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