November Markets and Meet Mick

It's almost that time of the month again - Market Time! We will be at the markets in Yeppoon on the 5th November and Rockhampton on the 6th November. We will have the usual Delicious Pork, Tender Beef and Tasty Goat.

A reminder that our pigs are true free range. They spend every day from birth to the day they are taken to the abattoir, outside. They enjoy being able to display their natural piggie behaviours. They eat grass, dig in the mud and generally have a pretty chilled out lifestyle. They do eat a grain ration, but we ensure that it is well balanced and doesn't include any nasty gmos.

Who's been enjoying our beef? I'm not sure that everyone is aware that we sell beef, and that it is our own grass fed and finished beef. We are actually certified organic with our cattle and goats, although they lose certification once they are killed because our abattoir and butcher facilities are not organic certified. We finish our beef cattle on leauceana., which is a fodder tree that is high in protein and cattle do very well on it.

I've been really enjoying slow cooked brisket lately. I do a Mexican flavoured version to have with tortillas and I've done a curry coated one for a curry night and this one below I did a little while ago and it to was delicious! We will have brisket at the markets, so why not give this recipe or another one a go.......

Slow cooked Brisket

2kg piece of DVFR Beef Brisket

1 large onion, chopped

1 clove garlic, crushed

1 tablespoon honey

1 cup of tomato puree

1/2 cup Worcestershire sauce

Juice of one lemon

1 tablespoon ground cumin

1 tablespoon french mustard

chilli to taste

1 cup water or bone broth

Mix all the ingredients and pour over the brisket. Cover and bake in a very low oven for most of the day. e.g. 140 for about 8 hours or 160 for about 6 hours. 

The goats prefer to eat shrubs and trees over grass, and I think that's why they have such a nice flavour, probably also why they are less tender and more suited to slow cooking. They too love leauceana, so we occasionally cut some and bring it home for them.

Back in Septemeber we employed Mick. He's a young fella from Brisbane who really wants to learn what it's like to be a farmer. It's so good to see such enthusiasm for farming and gives hope for the future of farming really. Anyway, Mick has joined us to learn as much as he can about farming the way we do - all things from paddock to plate. He will be helping with the markets this weekend, so you will get to meet him. 

Learning how difficult it is to work with animals..........

Learning how to make cheese...........(I was making tortillas for lunch while Mick stirred and stirred the cheese).

October Markets

What a tough couple of months we've had - it's been a real struggle with not enough pigs. We took our eye off the ball at some stage and didn't realise what pigs we had in front of us. Pigs are funny things, there's about a 2 week period when they are perfect for selling - they get too big too quick and seem to take forever to get to the right weight, when in fact it's about 5 months from birth to sale. Anyway it's going to continue to be a struggle with numbers until Christmas and then hopefully everything will settle down and we'll have a nice steady supply.

We have  quite a few babies on mum and lots of piglets getting weaned, so hopefully if we can make sure the mums get pregnant again next year will be a beauty!!

So going forward we have decided that we will only do the one market per month. Therefore the first weekend of each month - October, November and December will be Yeppoon and Rocky Market weekends. We won't be doing hams this year either unfortunately.

We are having a great year grass wise - lots of showery weather lately and a very mild winter has meant that we have green grass just jumping out of the ground!

The goats are growing well and we'll be soon weaning about 30 kids and our 2 lambs. We've recently bought an Anglo Nubian billy to put over this years girls so we'll have a bit of cross breeding going on, hopefully to put a bit of size into our sale goats.

For the next market we'll have our delicious pork, tender beef, plenty of tasty goat and a small amount of lovely lamb. Just a reminder that I can no longer get the butcher to pack orders for me. I can try and put something aside if you want me to, but can't guarantee it, as I'll have to do it after the Yeppoon Markets. I may have to put a 2kg limit on NF bacon orders if I get too many requests. If you would like anything that I don't normally stock, please email me by Monday morning with your request.

Corned Beef - if you want nitrate free, please request it as we don't do it unless people ask for it.

Porterhouse Steak is one of our most popular beef cuts.

Pulled Beef Tortillas - home made tortillas are really easy and go great with pulled pork or pulled beef - the beef is brisket slow cooked all day.

The post I didn't want to write!

This is the post that I really didn't want to have to write.........we will not be able to make it to the markets in September.  Kim and I have spent the last few weeks working out what pigs we will have going forwards and we are really going to struggle to have sufficient for our butchers and our market customers in the next month. The good news is, that by October, we should be able to go back to 2 markets per month. 

We've had many messages from you guys wanting to know what's going on and I promised I'd get something out this week. Thank you for your patience and I hope we will continue to get your support when we can finally start up again. If it's any consolation, it's tougher on us than you! Farming can be tough sometimes, and the culprits are usually the weather or commodity prices or something uncontrollable.  This lack of pigs is worse because the demand is there, but we just can't meet it. 

Thank you........and I must remember this quote.....

"Worrying doesn't take away tomorrows troubles, it takes away todays peace"

Hot weather, Cold weather, Wet weather......

We seem to get it all with the weather - hot, cold, wet - and we are never happy, especially when it's too dry! Recently we had some beautiful rain, but it was a tad too much on our pig paddocks and did cause some stock losses - just too much rain in too short a period and it was very cold as well! It is now absolutely glorious weather and so warm that we will get full benefit from the rain, which is unusual for winter rain events. Unfortunately for us (and our loyal customers), it was the hot weather last summer that is still having a dramatic effect.

With pigs, there is a condition called summer infertility. It is what it sounds like - pigs have trouble making babies when the weather is too hot. We thought it was just a boar thing, but on doing more research, we are finding out that it's a problem  for the sows as well. Without going into too much detail, the upshot is that when you have long hot summers like we did this/last year, you don't get many successful pregnancies. Our pigs are between 5 and 6 months old when we send them off to market - that is why it's affecting us now, and has been a problem for the last few months. We have a lot of babies on the ground now and hopefully this will continue going forward. We will also be doing some planning now to work out better ways to keep the breeding herd cooler during the summer to come.

Why am I telling you all this???? Well, we are going to have to cancel the markets in August! Yep, none! Hopefully by September we will have something available to take and that we'll be right from then onwards. I am so miserable about this because we have such a supportive customer base and I just hate not being able to supply you!

One of our many baby goats!

This is one of the leaky weirs we put in the creek following our work with Peter Andrews. These are simple log structures that slow down the water, to prevent further erosion. They are working really well. I've written more about them on my other blog. Healthy Farming Healthy Food

Markets

Life has been crazy busy lately! I'm sorry I'm getting this notice out a bit late, but better late than never! We will be at the markets in Yeppoon and Rockhampton this weekend. Yeppoon Community Markets 6-9.30 am and Rockhampton Kern Arcade Markets from 6-12pm.

Our pig numbers are still very slow to coming on - I don't think pigs like making babies in the heat and we had such a long hot summer! So we won't have a lot of pork this weekend. We will have beef, goat and lamb. Not a lot of lamb so it'll be first in first served. The lamb is from Brenda and Anthony Lipsys of Blue Sky Heritage Eggs fame. We bought a few wethers from them to put through the markets. This is the first one.

Amongst all the usual, we will have bacon bones and bacon hocks, broth bones, lard and dog bones.

Another thing I wanted to mention is that while the pig numbers are low and while we are still getting the meat processed at Monto, we will only be doing a market once per month. This will be for the next 3 months at least. So I'm really sorry about this inconvenience but unfortunately there's not much we can do about it.

I look forward to catching up with you on the weekend.

Who wants to be a farmer???

We've been lucky over the last couple of years having one or another of our sons home. Well one of them has been in South America for nearly a year and the other has just gone to England! We've also had a young local lad helping us at times too, and now that we don't get too many backpackers coming this way any more (thanks to the Governments 2nd year visa changes) we have decided to find someone  who wants to be part of our growing business.

I've long been a fan of Joel Salatin and his concept of getting young people into the farming industry. So we have decided to advertise and hopefully find ourselves a young wannabe farmer. We want someone who is as passionate about healthy living as we are, and would like to really get involved in a sustainable lifestyle and regenerative farm. The first twelve months will be like an apprenticeship, but we really hope that the successful person will want to hang around and help us grow the business. All going well, there will be an opportunity for that person to have some ownership within our current business model.

The position will be called a Farmhand and will be paid under the Pastoral Award. If you or someone else you know is interested in this position, please email me for an application package, or pop over and have a little look at our internship website as it gives a little more information about us and the farm.

Click HERE for a link to the website. OR my email is: dawsonvalleyfr@bigpond.com

Who wouldn't want to work with something as cute as these piggies....

Price increase and next market date

Next Market - 4/5 June - Yeppoon and Rockhampton

I've been spending some time in the office this week. It's a necessary evil, but one I don't get to do very often. We had an English backpacker here for a week so I left him feeding so I could catch up on bookwork. This has been quite depressing, as I've had to have a realistic look at our figures and work out what money we are making (or not) and what money we need to be making to enable us to keep going doing what we are doing. Farming is the same across all industries - the farmer gets the smallest share of any profit, and does the majority of the work! The dairy industry has highlighted how most farmers are price takers. We decided to opt out of that vicious circle, by producing  a product that we could market ourselves. Unfortunately the competition in the market by the bigger corporation farms mean that we still have the price dictated to us by market influences.

As I mentioned in my last post, we need to find another option for processing our meat. Monto Meats have been very good to work with and they have been our butchering facility since the beginning. There have been issues at times, with one of the main drawbacks being that they are 3 hours drive from us! I've investigated a few different options, but haven't yet worked out an alternative, so stay tuned for more on that front!

We haven't really been charging enough for our meat and so we haven't really been keeping on top of the cost of production. As I've mentioned in the past, the last price rise was due to an increased cost of packaging, and so we haven't had a price rise to reflect any increases in cost of production. Free range pig farming costs a lot more per pig than a large industrial shed. We do of course get more for our product, but because we produce so few animals, the individual cost per animal is also a lot more. Eg in a shed that houses thousands of pigs, the infrastructure (capital costs) can be shared across all those pigs. Their direct costs are less also as they are more mechanised. It's hard to have mechanised systems out in the paddock.

Basically, we have to charge more to enable us to survive financially. This next lot of market animals will still be processed at Monto Meats, and they will continue to do it until we can sort out an alternative. There packaging price will be double what it has been. We pay a price per kg dress weight, but the amount of packaged meat is a lot less than that, so a $2.50/kg increase in packing means approximately $4/kg increase in the end product. I have therefore re-worked the pricelist to reflect this increase and to put a little rise in our takings. I know that people think that by cutting out the middleman it should be cheaper, but basically we, and the butcher are the middle man and that middle bit still costs!

I have updated the price list - just click on this Link to Price List. While Monto Meats continues to do our meat, we won't be able to take big pre-orders. If you want a particular cut of meat, I can organise that, however I won't be able to get them to pack orders for me, so I can't really take them. I will have to put orders together on the Saturday morning in Yeppoon markets.

Please also note that now that we are now selling whole pigs to Daly's Quality Meats in Clinton, Gladstone and so we won't be delivering to Gladstone now. Please ask him for our pork and tell him that you are one of our customers. I'm not sure if he's doing grassfed beef, but if he's not, tell him that he needs too (I already have!). He often has goat too (not ours yet, but hopefully in the future it will be). Thank you so much to the Gladstone guys for your never ending support, it has been so greatly appreciated!