After a long, at least for me, market season we are now rolling into fall and October starts tomorrow! I know many of my customers are sad that their local farmer's market is over for the year, but I will say I am not sad. I'm not sad to get to spend more time at home with my crazy kids. More time at the farm doing projects that I generally don't have time for during the week otherwise. More time to get my mind wrapped around the fact that we will be lambing out 40+ ewes come January. (Sheep are like chips, can't have just one!) More time attempting to get house projects accomplished before winter hits.
Just more time.
Now, I know I kid myself. More often than not, I have ideas to do things and then it hits the fan. Something comes up, I have a meeting, or I fall asleep on the couch. Piano lessons, soccer practice, or some other kid activities take up time too. More time for Farm Bureau meetings... especially since I found myself on the Michigan Farm Bureau Policy Development Committee along with my county farm bureau board.
All while dreaming of moving out of town and onto our own piece of dirt... I'd love to have my sheep and cattle at my own place.... someday!
So in reality, do I have more time? Probably not. But I also need to figure out my next business move. Its one that I knew I needed to either go for or never think about it again.
Shipping...
It seems like a scary thing to me and a expensive task to even think about. Shipping frozen meats across country. Yikes. I've taken a short course on shipping meats, and as scary as it is, I think we can pull it off. Using UPS ground 2 day shipping, I should be able to get things in and around the Midwest without the use of dry ice, but with other frozen means, which is nice. Dry ice is considered a hazardous material so shipping gets a little more tricky especially if I have to ship farther distance. Recycling the big styrofoam cooler containers that doctors offices or vets offices use to receive the different medications in the mail will also be a money saver. Now I just need to step off the ledge and execute that plan.
If you have looked at our online store in recent weeks, you can tell that we are very low in most all beef. I can tell you that going to the farmers markets without any sort of good beef cuts, like any type of steak, really makes for a challenge. So variety, sometimes hurts me. I have too many options sometimes. At one point I had something like 12 different kinds of sausage in the freezers, crazy. So you'll see some of those more "summertime" sausage varieties go away for the time being. My big, old almond colored upright freezer is only used for sausage at this time! Its not a small freezer, nor is it the most efficient, but it does the job. Thankfully it locks! James likes to mess around in the freezers sometimes.... when its a chest freezer at least the door will shut. Uprights, not so much.
As we roll into fall, be on the lookout for our monthly restocks, and we will also continue to carry chicken through the end of November! We may also get some other fun things in stock, who knows. Life has a way of always throwing us a good curveball. Why not?!
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~Until Next Time
PS- if you are looking for breeding stock heifers, check out the 2024 calves and give the farm a call!
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