The first onions are started indoors, under grow lights. A significant project for March will be the construction of an 8′x16′ greenhouse in front of the house to ease the pressure on our planting room. This requires lumber, which requires logging & milling, the latter of which is scheduled for early March. Below is the log stack so far; some of this is dedicated to sale lumber for several customers building new raised garden beds. We’re grateful for their willingness to invest in local wood for this project; timber sales are another form of economic diversification for us.

We’re continuing to work on the orchard and other pasture-clearing projects in the limited time remaining to us. Other logging work involves cutting hardwood logs for the next round of shiitake mushroom inoculation; read details of this process here.

Joanna has been hard at work on a long-term desire, a rough 10-year rotation plan for all our growing areas that will help us manage future plantings more effectively and ecologically. This process was significantly aided by our decision to transition to CSA this year, as it makes the farm’s future plans more stable as opposed to the more fluid year-to-year reactions to market conditions and competition. With this long-term plan nearly complete, it’s possible to put together a much better 2012 planting plan that fits into the wider management plans. In future years the planning should be much easier with this framework in place, but in the meantime it’s an indoor project competing with the continued glorious weather.

Web work has also been a significant task lately, as we both continue to develop content for the new site and work on various background issues with getting it set up right and developing tools/features for CSA members. The recent egg-production debate (see here and here) has been very stimulating, but also a serious time sink. If you haven’t kept up on the comment threads, it’s well worth doing so to enjoy a really interesting discussion. While there’s more to say on both sides, we really need to move on to more profitable/directly beneficial activities. That being said, we’d be interested in any other comments or perspectives readers want to share, though we can’t promise we’ll respond directly to them.

We’ll be starting the first round of chicken breeding soon, aiming for the first hatch in about a month so the chicks can be put on pasture ASAP (above, some of last year’s birds). We’ll likely be doing several rounds of breeding through early summer, pairing different roosters with our best hens to both improve the flock and replace current hens who are getting old. This means we’ll be eating a lot more chicken than past years, likely leading to more meals such as the fresh chicken dinner we served last weekend.

We’re shifting into vegetable mode pretty quickly. Weeding has even returned to the task list; we recently spent part of a warm afternoon weeding the overwintering spinach beds. Most of our growing beds are well established, but we have a few areas that we’ll be using for the first time, and those require extra work early on. Peas will be going in soon, and we’re still brainstorming ways to keep the rabbits off of the young, tasty seedlings. We had never had rabbit trouble until the latter part of edamame season last year. The pesky critters are still hanging out near the field, so we’ll have to come up with some solution to make sure that they leave one of our favorite spring crops alone.

Sunday we hosted a CSA event for those who wanted to see more of the farm. We spent a couple hours of a gorgeous sunny afternoon on a long loop through the woods and fields, then retired to the house for some light tastings of farm food and conversation.

Here’s what we served; all on-farm ingredients in italics. Pictured above,  rosemary corn crackers (cornmeal, rosemary, yogurt, flour, olive oil) topped with pesto (dried cherry tomatoes & peppers, basil packed in olive oil, minced garlic). Not photographed but also served, goat cheddar (aged 5 months), beet pickles, fermented kraut, applesauce from Missouri apples.

You may notice that much of the landscape looks somewhat barren; one of the reasons we’re clearing these thick cedar stands is that they block most sunlight from the soil and inhibit anything else from growing. We’ve found that after clearing a cedar thicket, a significant (partially native) seed bank springs into action and produces good ground cover by summer. The first spring after clearing an area is when we have to be most careful, because there is a bare-soil interval between tree clearing and seed germination. This is one reason we only use equipment and/or haul logs in these areas when the ground is frozen or dry, and also tend to leave some cedar material as ground cover. We’re also being especially careful with the chickens on some of these new areas until the seed bank has time to take hold, rotating them regularly and using straw or other mulch to help protect the soil until spring. In the long run this area will have much more biodiversity and ground cover than the cedars allowed, but we’re taking care not to cause undue damage before then.

A view from within the orchard, looking NW up at the chicken shed, sited just outside the perimeter. The large green pile in center right is a chipping pile of branches for mulch. This was all dense cedars last fall; the shed is built from trees logged from its site, milled on-farm, and reassembled into something more useful. While there are many trees to go, this view gives a partial sense of our long-term goal; acres of pasture with scattered shade/shelter trees on which we can rotate the chickens (and goats), while giving the birds access to the orchard at times to help manage pests and clean up dropped fruit. We’re leaving a few of the larger cedars in place, as the birds enjoy foraging in their shelter and perching in the branches.

Working with the CCUA folks was great, as they’re hard workers and really good company.  They can use a bunch of fresh cedar mulch for their urban farm, and purchased it with a day’s work. It was a good opportunity to cross-pollinate ideas and experiences between rural and urban farmers, while still getting useful work done. We fed them well with fresh pizza (various combinations of smoked pork, goat cheddar, caramelized onions, dried peppers/tomatoes, garlic, tomato sauce, potatoes, sweet potatoes, herbs, etc.) and more. Our deep thanks to them for a great day and significant forward progress on this time-intensive long-term project.

Mac,

I greatly appreciate your openness with numbers and experiences; this makes for an excellent discussion. I’m glad to see that there is a model for a farm to make decent income on eggs, but from our perspective there are still flaws in your production and marketing model, and I will discuss these below. Also, please keep in mind that being organic, or even nearly so, in Missouri and many other places is harder than in Wisconsin. We don’t have the local support network of organic co-ops, crop farmers, hatcheries, and feed mills that you do; we have to do everything ourselves or ship it in from far away, and our state government is also generally more hostile. One organic egg producer I know personally drives to Kansas to haul back organic corn for his custom-ground feed because it’s not available reliably here. I suspect your support network helps keep your prices down, which is fair and understandable but still different than many other places.

We’re discussing two very different models of poultry/egg production, and I’m not sure they’re directly comparable in economic terms. My numbers and analysis apply to a system in which the birds are primarily pastured-raised in a rotational system that changes the area under their feet on a regular basis. This is a standard model for small or diversified farms; even at the scale of someone like Joel Salatin at Polyface Farm, the birds are still regularly moved to new ground in portable pens, or new ground is brought to them in the form of portable fencing (incidentally, Polyface keeps their layers for two years rather than one). This is an inherently labor-intensive model, but the tradeoff is perceived to be healthier birds and pasture because there is more fresh food available and the pasture is allowed to recover.

In addition, our eggs are far fresher, reaching the customer within 2-3 days, rather than 1-2 weeks in your model; this has specific culinary implications in some circumstances such as poached  eggs, and this also justifies a higher value to the consumer. We feel our eggs also taste better than store eggs, and while many such claims are unsubstantiated, we do have a bit of evidence in our favor: we held a tasting event on our farm in 2010 in which a crowd of people blind-tested boiled eggs (among many other things) from our flock and from Organic Valley eggs. Here’s our synopsis of the results; rankings are from 1 (best) to 5 (worst):

Boiled chicken eggs
On-farm: 1.71
Organic Valley: 2.71

I thought this difference was fairly subtle, but the results were fairly clear. This was a close comparison, as Organic Valley is widely regarded as the best of the large-scale producer brands, and our eggs are coming from winter chickens who still are eating mostly grain and not a lot of foraged protein. Our yolks were noticeably yellower, but the flavors were only subtly different. If we can beat the best store option at the low end of our chickens’ flavor potential, that’s not bad. And it speaks well for O.V., as I’ve had far blander store eggs before.

Both consumers and advocacy groups tend to perceive rotational pasturing as an ideal situation. For  example, the Wisconsin-based Cornucopia Institute defines the ideal pasture management for egg production as “diverse, small- to medium-scale family farms. They raise their hens in mobile housing on well-managed and ample pasture or in fixed housing with intensively managed rotated pasture”. Whether or not you like or agree with Cornucopia’s specific standards, they are representative of the wider cultural concepts among our target customer base, which in turn drives marketing and pricing.

Joel Salatin at Polyface, a dedicated capitalist but hardly an elitist, appears to sell his rotationally pastured, non-certified eggs for about $4/dozen on-farm, and $6/dozen off-farm (based on prices quoted by customers online; the latter probably includes a considerable retail markup). In addition, I’ll cite a recent article in Growing For Market magazine (Nov/Dec 2011 issue, not available online) written by a mid-sized vegetable farm in Virginia, using methods that are a hybrid of our two models (they buy mature layers, manage them in a rotational pasture system for six months, then sell them for meat). They concluded that $5/dozen earned them a little over minimum wage, and their feed costs were a bit lower than ours for organic as it’s easier to get in Virginia than Missouri; they also noted that they didn’t think they could go any higher given the underpriced competition in the area. We know and trust this farm’s judgment, as it’s where we got our start before settling Missouri (we’re not from Virginia, though).

Of the organic/sustainably minded professional farmers I personally know in this area, one has gone to $6/dozen for pastured organic eggs, one feels that $3/dozen for pastured eggs from hens fed conventional feed is a loss leader for their CSA,  and one has quit selling pastured  eggs altogether because of economics. Another sells certified organic eggs for $4/dozen but does so in a partial confinement model similar to yours, though with fewer birds and thus less economy of scale. So within the system of small-farm rotationally pastured poultry, I think we’re in line with the economic reality, given that a segment of consumers do in fact want pastured eggs and  the labor requirements that come with it.

You criticized this model for trading on the willingness of a “fortunate few” who would pay for overpriced  eggs. However, it seems to me that your model is equally reliant on this consumer dynamic, as by your own admission your eggs at $4/dozen are still too expensive for most of your rural neighbors (who, as you noted, don’t care about organic). It is a choice, too, whether or not they think it is: I’d like to see the sales numbers for the alcohol, cigarettes, candy, soda, lottery tickets, snacks, and other discretionary sundries from your local gas station/grocery store, as those form the profit backbone of convenience stores  everywhere.

It seems to me that the $4/dozen retail price is what keeps you in business; you still need your co-op to do the  transportation and marketing work for your overall volume (and for the other farmers whose total  production makes the system’s efficiencies possible), for which it doubles the price, to be paid largely by the same mostly urban “fortunate few” who choose to pay up to four times more than the cheapest option. Another reason your model works is your organic certification, which again allows you to charge a higher price for effectively the same food product (by your line of argument), which is mostly an ethical choice by the same urban foodies. Thus, you’re doing the exact same thing as we are: you’re selling an environmental and cultural ethic, and a higher-quality product, that allows a far higher egg price than cold, hard economics would dictate. Both our prices are determined in part by just how high up the sliding scale of perceived ethics/sustainability our methods place.

I will openly and happily grant that your system is way better than a conventional feedlot’s. I would buy and eat your eggs. However, your methods as you described them still fall in the middle of the potential  range of flock management ethics, though  I’m open to more details. For example, I’m curious how you manage the pasture attached to your barn to avoid overuse by the flock. As I said above, I know from experience what even 30 foraging hens can do to fresh pasture if kept on it too long; I don’t see a way for 2500 birds  to use the same pasture year-round without destroying it unless they don’t use it as heavily as truly pastured birds do. Cornucopia’s egg producer ratings describe their  middle-ground ranking as “family-scale farms that provide outdoor runs for their chickens, or from larger-scale farms where meaningful outdoor space is either currently granted or under construction. All producers in this category appear committed to meeting organic standards for minimum outdoor space for laying hens”, which fits the information I have about your setup. They, and I, agree that this is not an inherent criticism, simply a statement that there are even more ideal ways to manage birds when possible. For reference, their top-ranked farms include one in Wisconsin which practices intensive pasture rotation and charges $5/dozen.

The most fundamental difference in our numbers is labor cost; you’re producing far more eggs per unit labor than we are. This is certainly more efficient, no argument there. Measured in the simple terms of eggs out vs. labor in, true feedlots are also a lot more efficient than you are, but I doubt you would advocate their methods over your own. However, you’re still basically using the “factory” model in which all the inputs are purchased off-farm (birds, feed) and mixed together in a production facility before selling the finished product, with little to no reliance on or integration with the overall farm landscape and environment. Your model may have pasture, but it’s not based on pasture. Our pastured birds, on the other hand, utilize far more on-farm resources from foraging in otherwise unused areas to cleaning up produce and cooked animal scraps (fat, whey, etc.) sourced on-farm. But even with partial-factory methods, you’re still doing it to certain ethical (and expensive) standards that do set you apart from the true feedlots; thus we’re both setting an ethical standard for farm management and animal care that is economically arbitrary except for what we perceive our customers are willing to pay.

The final leg in your economic model is a carefully marketed consumer perception that egg production of all certified organic eggs  involves birds that are more pastured, and less confined, than many actually are. Pretty much every egg carton I’ve ever seen, organic or otherwise, has some version of the diversified pastured-based Old McDonald farm on it, with a happy chicken out in the sunshine. Whether or not it resembles your farm, relatively small among your peers, it certainly doesn’t represent them all.

An organic inspector we know has told us of organic egg operations that are quite unlike the pasture-based systems envisioned by the average consumer. This Cornucopia Institute photo gallery has some excellent examples from the various scales. I suspect you fall in the mid-range, and I suspect your farm looks pretty good. However, the disturbing photos of confinement pullet production for Organic Valley (such as this one; link added 2/11/12) an otherwise highly-regarded organic co-op, makes me wonder where yours are from, and whether they grow up in such a crowded indoor environment, especially given the price you quoted which seems quite inexpensive. Have you been to your pullet source? In any case, I doubt a carton with a large image of thousands of hens indoors on litter, happy or otherwise, would sell as well. In effect, your co-op is likely marketing all of its  members’ eggs as coming from intensely pasture-based farms, and consumers lap it up.

This matters because, in my five years selling  at a farmers market, I consistently found that consumers held a much rosier view of farm conditions and economics than reality justified based on our insider knowledge. I blame it equally on the media and advertising agencies, but people consistently assume that anything local is organic, that all chickens live happily on grass all day long, that grass-fed means no grain, that no-spray means organic, and so on. So even gentle greenwashing is very powerful when it comes to crafting an image that is at odds with the reality, even if that reality is reasonable in its own right, as on your farm.

There is room in our economic system for both our production models; you’re able to handle the larger accounts that farms like ours would have a hard time meeting, and there are customers who don’t insist on truly pastured birds like ours, just reasonably well-treated birds not pumped full of drugs and GMOs. We’re each meeting a specific consumer niche with a price that’s reasonably appropriate to the economics of the customer-desired farm management. I don’t consider your methods ideal, but that’s one reason we started raising our own (another option rural  people who “can’t afford eggs” should consider). We’ll admit that our model isn’t 100% ideal either; we’d rather not ship in feed from long distances, but economics of growing our own are truly prohibitive given the government crop subsidy system, and we refuse to compromise our principles and buy GMO feed.

I have no apologies or concerns about raising and marketing pastured eggs from heritage breeds to people who value those concepts, at a price that justifies the work. If I’m the food equivalent of a hand-crafted Fair Trade artisan pottery mug, so be it. Anyone offended by “overcharging” for a product should go after luxury cars and the fashion world long before small farmers. I’m still producing a useful and beneficial product, along with personal income and tax revenue in a rural area that really needs it, with the profits (if small) staying here and not padding someone’s faraway golden parachute. If there are customers out there who will pay as much for a dozen eggs as a 6-pack of bottled water, bless them. There ought to be room for us all in a free market, without the mid-level farmer looking down on the small farmer while the feedlot peers over their own shoulder.

The January bird list is very similar to December’s, not at all surprising. These are the standard birds that overwinter with us; their presence is familiar and welcome. Robins have been particularly abundant, with large flocks whirling through the treetops on multiple days. Bird activity really took off in the last few days of the month, under near-record warmth, as we saw 800 snow geese migrating one day, and multiple raptors riding thermals north the next day. On our monthly birding visit to Eagle Bluffs CA, we saw a wide variety of ducks and other birds, including rare close-up views of Sandhill Cranes. Always worth a trip down there, especially now that migration season is nearing.

Coyotes have continued to be very active, with two different packs audible many evenings. They’re actively thinning the deer herd; we had to drag a hollowed-out carcass from our stream one morning and dispose of it deeper in the woods. I’m glad to see this, as the herd is too large, and well-fed coyotes are hopefully less likely to bother domestic animals. Strong buildings and electric fences have so far kept the two populations comfortable separate, as it ought to be.

NEW IN JANUARY (1 species)
Snow Goose (migrating north); first seen 1/27, around 800 seen passing overhead on 1/29. This is almost three weeks earlier than the first snow geese in 2011 (first on-farm record 2/15/11).
Red-Tailed Hawk: these are in the region year-round, but are uncommon in our farm’s airspace. On 1/30 we saw 4 different ones riding thermals, probably moving north with the warm weather.

PRESENT IN JANUARY (22 species)
Canada Goose
Red-Shouldered Hawk (along with the Red-Tails on 1/30, saw at least 7 of these)
Bald Eagle (seen several times, including raptor day on 1/30)
Great Horned Owl
Barred Owl
Red-Bellied Woodpecker
Downy Woodpecker
Northern Flicker
Pileated Woodpecker
Blue Jay
American Crow
Tufted Titmouse
Black-Capped Chickadee
White-Breasted Nuthatch
Carolina Wren
Eastern Bluebird
American Robin (flocking in large numbers toward the end of the month)
Cedar Waxwing
Yellow-Rumped Warbler
Northern Cardinal
Dark-Eyed Junco
American Goldfinch

MISSING/UNOBSERVED SINCE DECEMBER (1 species)
European Starling

Here’s a mostly complete list of the foods we prepared and preserved over the past year, to feed us through winter and spring of 2011-2012, and in some cases through the following summer or fall until the products become available again (like fresh meat). All we really purchase anymore are staples like sugar, salt, flour, spices, vinegar, oil, and such, and those mostly in bulk so we always have them on hand. All items listed below were sourced from our farm unless otherwise noted.

FROZEN
Whole chickens (more lives ones available, too)
Pork from 300lb hog
Goat from yearling wether
Quarts of raw goat milk for yogurt-making when we’re not milking
Small containers of our chevre & ricotta
Whole okra
Shelled peas
Sweet corn
Shelled edamame
Green beans
Shredded zucchini
Whole strawberries
Strawberry ice (concentrated sauce)
Peaches (local)
Green tomato chutney (a few off-farm ingredients)
Tomato-basil sauce
Zucchini soup
Hot pepper sauce
Garlic scape pesto
Basil in oil
Basil pesto
Frijole mole
Tomatillo salsa
Roast tomato salsa
Smoked goose broth
Wild rabbit broth
Shiitake mushroom broth
Chicken broth
Sausage (pork & goat)
Cured/smoked bacon
Rendered lard

CANNED
Tomatoes
Tomatillos
Green tomato pie filling (a few off-farm ingredients)
Cucumber pickles
Beet pickles
Green tomato relish
Zucchini relish
Piccalilli (vegetable relish)
Applesauce (local apples)
Strawberry jam
Apple butter (local apples)
Peach butter (local peaches)

DEHYDRATED
Peaches (local)
Apples (local)
Strawberries
Anaheim peppers
Jalapeno peppers
Ancho peppers
Chipotle peppers (smoked jalapenos)
Cayenne peppers
Sweet peppers
Cherry tomatoes
Okra
Onions
Shiitake mushrooms

STORAGE/OTHER
Sweet potatoes
Onions
Garlic
Butternut squash
Carrots
Parsnips
Goat’s milk cheddar & gouda, waxed & aging
Whole corn for cornmeal/polenta
Cowpeas
Two 20 lb hams, cured & hanging
Sauerkraut, fermenting

Who needs the stress of grocery shopping, price comparisons, advertising, and brand competition when the home store looks like this?

Egg production & gross income
We have 35 hens, but I’m going to use 30 here to provide some slush for losses and poor layers (some of our current hens are over 3 years old).  At their peak, 30 hens laying 5 eggs a week = 150 eggs/week. This winter, when most are taking a break (which they need to stay healthy), we’re getting around 60/week. You can up this with artificial light or other interventions, but that’s not healthy for the birds and we prefer to handle them naturally. So to account for the laying curve over the year, I used three different laying rates:

20 weeks at 150 e/w = 3000 egg
20 weeks at 120 e/w = 2400 eggs
12 weeks at 60 e/w  =    720 eggs

That’s a total of 6,120 eggs, or ~500 dozen.

At our high price of $6/dozen, that’s $3,000 gross income per year (not counting any expenses, including remitting sales tax from that gross). And that’s assuming every single egg from a year’s production sells, which it certainly doesn’t (if nothing else, there are always cracked, overly dirty, or otherwise unsellable eggs). In other words, that’s the most we could possibly earn in a year on a flock our size if we had no expenses for feed, labor, marketing, or anything else.

Feed expenses
Organic chicken feed costs roughly $.50/lb here, about twice what conventional feed costs. If it’s not certified organic, it almost certainly has GMOs in it, regardless of other “natural” type labeling, and that is anathema to us. Figuring that an average hen eats 1/4lb a day, and using 40 birds to account for roosters and poor layers, we get this:

40 birds * 1/4 lb = 10 lb/day
10 lb/day * $.50/lb = $5/day * 365 days/year = $1825 annual feed cost.

Now, this is almost certainly reduced by the birds being on pasture and fed lots of farm scraps, so let’s reduce that quantity by 1/3, making annual feed costs around $1200 (not accounting for the time & labor of acquiring and handling the feed). This doesn’t really account for the fact that organic feed is difficult to acquire here; we have to have it special-ordered from Wisconsin through a local feed store, as does Happy Hollow, but that’s what it takes to avoid GMOs in Missouri.

So far we’re down to $1800 in net profit annually, before labor or other expenses.

Labor expenses

This is the other big one. Labor involves visiting the chicken house twice a day to check feed and water and collect eggs, any fence-moving to keep them on fresh pasture (which we do often, even in winter), cleaning & inspecting eggs, packaging eggs for sale/distribution, dealing with any health/management issues within the flock, remitting sales tax to the state on any egg sales, and so on. Any accounting for labor should also take into account the reality that we (or an employee) have to be here just about every day of the year, in any weather, to manage the birds’ pasture access, water, and food. Overall, my basic daily chores take about 15 minutes; I’m going to double that to account for all the rest which is harder to track, and I still think that’s a low estimate.

30 minutes/day roughly equals 4 hours/week, or around 200 hours a year.

Assuming my labor is worth at least minimum wage, 200 hours/year * $8/hour = $1600. With our $1800 net profit after feed expenses, $1600 in labor pretty much kills the remaining budget. We’re now down to $200 in remaining cashflow, to account for any other expenses like infrastructure, water, straw for bedding, and bird replacement.

Long-term flock maintenance

People sometimes forget that chickens don’t live forever. They get eaten by hawks (especially pastured ones like ours), or die from old age/disease like any animal. In fact, we’re probably better off regularly culling birds past a certain age, for three reasons: (1) to avoid aged birds introducing disease into the flock, (2) to give them a cleaner, more humane death than decrepitude provides, and (3) to get a bit more value from them (a 3-year-old hen is still a decent stew bird; a real geezer is not). Why bury an old carcass when we can eat a middle-aged one?

The corollary to this is the need for regular introduction of new birds, either by purchase or breeding. We’ve opted for the latter, buying a small incubator so we can breed and raise our own, and hopefully improve the genetics of the flock (one reason we keep a number of roosters around). However you replace birds, it costs time and money that aren’t easy to factor into an annual budget, and that remaining $200 somehow has to cover this and everything else.

Manure/fertility
I didn’t include manure production/handling here, which can be a cost and/or a benefit depending on the farm. For us, generating on-farm fertility is a major reason we raise chickens in the first place, so there is some inherent value there, although it’s hard to monetize. What’s the actual value of using our own manure rather than feedlot manure, other than removing GMOs, antibiotics, and off-farm diseases from our input stream? Even for a benefit like this, there is still significant extra labor involved in regularly cleaning out the shed, hauling & composting the bedding, and otherwise managing the waste stream to be a net farm benefit instead of a problem (like it is for larger operations). So I pretty much figure the manure handling evens out; more benefit offset by more work.

Infrastructure
Nowhere in this discussion have I budgeted for infrastructure. Everyone has to pay for, or value, the infrastructure needed to raise chickens, particularly if they’re being rotated on fresh pasture and not just let out to the same yard year-round. This includes fencing (whether permanent or moveable net), housing (whether building new or converting existing), refrigeration cost, feeders and waterers, and so much more. Even though we built our new shed from cedar lumber generated on the farm, that still costs chainsaw work & labor, milling fees, hardware, and roofing. These costs should spread over 20 years at least, but they still need to be there in the price of the eggs.

Conclusions
In effect, what these numbers tell me is that it’s possible to make at most minimum wage raising high-quality, organically fed pastured eggs, even charging the “high” price of $6/dozen, and that’s under a nearly ideal system in which few birds are attacked by predators and everyone lays to their potential. The real world is rarely so accommodating. Even if you quibble with specific numbers and estimates, you’d have to double or halve a major number to make a meaningful difference in the income, and that’s not realistic.

The same economies apply to conventional small-farm eggs, and to industrial ones. Let’s say we halve the feed costs for people just buying generic feed; we also then halve the price to the $2-$3/dozen typical of farmers market eggs, or even lower given that various country people sell eggs for ludicrous prices below $2/dozen. Given that feed and labor are roughly equivalent percentages of the whole, the same ratio holds: you’re making at most minimum wage in fairly risky business. People charging under $2 are simply insane, and those in the $2-$4 range really aren’t making much meaningful income if they’re accounting for their actual costs. They might be making a profit, but they aren’t making an income; there’s a big difference if you care about the long-term viability of local foods.

This tiny profit margin is why feedlot eggs sort-of work; you can afford to make a miniscule profit per bird if you pack ten thousand of them into a barn, keep them in artificial light throughout the year, pre-emptivally medicate them against inevitable health issues, and turn them into dog food as soon as they decline from peak production (and most of the profit still goes to the middle and corporate level, not the “farmer”, who still makes at or below minimum wage). But that system has also taught consumers that the “value” of a dozen eggs is lower than that of a few tomatoes, and so people are no longer willing to pay a reasonable price for a much more nutritional food. The price of cheap food is farmers unable to make a meaningful living at almost any scale.

It also tells me that many people selling eggs at farmers markets and roadside stands aren’t treating themselves like businesses. There is simply no way to actually make a living wage or meaningful income on eggs at the prices most people sell them for; the reality is that they’re not. They’re either doing it as a hobby, and/or not paying attention to their numbers. Lots of non-business-minded small farmers seem to equate gross income with actual income. In fairness, there are also people who do realize this, but just don’t think they can get a fair price (and often can’t), so charge whatever they can get because they like having chickens. That doesn’t change the economic reality, though, and hurts farmers who are trying to earn a living.

Personally, I think the skill and risk it takes to raise pastured eggs should be worth more than minimum wage, but $6/dozen is the only way we’ll even get that far, so we’re going with it for now. We agree with Liz at Happy Hollow, who’s said that if not enough people will pay minimum wage for good eggs, it’s chicken soup time and we’ll go back down to a home-sized flock. There are lots of easier and less risky ways to make minimum wage; neither of us will do this work, and take these risks, for less.

Still to do:

• Add content to static pages. We’re planning a far more comprehensive site than we’ve had in the past, with farm management info, organic certification info (for produce), info about products/services, and much more. Pages will also mine the content of posts. It may take years to fully achieve our vision for the content, but we should be able to move beyond the current skeleton of a menu within a couple of weeks.
• Add a recipes section to the site. I might use a canned plug-in or I might try to program it myself so I understand the inner workings and can better maintain it over time. We’re planning to put significant effort into the recipes part of the site and want to use a format that will last. If all goes well, the recipes will implement the hRecipe format in a WordPress custom post type. And CSA members will likely be able to contribute recipes directly.
• Consider adding an email subscription option(?) We’re debating about what to do with this one. WordPress automatically generates an assortment of feeds, including RSS, so readers can use various methods on their end to subscribe using that.
• Come up with a fix for images that didn’t transfer well from the old blog. Most of the content imported with a minimum of headache, but some of the images didn’t make the final trip to the new site and are not rendering properly. I have a couple of ideas on fixes, but this is low in the priority list right now. (A direct import from blogger to the WordPress installation at cherthollowfarm.com didn’t work, so the blog took a detour to cherthollowfarm.wordpress.com, which took care of most of the problems, except for some of the photos that didn’t make the final leg of the trip. Grrr…)
• Add content to the “biodiveristy” section of the site. This is a custom post type that we’re going to use to catalog both wild & domestic plants & animals on the farm. This is a long-term project. The most immediate use will be to provide info on various crops that we offer to CSA members. We also want to use it to keep track of varieties.
• Ditch the old blog post categories and develop/implement a new, better-thought out category structure for blog posts.
• Finish an assortment of behind-the-scenes work (including implementing a system of regular backup and coming up with a method for filtering comment spam that doesn’t cost us more $).
• Monitor for any problems with site navigation, etc. Is the sidebar missing anywhere? Do the pagination buttons work as they should? Etc.

JANUARY CSA DELIVERY
Immediately upon returning home, we got to work putting together the first CSA shares, including setting up the inaugural online member survey. Our goal is for this system to allow limited share customization, helping members have some control over what they do and don’t receive, while not being too complicated for us to manage. Two share sizes plus ten or so items plus three options (none, standard amount, extras please) is already a significant amount of complexity, but we’re trying the system out this year because we really like the value it creates for everyone involved.

Shares were delivered on Monday and Thursday afternoon, with only one small hitch that was easily corrected. It took about 2 hours each day to do the delivery route, a significantly shorter time expenditure than going to one market, though higher mileage. Saving us more time, one of our employees will generally be doing the Thursday delivery route for us, paid as an independent contractor for the off-farm work. She likes the idea, as she’ll be working here Thursday mornings anyway, and it means we only have to come to Columbia once a week, a significant time savings for us.

We’ve received a couple good comments already, so I’m hoping everyone enjoyed their pulse of fresh winter vegetables (and purchased eggs, in some cases). We’d certainly like to hear of any concerns. Although storing all these crops until now creates a higher risk and workload for us, we also really like getting some product to members right away. It makes their investment more real; no one has to wait five months to get any return on the up-front payment, and it buffers any future crop failures or issues through the rest of the year. So far, so good for the 2012 CSA.

SEED ORDER
Before leaving on our trip, Joanna especially worked long hours putting together our fairly complex seed order that juggles six or more seed companies and ~150 varieties. In addition, we save our own seed for many other items, but still need to integrate those stocks and any leftover seeds from last year with the rest of the order. Developing the seed order inherently requires putting together a realistic planting plan for the coming year, which is a large task in itself as we balance crop rotations, work schedules, weather/climate considerations, CSA needs (which are quite different from market needs), and more. Effectively, to make a cost- and resource-efficient seed order requires planning out much of the next year, and needs to be done by early January so we can get the orders submitted in time to get everything we want. With the continued growth in both small farms and gardening, more pressure is placed on the seed-supplier bottleneck every year and many items vanish quickly (particularly so as organic certification requires us to seek out organic seed whenever possible/practical). Most of our orders are now submitted, and are arriving. The first indoor seed starting (onions) is already only a few weeks away.

We used results from our December survey of CSA members to guide the seed order development. For example, with respect to pepper heat/spiciness, only one household of twenty voted for habanero-level heat, so most of the hot peppers that we grow will be in the low-to-moderate heat category. (We were thinking about skipping habaneros altogether until we tasted an amazing habanero salsa while traveling and learned that the almost tropical fruitiness is a characteristic flavor of habaneros; so we’ll grow one or two plants.) From the survey, we also learned that many members seek out bitter flavors, so we’re going to trial a couple of new crops that tend to be on the bitter side: escarole and radicchio. Joanna isn’t especially fond of bitter flavors, but then again, neither are most insects, so these crops are likely to have fewer pest problems than some alternatives. Radicchio has a reputation for being finicky, though, so we’ll start by trialing a smallish quantity this year. We had several members comment that they would love to get any fruit we can grow. Hopefully the strawberries that are in the ground will produce enough for distribution, and we’re tentatively planning on a small watermelon patch, though they tend to be space-hogs for the yield anticipated. We’re also increasing blueberry and fruit tree plantings that will hopefully pay off with fruit in future years. And in spite of an already complex seed order and planting plan, Joanna always enjoys playing with a few new things, so this year some new herbs are on the trial plan; these include shiso, cumin, anise, and bronze fennel (some of which can be grown for seed, but all of which have edible leaves).

WEBSITE DEVELOPMENT

Behind the scenes, we’re developing a new farm website that uses a WordPress platform to integrate our blog, general farm information, CSA member information and utilities, and a better recipe/advice section. It’s a major upgrade to our online presence, but takes a lot of programming, design, and content development. At some point in the next month or so we expect to have enough done to bring it online, at which point this blog will go dormant as a content archive and all activity will move to the new site. In the meantime it means we’ll be competing for computer time while balancing our roles (Joanna does most of the background programming & structural design, I’ll be doing most of the writing and layout). It’ll probably take us a year to really get all the new content put together, but we at least need to get enough done for a respectable online presence.

OUTDOOR WORK

Weather and indoor work permitting, we have a long task list on hand for outdoor infrastructure work. There are several more acres of overgrown land we’d like to clear of cedars entirely, and/or thin out for better pasture, given the growing goat and chicken population. The image above shows the orchard area; most of the visible cedars are on the clearing list. I also have to build a new, strong fence for this area, which will have more trees and other fruits going in this spring; other pasture areas could use some fencing work as well.

Another view of the new chicken shed above the orchard; that thick mass of cedars needs to go, so the area can regrow in a better pasture mix that chickens and goats will enjoy. We’ll be saving the few hardwoods in that mix, which should really benefit from more sun and growing room to hopefully become good shade trees. We’re also working with some neighbors to set back the thick cedar groves south of our entry road, which currently prevent the winter sun from warming and melting any snow and ice on that steep hill.

Whenever we get enough cedar logs collected and milled, there are a wide variety of possible projects requiring wood. We already have a request for some nice lumber for raised garden beds from a past wood customer. High on the list is enough lumber to build a smallish passive solar greenhouse for seed/plant starting, to get that work out of our basement and away from expensive grow-lights. In addition, I’d like to be able to improve the goat barn by adding battens along the walls (thin planks to seal gaps between the original boards) to improve the interior comfort. I also want to rebuild most of the doors, which were originally built with really ratty lumber because that’s all I had left from the year’s milling when the rest of the barn was built. Then I need to build new milking stands for the (expected) larger milking herd this year, making it possible for two people to milk at a time. The new chicken shed also needs more work, including finishing battens and building a solid confined run so the birds can have fresh air on days when hawks are around (right now we’re just using less-than-ideal chain-link panels). Any logging we do generates branches to chip into mulch that needs spreading on paths, and various types of firewood that need to be hauled and stacked.

INDOOR WORK
Many small but important indoor tasks might be tackled this time of year, such as tool cleaning and sharpening, packing barn improvements, recipe research/writing/editing for later CSA use, finalizing the planting plan (& improving the long-term rotation plan), organic certification paperwork, tax preparation, and more.

FIRST CSA DISTRIBUTION
We’ll begin the 2012 CSA season by home-delivering our January share this week, a nice diverse set of seasonal storage produce with some fresh items made possible by the mild weather so far (we don’t use hoophouses).

We intend to start writing up and including more recipes for items as the year goes on, but are still rebuilding our website for now and so haven’t gotten to that yet. For now, Google and personal cookbooks will offer plenty of suggestions for recipes & uses, though I did find three recipes in our blog archive that rely heavily on share-included items:

Parsnip-sweet potato shepherd’s pie
Sweet potato curry
Spiced squash soup

Here’s a look at what shares will include, depending on individual requests (CSA members have the ability to opt out of items they don’t like/want). Images don’t necessarily reflect quantity distributed. NOTE: many root crops will have some dirt remaining on them, as it’s just not practical to fully scrub these outdoors in winter conditions. Much easier for each household to wash a pound of roots in a warm kitchen with warm water; we did a basic wash to remove clods, numbing our hands in the process, but you’ll want to finish them. That’s the reality of farm-fresh food sometimes.

Garlic heads: A selection of multiple garlic heads, drawn from good storage varieties still on hand. Siblings of these garlic heads are already in the ground growing, and this is the time of year when the biological clocks of some of the remaining storage heads also realize that it is time to sprout and try to grow. Heads can last until March or longer, but if you notice that one is beginning to sprout, just use it first. Green sprouts may have a more pungent flavor than the rest of the clove if used raw.

Here’s a key to the shorthand on the labels:
All shares requesting garlic should have one of each of these:
SIB: Siberian, excellent cooking variety which should be featured, not buried in the background.
FIRE: Georgian Fire, spicy raw variety with strong flavor when cooked.
SAM: Samarkand, one of the best varieties for storage.

Full shares also have one big or two small heads from among this collection:
TOCH: Tochliavri, milder variety good for raw uses like pesto and salad dressing.
BRIC: Brickey–Only a small supply, and thus we haven’t sold it before, but we’re quite fond of its robust flavor. From a woman who has been growing garlic in the area for years and was kind enough to give us a head back in 2009. Look for more in 2012.
CRYST: Georgian Crystal, a good general purpose garlic.

For other information on garlic varieties, you might review this post.

Onions: A mix of red and yellow onions, small quantities but very tasty.

Carrots: Sweet cold-weather carrots with plenty of uses. They’re a mix of sizes in part because the grasshoppers devoured numerous rounds of seedlings back in late summer, and we kept reseeding to fill in gaps. The small ones are true baby carrots, not the lathed things that get passed off as such in the store. A shredded carrot salad is a nice way to feature these, or simply enjoy the sweetness with a pile of carrot sticks. No need to peel, just scrub.

Parsnips: Excellent roasted, alone or in a root vegetable mix. We really enjoy parsnip soup, which we make as a creamy blended soup that’s rich and filling on a cold winter day.

Sweet potatoes: Great for roasting alone or with other roots; big ones can also be baked. There are two varieties, one with orange flesh and one with white flesh; we think the latter are especially sweet with a nice texture. We especially like roasted sweet potato fries: Preheat the oven to 450ºF. Scrub potatoes and cut out any blemishes, but there’s no need to peel. Cut small potatoes into rounds, larger ones into cubes or strips of somewhat uniform size. Toss with oil/fat of choice, sprinkle with salt and maybe a touch paprika or cinnamon. Roasting time is usually ~20-25 minutes. Stir after 10 minutes and check again at 20.

Butternut squash: These didn’t store as well as we hoped, and are showing their age, but should still have good flavor & nutrition for those willing to work around any developing softness. Offered as seconds-quality to those willing to take a chance on them. We’d recommend baking them whole (poke a few holes), removing any obvious bad spots, pureeing them, then using the puree in soups, breads, or other uses where the squash is combined with other ingredients. Anything that isn’t taken by members, we’ll use the above procedure on and freeze for later use.

 Leeks: Tasty mild alliums, adding a different flavor to dishes than onions. These are excellent sliced thin and sauteed in butter, or used as the base for leek-and-potato soup. Wash before use to remove any grit that might have gotten between layers. The easiest way to do this is to cut lengthwise in half and rinse under running water.

Cowpeas or cornmeal: Specialty items that are inefficient to grow but fantastic from a culinary point of view. We’re offering members a choice of small quantities, one or the other. Cowpeas are similar to black-eyed peas, and should be featured in cooking rather than buried in something like a chili; they also make a nice hummus base when cooked very soft. Cornmeal will be fresh-ground from heirloom corn, especially good for cornbread or polenta. If making the former, use all cornmeal (no wheat flour) to accentuate and appreciate the flavor.

Daikon radishes (not pictured): Long, large white radishes with a sweet/mildly spicy flavor. Great for stir fries, pickling, and certain salads, though they may be strong raw for some palates. Can also be shredded as a topping for wraps.

Spinach: Harvested fresh from overwintering beds that have done really well in the mild weather. Would not have predicted that we’d be able to pick field-grown spinach in mid January. Delicious sweet winter flavor, almost like candy; don’t waste this on cooking, just enjoy as a nice fresh green salad. We rinse greens and send them through a salad spinner (because they store better if they’re not soggy), but we always recommend that you wash greens again in your kitchen to remove remaining grit, bits of mulch, etc. Thanks to one of our dedicated employees, Kim (in background), for freezing her hands alongside us this day!

Herbs: Snow is melting off now, but haven’t had a chance to check on all of them yet. Thyme is in harvestable condition for sure.

Eggs: These aren’t directly included in the CSA but are available for purchase by members. Only some hens are laying right now, and we can easily personally go through 3 dozen a week, but we’ll have a few dozen extras available.

The next distribution won’t be until March or later depending on weather & crop conditions, but this early batch of farm-sourced food will be a nice treat for all involved.