Baby raccoon has been visiting a lot lately to eat dried crab apples.
Monday, March 10, 2014
Lebanon Valley Cooperative Meat CSA Sign-up!
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| It's that time again! Time to sign-up for the Meat CSA. Although the thermometer doesn't show it, spring is on it's way! We are now working with three local farms to provide you with super produce and meat: The Abode Farm (vegetables): abodefarmcsa.com Artemis Farm (grass-fed beef): Cynthiasrandallcattle.com Trusted Roots Farm (vegetables and eggs): trustedrootsfarm.com Read more about our Cooperative Meat CSA on our website: climbingtreefarm.com |
Tuesday, March 4, 2014
It's Still Winter.
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| It is the first week of March now, and the weather station said it would be 27 degrees below the average today. I see one or two days in the 10 day forecast in which the high goes above freezing. It's still looking pretty wintery out there. |
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| The pigs have made themselves a network of trails through the snow. |
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| Here it is: The first puddle of 2014! |
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| We are SO excited for Spring! |
On Farm Slaughter
Fresh liver from on-farm slaughter.
We've been told that livers from pigs raised outdoors are often condemned by USDA
inspectors because they are usually unhealthy due to worms....
that doesn't seem to be the case with these pigs! This is one beautiful organ!
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We love our pigs. We want their lives to be as comfortable and as good as possible. We also want their eventual deaths to be comfortable and good.
Meat sold to a restaurant, store or farmer's market must be processed in a USDA facility. That means that the animal is brought to a slaughter house alive, and is killed, butchered and packaged there. We only use Animal Welfare Approved slaughterhouses, train our animals to load the trailer for transportation on their own (to reduce stress), and we unload our animals ourselves at the slaughter house to avoid rough treatment. Because our animals are born outside and live every day of their lives outside, any transportation and time spent in an unfamiliar surrounding is stressful to some degree. In an ideal world our animals would all be killed on-site while they are happily chomping away on forage, and can remain blissfully unaware. This is the lowest stress scenario for the animal.
We just did our first on-farm pig slaughter. The pig was hanging out in the woods, she died quickly and peacefully. The pig was gutted on site, transported to a butcher shop to be aged, and was butchered, and packaged there. NY state law allows meat slaughtered on-farm to be sold from the farm and through CSA. The pork we sell through our CSA will be from pigs processed this way....its an ideal world!
CSA sign-up forms coming very soon! |
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| Checking out the beautiful liver. |
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