Gobble Gobble

Fall on our farm, and in the Adirondacks in general, is spectacular, which is to say it is somewhat of a spectacle. Spectacle, from latin specere, means to look, and when we look we see an instant in time. And so I believe part of what makes anything spectacular is it’s brevity. Summer is chugging along and then, all of a sudden, colors in the mountains start cascading down the slopes, eventually painting the whole valley in color. Then with one blustery day the colors are washed to the ground and the scenery’s pallet is mostly shades of brown spotted with the occasional green of an open field.

With a parallel urgency the farm shifts to winter as if fall were merely a stepping stone, just a passing moment. Cattle leave for their winter homes, the last batch of chickens has one more week on pasture, and soon all the waterlines will be empty and the fencing put to bed for the winter. Our kitchen experiences a changing of the guard as well, from green salads and grilled zucchini, to chicken or squash soups and coleslaw with cornbread. And of course the long awaiting for the Thanksgiving meal has made her way into the annual family planning conversations. Where will it be this year? Who is hosting? And of course, where are we getting the Turkey?!

We are proud to offer turkeys this year that are just as we would raise them ourselves. We have PRO (Pasture Raised Organic) Turkeys from Wrong Direction Farm. In a logistics feat of coordination we got our pallet of turkeys delivered on a back haul from Juniper Hill Farm who was delivering to a farm near Wrong Direction Farm. Our freezer is filling up fast, and Racey and I came up with a freezer storage solution: build a ramp that allows us to roll a pallet in and out. So for my 40th birthday on Wednesday Racey and I built a pallet ramp to our storage freezer and when the turkeys arrived we just rolled them right in!

Turkeys are available for sale now, I have them organized by weight, so you know what size turkey you’re getting, within a pound. We have a limited quantity of turkeys so place your order soon while we still have some in stock.

Another fall activity is spreading compost. We do not produce as much compost as some farms that feed cattle all winter, but we compost all of the slaughter waste and pig winter bedding. All of that material eventually adds up to be a large pile. So we rented Essex Farm’s manure spreader and spread a big pile of compost. It was very satisfying to create such a valuable resource from “waste,” and to think that some places have to dispose of their waste in a land fill. Thank you Essex Farm for the use of the spreader, and thank you Scott Hoffman for making the whole project happen.