This Is The Farm Blog

Summer heat is here. Time to make hay. Well, we don’t actually make any hay, but the last ten days we’ve seen farmers making hay. Hay. And more HAY! Hot, dry, but not too dry. Got to make the hay while haymaking is good. Farmers everywhere are up at 6, in at 11. Now everyone is talking about putting hay away. See, it works like this….hope for rain on June 1st. About three days of rain. Wish the rain would stop on about June 5th or so. Wait 2 or 3 days and hope for no rain. Cut hay. Bale Hay. STORE hay – before the rain comes again.  Put the hay away before the rain. It’s all wishful thinking, and somehow almost every year it works out that way for the hay farmer.

Which brings me to hay and corn. There’s a lot less hay this year. Most farmers are betting on corn prices going through the roof. So they’ve tilled their hay fields under and planted corn. Not the kind you feed animals though. They’re all planting ethanol corn in hopes of a new pick up truck or John Deere something or other at the end of the season.

Which brings me to our dilemma. Corn prices are up. That’s feed corn. Because the speculation is that it will be hard to come by. Hay prices are up. Because all the hay fields are now corn fields. And not the feed kinda corn. The ethanol corn. For us, that means feed corn and hay prices are up. That means we pay higher prices for everything…just on the speculation that ethanol corn is going to buy all the new equipment every commodity farmer wishes for next year. Hmmmmm.

That’s why we’re sustainable farmers. Other than the fact that we need hay and feed, that is…..oh well. All we really want is rain right now.

Posted by jackie at 07:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Been busy living the good life. 

Let's focus on eggs for a minute. The Incredible Edible Egg. A potentially hazardous food that is highly governed by the department of agriculture, in particular, food safety. Earlier this year we discovered that in order to sell eggs, we need a food processing license.

To get one, you have to have a facility with a stainless sink, three bay of course, hot water, cold water, hand towels, a clean impervious surface on which to place your supplies. Walls that can be washed. A fridge reserved only for 'the EGG.' Floors clean as a whistle. Think laboratory.  Think red tape.

We'd already commited to delivering eggs to Troy Community Gardens via their CSA, and we have regular customers of our own. We'd already ordered and raised about 75 hens. So we had no choice but to press on and get licensed.

We also sell meat, of course, so we decided to have a room built in our shed to house the food processing center and the freezers and coolers. We wanted to do this all along; to have a super clean place to keep everything. But the EGG put us over the top.

So eggs, which we sell for $3 per dozen, and raise about 30 dozen per week, about 26 weeks per year,  will be profitable on this farm in about 2011. 

Here's the detailed look at getting licensed:

The room - (don't ask how much we paid for the room - ouch - we'll just allocate a percentage)

                       $500

Sink                  $40 

Fridge                $400

Towel Dispesner   $3

Hot Water Tank    $250

Plumbing Supplies $100 

Cooler, Etc.         $50 

Licensing Fee       $78

Labels                $30

_______________________

TOTAL   $1451

That doesn't include the routine cost to maintain  and feed and house the darling hens......Oh well - that's the egg business
...still cheaper than gas.

Posted by jackie at 06:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)