumers that seek local producers, don't even want to be confronted with food processing facts. They just want to see the meat products in their cellophane containers. But if you do have an interest, you should have access to all the facts related to the processing. As far as our farm, I've outlined all of the pertinent facts here but if you ever have any questions, just ask.