2012 national drought and rising grain costs

During this early planning part of the year, we have been taking a hard look at all the pieces of the farm.  We’ve been crunching numbers and planning to ensure that we can grow the best possible product while keeping prices as affordable as possible and ensure that we can earn a living from the hard work of farming.

Bluebird Farm hogs and broilers will continue to be raised with certified organic grains, outside rotating through pastures, forests, and garden.  The layer hens will also live free range and on pasture; however, the layer hens will no longer receive organic grain.  We will use a non-medicated, all-grain feed that we’ve used in previous years to feed our pastured laying hens.

The 2012 drought in most of the United States caused a poor national crop of grains that are important to raise chickens and pigs. All grains prices, organic and non- organic, went up in price by 30%, and left farmers across the nation without a way to afford to feed their animals.  While many farmers and farms across the nation are still reeling from the devastating effects from the 2012 drought, we at Bluebird Farm are optimistically finding creative ways to make 2013 successful.

As we make our plans for the 2013 growing season, we’ve found that the high grain prices affected our various livestock in different ways.   Some areas of the farm have fared better than others.  The pigs look good (and taste good too!) and we are excited for another great year of vegetables.  But chickens proved to be a sticky issue.

Broilers- Tasty Pastured Chicken

Broilers are fast growing meat chickens that need very specific conditions to grow well.  We have made a variety of changes to our system to help them grow more efficiently.  However, no matter how efficiently the birds grow there is no escaping the fact that they eat lots of food!  We continue to strive to use organic feed for the broilers to ensure a pure product.  Certified organic feed is 100% chemical free and GMO-free.  We use this feed for both the hogs and broilers.  Unfortunately, upon close examination of all the costs to produce organic broilers we have had to raise our price.  The new price of $6/lb will ensure that we can continue to produce organic broilers while earning a modest income for ourselves (we discovered that in the past we were volunteering our time to raise the broilers).

We are confident that you will love our organic fed, pasture raised, free range broilers!

Layers- Fresh Pastured Eggs

We have decided to come to a compromise on the layer hens.  After looking at the numbers for the layer hens we found that in order to cover all of our costs, including organic grains, our organic eggs would cost $6.90/dozen.  While we want to use organic grains for all of our livestock we felt that almost $7/dozen is not affordable for eggs.

In order to keep our eggs at their current price we have made the difficult choice of switching to non-organic feed for our hens only.  The other option was to not raise any hens on our farm.  We will continue to use top quality, non-medicated, vegetarian feed for the pastured hens.  And of course all Bluebird Farm hens live on fresh green pasture rotated with sheep and pigs.  These hens live outdoors in the sunshine and fresh air with plenty to scratch and peck.  Our chicken wagon coop provides the hens with a mobile house around the pastures and fields of the farm. 

Bluebird Farm hogs and broilers will continue to be raised with certified organic grains, outside rotating through pastures, forests, and garden.  The layer hens will also live free range and on pasture; however, the layer hens will no longer receive organic grain. 

Each season we work hard to continue to raise the highest quality animals and vegetables at affordable prices that will ensure that Bluebird Farm continues into the future.  Above all we want to work with you, our customers, to build an open and honest food system that produces healthy food for us all.

We’re growing for you,

William and Marie

Bluebird Farm online store now open

We are excited to try a new online ordering program.

Now accepting January special orders with drop off locations in

• Catawba Valley Brewing Company, Morganton Friday Jan 13 5-7 pm,
• Conover Hardware Saturday January 14th 10-11 am
• Hickory 2010 farmers market location (the Hickory Depot parking lot) Saturday Jan 14th noon-1pm.

We are testing a new online ordering program. You can now make orders in our online store. You will not receive a total invoice because all prices are per pound and your total will vary with actual weights. We are not accepting credit cards at this time. Payment is due in check or cash at time of delivery. We want feed back on this new set up. Please let us know what you think of it.

Click below to enter our online store.

Bluebird Farm Online Store

Holiday Market Meat orders

Hello all,

In the coming week we will be attending the final holiday farmers markets of the season in Hickory and Conover. We are taking orders for our pastured chickens and forest raised pork for pick up at market. Remember we can only produce chickens seasonally, we are butchering our last birds before April of next year.

The Holiday market dates are:
Catawba Valley Brewery Farmer Friday 11/18 5pm-7pm

Conover Holiday Market Saturday 11/19 10am -2pm

Hickory Holiday Market Wednesday 11/23 Noon-5:30

Making your Order

1

At the bottom of this blog is an order form for our holiday market selection. Use the order form as a menu. Choose chickens and pork cuts from the list and copy and paste your choices into an email. Don't forget to include the quantity of each item you wish to have.

2

Select which location you would like to pick up your order at:

Catawba Valley Brewery Farmer Friday 11/18 5pm-7pm

Conover Holiday Market Saturday 11/19 10am -2pm

Hickory Holiday Market Wednesday 11/23 Noon-5:30

Special notes:

We will also have our fall vegetables available at markets. We raise our vegetables following all organic rules: no synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, or fungicides. We will have crunchy head lettuce, and other great fall crops available.

We will not be taking preorders for eggs because of limited supply (they don't lay as much in the short days) and high demand.

We look forward to seeing you at the holiday markets!

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Order Form

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The end of the Farmers market Season is just around the corner. Order your pastured pork and chicken for pick up in November at the final Holiday Markets of the season. Stock up on Bluebird Farm pastured chicken.

The birds will keep all winter in your freezer, but they won’t need to because there’s nothing better than a warm fresh roasted chicken on a chilly winter’s day.

Delivery Locations Date Time

Catawba Valley Brewery Farmer Friday 11/18 5pm-7pm

Conover Holiday Market Saturday 11/19 10am -2pm

Hickory Holiday Market Wednesday 11/23 Noon-5:30

Pastured Chicken Quantity

3.75-4.25 lbs 4.00/lb

4.25-4.75 lbs 4.00/lb

Pastured Pork Quantity/Number of Packs

Pork Chops, bone in 2/package 7.50/lb

Bratwurst Limited supply: about 1 lb 5.66/lb

Italian Sausage, links About 1 lb 5.66/lb

Italian sausage, ground 1 lb 5.66/lb

Country Sausage, mild 1 lb 4.90/lb

Country Sausage, hot 1 lb 4.90/lb

Chorizo 1 lb 4.90/lb

Fresh Ground Pork 1 lb 4.75/lb

Fresh Ham Roast Limited supply: 2.5-3.3 lbs 4.60/lb

Shoulder Roast Sold out until Dec. 4.60/lb

Spare Ribs 4.50/lb

Country Backbones 2.00/lb

Uncured Bacon (sliced side meat)

About 1.1 lbs per pack 6.50/lb

Whole Belly Great for smoking: 1-2.5 lbs 6.50/lb

Fat Back, unsalted 1.50/lb

Leaf Lard, unrendered The best biscuits ever! 1.50/lb

Artisan Salami Aged for 2 months

Sweet Soppressata Red wine, garlic, and herb 7.99/ea

Pepperoni Excellant peppery flavor 7.99/ea

We will continue to have special orders available for delivery to Conover and Hickory monthly or twice a month from December through March.

Farm Open House

Farm news

Weighing chickens (and pigs) and training pigs.

Our meat chickens are very sensitive to the weather. In hot weather they spend most of the afternoon resting in the shade instead of exploring the pasture and eating. So they grow much more slowly in the heat than mild weather. With the cooler weather and more afternoon shade our current chickens have been growing a little faster. But we are not sure if they will be large enough at 9 weeks of age (next week) or if they need to grow 10 weeks (September 14^th) like the summer chickens. One way we can try to tell is to weigh them at age 8 weeks. So we head out tot the pasture with a scale and box. We set those up on a flat spot then catch a chicken! They aren’t too excited about getting scooped up. They are freedom chickens!

An even funnier sight was me (William) trying to weigh our piglets. We were trying to see how much they had grown since we purchased them. They don’t fit in a box on our small scale. So I brought a bathroom scale to the pasture. I weighed myself, then I had to grab the little squealing, thrashing piglets and weigh again. The scale is the kind you have to tap with your toe then wait for it to zero out. So I am holding a 50ish pound thrashing piglet while I try to reach out with the toe of my boot to tap the scale. Then once it zeros I have to try to balance on the scale and somehow look around the piglet at the numbers. Most of the time I moved too much and the scale read error. So I had to try the whole this over again.

A more fun piglet job is training them to an electric fence. Once they grow large enough we set up a double electric line and have supervised training sessions. At first the little piglets don’t really understand what the fence is. When they get shocked they run all the way back to their old, un-electrified fence. Once they figure it out though they are so excited to munch their way through our patch of millet and cowpeas cover crop.

Farm Day, Friday September 23^rd 4-7pm

Farm Day is open to CSA members and the public. If you missed the CSA Open House, you can come on out to Bluebird Farm on September 23rd. Come out to the farm and tour the garden and pastures! Talk to the farmers (and the animals.) Let your kids dig and get dirty in a special kid area of the garden and enjoy petting layer hens and feeding pigs.

We’ll also have a special deal on pork, Pork Family Packs, and ½ hogs available at the Farm Day.

We encourage everyone to visit the farm and see your community farm! This is an opportunity for a full tour of the gardens and pasture with your farmers. See how we raise animals on pasture and organic vegetables at Bluebird Farm and hear about our sustainable farm management .

Farmers market!

Saturday is another wonderful farmers market day! I will be there with our delicious pasture raised pork. Our hogs spend a good life doing what pigs love to do, rooting in the woods, napping in the mud, and of course eating! Most pigs are stuck in a small pen not even large enough for them to turn around in! When pigs are allowed to be happy and healthy it shows in their meat. Tomorrow I will have our pork chops unlike any pork chop you find in the store. If you want a little treat for breakfast or maybe a new twist on the great BLT (eat your tomatoes, they'll be out of season soon!) try our thick cut uncured bacon. For a recipe on how to cook the bacon see our website at this link. We have our full selection of sausages: bratwurst, Italian Sausage, country sausage, spicy mexican chorizo, and our new fully cooked smoked kielbasa and spicy cajun andouille.

Yummy weeds!

I will also have our mouth watering whole pasture raised chicken. Whole chickens are easy to cook and provide a great variety of meals: roasted, smoked, pulled off the bone for salads and sandwiches, and of course use the bones for soup stock. See recipes here Our chickens are raised on grass and moved daily. Crowded chicken houses can't produce anything that tastes like this.

Its great to be a chicken at Bluebird Farm

For more information on how conventional pigs and chickens are raised check out the website Food Inc

I will also have some of our organically raised eggplant. It is a small asian variety great for sautes and stirfrys. It is a beautiful bicolor fruit. We like to cook it with tomatoes and squash for a simple vegetable topping for pasta.