As we approach Thanksgiving and turkey season is winding down, I have the opportunity to look back and see how our year went. With the cold weather here for a while, I plan to spend more time inside reviewing, researching and planning for next year.
Currently on the farm, we have 5 broad breasted turkeys and one midget white turkey still available for Thanksgiving. We will be finishing those up within the next week. I think we have done ok this year. Last year, we offered 15 turkeys for sale and sold them all. This year we had 75 and have sold almost all of them. We are keeping 3 midget white hens and 1 tom for breeding for next year. I hope we get lots of feedback from our customers this year. I want to hear how your turkey meal was, what you like, or if there was something you didn’t like! If you got a midget white turkey, I would love to know what you thought. It will help me know the demand for more (or less) midget whites next year.
Did you know, the midget white turkeys take 6 months to grow out (8-14 lbs)? While the broad breasted turkeys are 20 lbs at 20 weeks!
We did lose a few this year. For the first time, we had a coyote (or a few we think) come through and get 7 turkeys. That was discouraging. But if you’re raising pastured animals like we are, there will be loses from time to time. We do not keep them inside big confinement houses.
We finished with all our chickens for the season about a week ago. We have a freezer full so we should be able to supply your requests for chicken all winter! Sizes range from about 4 lbs up to our largest one – 8lbs. We grew the last of our broilers out to the 6-7 lb range. A few customers like our bigger birds. We plan to start raising chicks again next spring.
We have increased our laying flock up to 44 birds. That’s 40 hens and 4 roosters. That should give us more eggs for next year. Our young hens are laying and young layers lay smaller eggs. They will get larger as the hens get a little older. If you are buying eggs from us now, you will see a variety of sizes. Although we have 40 layers, we are only getting 6-10 eggs a day. It’s fall, the days are shorter, the hens are molting. Egg production always goes down. It will pick back up as the days get longer. Hens lay based on the number of hours of daylight. Not how warm it is.
I tried planting some wheat and oats, but I didn’t fence it off. The layers thought it was a treasure hunt. I don’t know at this point if any will come up. I’ll have to wait and see. Lesson learned.
Goats, goats, goats. We can’t forget our goats! We still have 4 of our babies and are trying to decide what to do with them. Do we keep them? Sell them? Hmmm… We are hoping to breed again, starting next month which means more babies in May. What will we do with more babies? Oh the questions…
The garden has been unproductive this year. Maybe I’ve invested more time in livestock than the garden. There is always next year. This fall we have carrots, radishes, garlic, onions, a little celery, some broccoli and bok choy (assuming it didn’t die last night in the freeze). I’m having mixed results. Some things are doing great, some aren’t. I have lots to learn.
We are looking to stock up on firewood this year! Looks like it is going to be a cold winter again and our wood stove will go a long way in heating our house.
The Apex Farmer’s Market is still around. Having undergone leadership changes mid season, it made the last of our season a little bumpy. For those of you that are regular market customers, Thank you! for sticking out the season with us. We WILL be back next year! We are already in the planning stages and working on new vendors for the next season. If you know a farmer that might be interested, please have them go to ApexFarmersMarket.com for information and a vendor application. We look forward to a GREAT year next year.
Guess that’s it for now. At this point, I’m weary from the season and looking forward to getting through Thanksgiving and having a little bit of rest.