Spring Piglets!

During the storm last night, Sadie finally gave birth to nine healthy Red Wattle piglets!  After having been off feed for four days, we were beginning to worry.  But leave it to bad weather to bring on the birthing!  

This is the second time Sadie has given birth outside the farrowing huts we've built for such events, and this time she even built a little nest of straw and brush for her litter.  If you're interested in one of these fine hogs, be sure to contact us soon.

Real Food Farms Vegetable CSA

Ecotone Farm is proud to partner with Real Food Farms in offering their vegetable CSA to our regular customers.  Here are the details:

Real Food Farms Summer vegetable CSA runs for 20 weeks, starting around the end of May.  You may select from 2 sizes.  A full share for 3-5 people is $800 for the 20 week season and is an overflowing 1/2 bushel of fresh naturally grown vegetables; a full share is about a paper grocery bag full.  A half share is half that size and is $550 for the season. 

At Real Food Farms our passion is to grow local, flavorful and nutritious food using only natural and Biodynamic techniques for the better health of our family, friend, and you.  Free from pesticides, genetic engineering and chemical fertilizers, our fresh produce is grown in the Grassland community situated between Franklin and Brentwood, TN.  At Real Food Farms, we grow many heirloom varieties, save seeds, harvest at the peak of flavor, and sell only locally.  We grow year-round with many winter hardy vegetables.

For more information, you may contact David Daily at 615.604.3886 or email him at david@realfoodfarms.com. Alternatively, you can contact Philip or C.J. at farmers@ecotonefarm.com.  If you would like to sign up for this vegetable CSA share, please use the Ecotone Farm CSA sign-up page, which can be found here.

Farmer-in-Training

Here are a few photos we've taken in the last couple of months of Jasper on the farm.  While he really enjoys sitting on the tractor (i.e., not moving or running any equipment), he's recently begun to join me for morning chores and likes riding in the wheelbarrow too! 

Ruminants Ranging

We've finally joined all of the ruminants into a single group!  There are now 15 cows, 15 sheep, and 2 donkeys all grazing together behind the electric netting.  The donkeys - Honest John and Calamity Jane - are livestock guardians for the sheep, as they are notoriously aggressive toward members of the canine family, which have well-known taste for little lambs.  We'll soon add the chickens and pigs to the rotation as well.  Stay tuned for more photos!

Working at Twilight

Let the light of late afternoon

shine through chinks in the barn, moving

up the bales as the sun moves down.

Let the crickets take up chafing

as a woman takes up her needles

and her yarn.  Let evening come.

Let dew collect on the hoe abandoned 

in long grass.  Let the stars appear

and the moon disclose her silver horn.

Let the fox go back to its sandy den.

Let the wind die down.  Let the shed

go black inside.  Let evening come.

To the bottle in the ditch, to the scoop 

in the oats, to air in the lung

let evening come.

Let it come, as it will, and don't 

be afraid.  God does not leave us

comfortless, so let evening come.

-- Jane Kenyon

Industrial Chicken and Arsenic

In today's New York Times there is an article about the use of arsenic (among other things) in industrial chicken farming.  While this comes as no surprise to me, it does remind me of the recent study published out of Dartmouth that found arsenic has also made it into brown rice, and particularly organic brown rice syrup, which has found its way into various baby foods.

I've been wondering how this could have happened, and these two articles bring together what I've been thinking.  My hypothesis is fairly simple and rests on the somewhat outrageous fact that organic farmers can use industrial chicken manure as fertilizer.  First, they feed arsenic to chickens in confinement operations.  Then the happy organic farmers comes and gets that concentrated manure and distributes it onto their fields and crops.  And, just like that, arsenic is in the "certified organic" food chain.  Because they have no other way to obtain such high amounts of nitrogen, even small and medium sized certified organic vegetable and grain farmers - including ones at your local farmer's markets - use industrial chicken manure as fertilizer.  Ask your farmer.  Know how your food is grown.

Spring Time

Spring has arrived on the Highland Rim, and I thought I'd post some recent photos taken by various folks of the farm. 

 

 

 

 

 

Greenhorn Radio

At this year's Southern SAWG conference in Little Rock, I had the pleasure and good fortune of meeting Severine von Tscharner Flemming. Severine is an agriculturalist, activist and organizer based in the Hudson Valley, NY. She is the director and chief logistician of the Greenhorns project, which is a small, land-based non profit for young farmers.

Severine recently invited me onto her radio show, Greenhorn Radio, which is radio for young farmers by young farmers, and includes a weekly phone interview session surveying America's cutting edge, under-forty farmers.

Listen to the show here, and check out the Greenhorns here.

Ecotone Pork in Competition

In late January, executive chef at Miel Restaurant, David Maxwell, cooked with Ecotone pork in the Tennessee Pork Producers Taste of Elegance 2012 Dinner.  We're thrilled that David won 2nd place in the cook-off competition!  Congratulations David!

Here are a few photos of an Ecotone pig at Miel's whole hog dinner, which includes instruction in cutting up a whole hog, dinner with said pork, and wine!  Plus you get to take some home with you!

Spring Lambs

Well, spring is springing, and with it the season's bounties.  Since the first lambing a few weeks ago, we've had five more lambs born on the farm!  There is one ewe still to go, so we could end up with more yet!

Here are some photos of the newest addition - who seems to have abnormally large ears - as well as a paltry shot of the flock as a whole.