Greetings from Hammerstead Farms!
Not a whole lot of news this month. Our chicks are growing nicely, and should begin laying in late November or early December, which should help us maintain our current egg production schedule. Which is very good, as Sunflower Market in Broad Ripple is buying most everything my hens can lay!
We still have some eggs in stock at the farm, so if you can't make it to Sunflower, feel free to stop by and pick some up!
We also have a half a beef available. This is not from Hammerstead itself, but from our friends and partners at Crowded Byre. They raise Murray Gray cattle, and do a real good job with them, too. They'd qualify for the forthcoming USDA "Grass Fed" label, as more than 99% of their lifetime caloric intake comes from grass but I won't try to tell you they're pure grass fed beef because Tim does feed a bucket of grain a day.
That's a bucket of grain to his whole herd, mind you, so it's not very much. But it's not 100%. Because of the breed of cattle, they really need the extra little carbohydrate boost to get the kind of nutrition they deserve. And it's enough to give them a bit more "white fat" around the edges, which makes them taste a lot more familiar to most beef consumers.
I'd like to see the USDA adopt the "100% Pasture Raised" label instead of the "99% Grass Fed" one. The former is verifiable and easily determined - the latter means nothing, even though it implies pastured beef, producers could still qualify their herds by keeping them in barns for their entire lives and feeding nothing but hay. Which is wrong.
Anyway, back to the beef available. This is some really tasty stuff from an animal that was raised right and treated well. We're selling it for $5/lb., as usual, by the quarter, which in this case will be about 75 lbs of beef. Only two quarters are still available, so if you're interested please let me know as soon as possible. We sold the other half before we'd even advertised her, so it goes fast!
We also have a good selection of horns and fleece available. The horns are bovine, in sizes ranging from drinking horn to powder horn to spoon, and the fleeces are Suffolk/Mixed, which is very soft with a medium staple and good for socks and baby clothes, and Blackface, which is coarser with a longer staple and nice for outwear, weaving and that sort of thing. Fleeces are $10 ea. if picked up on the farm or $20 shipped anywhere in the US.
We also have a very unusual item: peacock feathers! A neighbors peacock has decided that he (well, he and she both, as there's a peahen with him) really like our farm better than his real home, and all efforts to return him have failed. He's molted now, and we have several dozen beautiful tail feather for sale. Some have the classic "eye" pattern, and some are the sword feathers, with no pattern but are iridescent gold and blue. These are great for fly fishermen who tie their own flies, and can be sued for decorative purposes as well. I'll sell them for a dollar each, which seems to be the going price on the Net, and if I can figure out how to ship 3 foot long feathers I'll consider it... just drop me a note if you're interested!
Finally our portable petting zoo will be at the Festival of the Turning Leaves in Thorntown, Indiana on Saturday September 23rd from 10 am to ???. We'll be set up behind the Sugar Creek Historical Society Museum, so if you're in the area, by all means stop by! This is a really nice small town festival in the Hoosier Heartland - we're pretty proud of our local community and would love to see the attendance set another record this year.
Thanks again for your interest in (and patronage of) Hammerstead - we're really excited about our farm, and hope to continue serving you in the future.
Be well,
Dave Haxton