From time to time people will ask "If you ever have any extra ______ I would be happy to take some". The problem with that is a difference in mind set, we never have any "extra" of anything at our farm. Everything has a use and a value, nothing we grow or raise will go to waste and nothing is disposed of without cost. Do you ever have any "extra" money in your bank account that you would give to someone just because they asked? I did not think so. Now don't get me wrong, Rosie and I are more than happy to be generous with what we have and share with the people who help us sow and reap, raise and slaughter. Even the people who just come by to hang out and give us some people time are doing us a great service and we like to be able to share with them what we have. But even when we are up to our eyeballs in squash or knee deep in milk none of it is ever "extra". Even the stuff that gets fuzzy will go to the pigs and with their flesh, back to us. Every scrap of food that we feed to the chickens has a dollar amount attached to it somewhere, what we produce is used in place of bags of feed from farm supply and the monetary conversion is easy to make.
Now I am not talking about anyone specifically, but more a re-occurring attitude I run into that some how the food we produce on our farm is "free", I guess if you don't buy is from a store it is not worth anything. Rosie and I probably spend more on our food than if we where to buy everything at the local store but the quality of the food we have here is far beyond what we could ever afford to buy on our own. I once had a very high prestige chef, who's restaurant raises its own herd of pigs for their exclusive use, tell me that the pork we are producing on our farm is the finest he has ever seen or tasted. That's right, our piggies are better tasting than the $200 loin cuts served at a shop so exclusive that not only would I never be able to get in but even if I did I would never be able to afford more than the after dinner mint. Not exactly the quality of food you get from Safeway, but the quality of food we raise here on our farm. So next time some one gives you a tomato from their garden box or a bottle of their homebrew or a loaf of hand made bread remember that you are receiving not just a food item but a work of art so exclusive that it is simply unavailable outside of the most rarefied circles.
Nice post. Are you feeding any of you animals on forage & surplus alone? Or reducing feed to encourage them to eat furry squash?
ReplyDeleteWe finally have some free weekends to come up in September. Do you have any workdays planned that need help?
We feed most of our birds on forage alone, after we get back to a less insane amount of animals we will be going back to growing as much of our animal feed as possible. But with the lack of rain this winter we have almost nothing for the lager animals to eat compared to years past. With any luck this winter will be better and we can go back to forage for everyone.We are planning some slaughter days in the next month or so, maybe around the 16h? But we will keep every one posted. As soon as the chicken plucker is finished we are planning on killing everything in the world. At least in the farm-brid world.
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