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Surviving the Drought of ‘07
This summer was
marked by daily prayers for rain and wisdom to
know how to feed the animals if the much needed moisture did not come. The
hourly rechecking at weather.com for some type of hope that the drought
would be coming to an end finally brought the weather forecast ban to the
Apple home. Unfortunately even with the intermittent promise of that
desperately needed manna from heaven we barely received enough rain to keep
the grass alive. The entire summer seemed like a flurry of “day’s without
rain,” and the
enormous task of maintaining our grass fed cattle and sheep with
less than 3 inches of rain in 3 months was sometimes overwhelming.
The majority of
this job fell on Mark’s shoulders and each day we wondered how long the
pastures could sustain the animals before
we would have to begin feeding hay. Thankfully, we were able to
rotate the pastures enough to keep everyone healthy and somewhat happy.
By God’s grace, the cows looked and produced well, even though the pastures
looked and produced poorly.
One experiment
which showed much promise for future years was a plot of rape seed we
planted in a 10 acre sacrifice pasture. Rape is a cousin of the turnip and
it grew, and regrew all summer, without rain. Our sheep and dry cows were
on the verge of being too fat thanks to this small plot.
Due to the success
of that experiment, we have planted 10 acres of turnips and oats, for
winter feed and I imagine we will never be without a plot of rape or turnips
again on the farm. We also had a friend drill in 64 acres of triticale to
hopefully help make up for the lack of available hay for
winter. We hope to graze this
Cows Foraging through snow
this fall and very early spring.
Another worthy note
in relation to the drought is the price of hay. Most predictions put hay
prices at least double and possibly triple the usual price. Although we
felt that we had planned our upcoming winter for sufficient hay, our
supplier decided to keep his hay to feed to his own cows and that has left
us searching for suitable feed for our cattle. We are looking into
purchasing a load of hay from Wisconsin to supplement what we were able to
put up ourselves.
The largest
challenge during the drought was fattening our beef cattle. Last year we
butchered 27 steers for our store and this year only 4 have been fattened
sufficiently for butchering. This has put an enormous strain on our
pastures and has been a challenge to keep beef in the store at all times.
Thankfully, Roger Sharritt rented his pastures to us for our beef cattle and
that alone sustained the beef herd. Without those pastures, we cannot
imagine that we would not
have been forced to sell part of the herd.
This winter we look
forward to some much needed moisture to keep the microbes in the store
thriving and roots of the grass alive. Hopefully, next year will find us in
grass up to our knees!
The Incredible, Edible Egg
Along
with all of the challenges of this past growing season, we found ourselves
tangling with, and being outsmarted by, several little varmints that
stressed our feathered girls. Several raccoons and skunks took a liking to
our system of keeping the girls loose in the pastures with the cattle.
While this system provides eggs with deep orange yolks, it is also a major
chore to keep the critters from munching on a hen or two each night. Our
girls stopped giving eggs several times this summer due to stress, and now
with the declining daylight they have stopped altogether. We have moved
them indoors, (with full access to the great outdoors) to pamper them with
new delicacies and to protect them from more marauding skunks, coons and the
like.
We now
harbor 350 pretty little layers that will hopefully give up their delicious
eggs by the hundreds within the month. We are currently collecting eleven
dozen eggs daily so eggs should be in great supply in the store!
Our New Store Brings Many
New Customers
With
six months under our belt in our new store we have seen tremendous growth in
our customer base. Finding ourselves jumping from full time farmers to
retail shop owners has been quite a journey, and the learning curve has been
somewhat intimidating at times . The daily tasks of ordering, stocking and
pricing the products from our suppliers has been quite a challenge and we
thank you, wholeheartedly, for your patience.
Keeping the store well stocked has definitely been a huge challenge
for us this past six months. We have found ourselves ordering certain
products 10 times that we only ordered twice last year. We will try to do
our best to keep all of our customers satisfied. If you have any comments
or suggestions that will help us to provide a better shopping experience,
please feel free to contact us. Our store is open between the hours of
9:00am and 6:00pm. Please remember that the animals are still our primary
focus on the farm and with winter ahead we will be spending more hours
tending to the many needs of the farm.
We
would like to thank all of our customers who have literally weathered the
storms with us while our store was located in our trailer. Hopefully, the
days of shopping while shivering in the freezing winters and sweating in the
sweltering summers is a thing of the past.
Changes at the Swiss Connections
A
glance into the refrigerator at the Apple Family Farm Store may generate
some questions about the new look of the Swiss Connection cheeses.
Last
October, Alan and Mary Yergerlehner had the opportunity to travel to Italy
and Switzerland thanks to our local Slow Food convivium. During that trip,
Alan caught a renewed vision to move his cheeses further into the realm of
“artisan”. Many of his cheeses are now aged in wedges and are no longer
aged in plastic but covered in a wax to allow for a more natural rind. The
cheddar is pressed in a cheesecloth cover, known as “bandage”, which brings
the process back to a more European version of the true “Cheddar”.
Many
of the names have also been changed, to protect the innocent, but you will
still find all of your favorite Swiss Connection cheeses, just with a little
tweaking. The mild cheddar ,now known as “Meadow Creek Kaese”, is a little
drier with more of a deep cheddar flavor and the Gouda is now called
“Flora”, again, somewhat drier with a fuller flavor.
Changes at AppleFamilyFarm.com
Beginning this week, some new changes can also be seen at
our website,
www.applefamilyfarm.com.
Our front page will now garner a host of topics to help our
customers keep up to date with the on-going activities on
the farm, as well in the store. We
will list items that are out of
stock and estimated dates of arrivals to help you plan your
trips to farm. We will also post dates of interest such as
cooking classes and farm events.
We
sincerely thank you for all of your wonderful support.
Bon
Appetite!
Mark,
Debbie, Brayden and Rhayna
Aaron and Alyssa
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This summer was marked by daily prayers for rain and
wisdom to know how to feed the
animals if the much needed moisture did not come. The hourly rechecking at
weather.com for some type of hope that the drought would be coming to an end
finally brought the weather forecast ban to the Apple home.
Unfortunately even with the intermittent promise of that desperately
needed manna from heaven we barely received enough rain to keep the grass
alive. The entire summer seemed like
a flurry of “day’s without rain,” and the enormous task of maintaining our
grass fed cattle and sheep with less than 3 inches of rain in 3 months was
sometimes overwhelming.
The majority of this job fell on Mark’s shoulders and
each day we wondered how long the pastures could sustain the animals before
we would have to begin feeding hay.
Thankfully, we were able to rotate the pastures enough to keep everyone
healthy and somewhat happy. By God’s
grace, the cows looked and produced well, even though the pastures looked
and produced poorly.
One experiment which showed much promise for future
years was a plot of rape seed we planted in a 10 acre sacrifice pasture.
Rape is a cousin of the turnip and it grew, and regrew all summer, without
rain. Our sheep and dry cows were on
the verge of being too fat thanks to this small plot.
Due to the success of that experiment, we have planted 10 acres of turnips
and oats, for winter feed and I
imagine we will never be without a plot of
rape or turnips again on the farm.
We also had a friend drill in 64 acres of
triticale to hopefully help make up for the lack of available hay for
winter.
We hope to graze this this fall and very early spring.
Another worthy note in relation to the drought is the
price of hay. Most predictions put
hay prices at least double and possibly triple the usual price.
Although we felt that we had planned our upcoming winter for
sufficient hay, our supplier decided to keep his hay to feed to his own cows
and that has left us searching for suitable feed for our cattle.
We are looking into purchasing a load of hay from
Wisconsin to supplement what we were able to put up ourselves.
The largest challenge during the drought was fattening
our beef cattle. Last year we
butchered 27 steers for our store and this year only 4 have been
fattened sufficiently for butchering.
This has put an enormous strain on
our pastures and has been a challenge to keep beef in the store at all
times. Thankfully, Roger Sharritt
rented his pastures to us for our beef cattle and that alone sustained the
beef herd.
This winter we look forward to some much needed
moisture to keep the
microbes in the store thriving and roots of the grass alive.
Hopefully, next
year will find us in grass up to our knees!
The Incredible, Edible Egg
Along
with all of the challenges of this past growing season, we found ourselves
tangling with, and being outsmarted by, several little varmints that
stressed our feathered girls. Several raccoons and skunks took a liking to
our system of keeping the girls loose in the pastures with the cattle.
While this system provides eggs with deep orange
yolks, it is also a major chore to keep the critters from munching on a hen
or two each night. Our girls stopped giving eggs several times this summer
due to stress. We have moved them indoors, (with full access to the great
outdoors) to pamper them with new delicacies and to protect them from more
marauding skunks, coons and the like. We now harbor 350 pretty little layers
that will hopefully give up their delicious eggs by the hundreds within the
month. We are currently collecting
eleven dozen eggs daily so eggs should be in great supply in the store for
this Christmas season!!
Veggies Galore
This
past season was our best ever for produce, despite the drought. Aaron and
Alyssa proved to be Master Gardeners and the store was filled for a good
part of the season with delicious produce. Next season Aaron and Alyssa
will add a CSA to the farm for produce, look for the application in the
coming months. In order to ensure that all who desire fresh organic produce
have access to such, we will put a Work for Produce program in place which
will allow families to work in exchange for produce. Look for a much larger
selection of produce next year with many more exotic varieties for your
gastronomic delight!
Apple Family Farm Cooking
Classes
During the course of any
given day I am asked a myriad of questions pertaining to the understanding
of the “Basics”. Questions regarding dairy products, stock making, bread
making and such abound. In order to help our customers with these long lost
arts, we have begun to teach classes twice a month.
Debbie Lewandowski has
graciously offered to assist in this huge undertaking and this idea would
not have been realized without her encouragement, wisdom and vast culinary
knowledge. We are grateful beyond words for Debbie’s willingness to jump
into this new endeavor.
Thus far our classes
have included Dairy Products 101, Food Preservation, and Bread Making 101.
Upcoming classes include Holiday baking, Making Stock, Meat 101, Cheese
making 101 as well as repeats of our previous classes. Our class size is
limited to 8 people and we require payment in advance in order to hold your
place in the class. You may sign up on line at our website, or in the
store.
Our New
Store Brings Many New Customers
With
six months under our belt in our new store we have seen tremendous growth in
our customer base. Finding ourselves jumping from full time farmers to
retail shop owners has been quite a journey, and the learning curve has been
somewhat intimidating at times . The daily tasks of ordering, stocking and
pricing the
products from our suppliers has been quite a challenge and we thank you,
wholeheartedly for your patience.
Keeping the store well stocked has definitely been a huge challenge for us
this past six months. We have found ourselves ordering certain products 10
times
that we only ordered twice last year. We will try to do our best to keep
all of our
customers satisfied. If you have any comments or suggestions that will help
us to provide a better shopping experience, please feel free to contact us.
Our store is open between the hours of 9:00am and 6:00pm. Please remember
that the
animals are still our primary focus on the farm and with winter ahead we
will be spending more hours tending to the many needs of the farm.
We
would like to thank all of our customers who have literally weathered the
storms with us while our store was located in our trailer. Hopefully, the
days of shopping while shivering in the freezing winters and sweating in the
sweltering summers is a thing of the past.
Changes at the Swiss
Connections
A
glance into the refrigerator at the Apple Family Farm Store may generate
some questions about the new look of the Swiss Connection cheeses.
Last
October, Alan and Mary Yergerlehner had the opportunity to travel to Italy
and Switzerland thanks to our local Slow Food convivium. During that trip,
Alan caught a renewed vision to move his cheeses further into the realm of
“artisan”. Many of his cheeses are now aged in wedges and are no longer
aged in plastic but covered in a wax to allow for a more natural rind. The
cheddar is pressed in a cheesecloth cover, known as “bandage”, which brings
the process back to a more European version of the true “Cheddar”.
Many
of the names have also been changed, to protect the innocent, but you will
still find all of your favorite Swiss Connection cheeses, just with a little
tweaking. The mild cheddar ,now known as “Meadow Creek Kaese”, is a little
drier with more of a deep cheddar flavor and the Gouda is now called
“Flora”, again, somewhat drier with a fuller flavor.
Kitty and Pups Healthy and
Happy
December 1st saw the birth of 8 healthy puppies at the Apple Family Farm.
First time Mama, Kitty, is proving to be a wonderful mother.
Once the pups are old enough to start wandering out of their cave (behind
the old store) we will move them to the petting area.
The puppies will be
ready to leave the farm by the end of January. Several of the puppies are
already sold but 4 are still available on a first come, first serve basis.
We wish you all the
best and thank you for your amazing support!
Mark, Debbie, Brayden,
Rhayna, Aaron and Alyssa
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