Superior Beef Genetics doing its thing

Devon/Angus cross yearling steers are on the pasture! We will be grazing and finishing these beef on our neighbor's pasture. Grass and water will be their diet and the result is high quality, flavorful beef for our customers. Go to our website to order %100 grass fed beef today!

The grass fed genetics in these animals are from The Bakewell Reproductive Center. The Center is a purveyor in the best of grass fed genetics for cattle. Some of these animals will also be marketed to Hardwick Beef, who purchase %100 grass fed and finished cattle from Northeast Farmers. They require a strict grass finished protocol. Visit their site to learn more.

We will report on the progress of these fine animals throughout the season, so come back often to read more!

In Like Finn!

The tomatoes are in our first hoophouse! We finally got the house ends completed, beds formed, drip tape layed out, and the tomatoes put in. My lovely wife Christa is doing the transplanting of some very large tomato plants. They have done well in our greenhouse. We will have 3 rows of heirloom tomatoes in the middle and a row each for peppers near the hoophouse sides. We are excited about growing vegetables in our hoophouse, it will provide us with earlier crops for our Summer CSA and farmers markets and will allow us to extend the growing season into the fall for our Winter CSA. How does crisp, succulent spinach from November through February sound?

Finn is my Pa's name and the name of our good neighbors' son (little Finn) who is a frequent farm visitor.

How to spend a nice spring day...

at an auction waiting to bid on an old tractor and farm implements! I traveled to the other side of the State (Fairlee, VT along the Connecticut River) to have a look at a 1964 tractor with a loader. I also noticed some farm implements that would go well with the tractor and help us on the farm. This was a consignment auction with a lot of farm implements and tractors of varying ages and conditions. Of course they start auctioning off the small misc. stuff and it wasn't until about 3pm that the tractor I had my eye on came up for bid. Its hard to spend a nice day waiting around while there is plenty of work to do back on the farm.

A lot of folks where checking out the tractor in question - a 1964 Massey Ferguson 65 Dieselmatic with Multi-Power. It had a New Idea loader, chains on the back tires and a homemade counter weight on the 3-point hitch. I didn't think it would go for more than $3000. The bidding started at $2000 and quickly went up to $3200. I hadn't even jumped in to bid at this point and was hesitating to do so. I kept thinking of the prices of other used tractors with loaders that have been selling for $5000 to $9000 in various ads and other auctions. I knew we could use this tractor on the farm and it could reduce our time on some tasks, so I was doing a cost-benefit analysis in my head when the price jumped to $3400! The auctioneer was looking for the next bid at $3500. My hand shot up and a few more bids later the tractor was headed to our farm!

A used 2 bottom plow and disc harrow were added to the mix - so now we can prepare vegetable beds and incorporate cover crops and compost with this set of tools.