Dawson Valley Free Range

Dawson Valley Free Range

Friday, April 22, 2016

Long Weekends and Price increase warning

This weekend is a long weekend and Kim and I are actually going to have a weekend away! I'm so excited to be having a few days camping R&R at the beach.......and there is no internet service!!! So if anyone wants to order for next weekends markets, sorry, but it's too late! I won't be back in service until Monday, so you can still send an order through, it just won't be guaranteed to be filled until I get the meat on the weekend.

The markets are on NEXT weekend, which is the 30th April and the 1st May at Yeppoon and Rockhampton respectively. This is also a long weekend, so hopefully everyone is going away this weekend and will be around for the next to come and stock up on meat. We'll have Pork, Beef and Goat this time.

We will be making some changes to the prices and the ordering process after this market. We have been forewarned by our butcher that he will be increasing the price of meat processing considerably. As yet I don't know how much it will be, or if we will even be remaining with this butcher. However, even if we change butchers, it will be costing us considerably more to process the meat. The last price increase I did was due to a change in processing cost, so I actually haven't had a price increase for some time to cover our cost of production increases. It costs a lot more to raise free range pigs as it is more labour intensive per pig than the conventional sheds and we don't have the economies of scale to enable us to run big numbers and spread the overhead costs out. We also don't have an endless supply of cheap backpacker labour any more.

To be blunt, we need to be charging more for our pork or else we won't be in business. We are just about to undertake an expansion in pig numbers, which will involve putting in more fencing and we will need to be able to employ someone to help us. If we can run more pigs we should be able to improve our bottom line, which will hopefully help us to keep producing our tasty pork.

If you are also travelling this weekend or next, please stay safe and enjoy your time away.

Monday, April 11, 2016

Ordering Time Again!

First of all, I must remind people that we are going to be missing a market this month. We won't be in Yeppoon or Rockhampton until the 30th April and the 1st May respectively. Gladstone delivery will be on the 30th April - 2-3pm at Puma Service Station, Calliope.

We will have Beef, Goat and Pork available for sale this time. The pork is still a little short in supply, so if you would like to order, it may make it easier for me to work out how many pigs to take over. Please do this as soon as possible.

The demand for our product has increased over the last 6 - 12 months and we are still trying to breed enough pigs. We sell pigs regularly to butcher shops in Brisbane and the Sunshine Coast and because this is every week, it's a constant job to make sure we have the pigs we need for them. As well as butchers, we supply packaged meat to Organic and Quality Foods and occasionally to Spar in Emerald. And of course the Blue Truffle in Rockhampton is supporting us by using our ham!

Unfortunately our market customers seem to be the ones that sometimes miss out while we keep the business customers supplied. For this I do apologise, and the only thing we can do is try and make our pigs reproduce quicker! That is not always so easy in a Free Range System, especially when it's hot. I think the pigs would rather be lying around in a wallow than getting lovey dovey!