Best Chicken Ever!

Colonel’s Blog, Earthdate 18 May 2023…

Hey Y’all!

Happy Thursday from Air2Ground Farms! It’s another beautiful Spring day in the Ozarks. The animals are doing well. At last count we have 12 lambs, with more each time we count. We gave the ewes some hay to supplement the grass on the hill but they are getting ready to move on. Maybe tomorrow, we will expand their paddock to contain all of the hill and that will last a couple of days but then we will get them moving again. The beef herd and piglets are both great! The beef chicks are getting ready for their move onto the pasture. We will move them outside in the next couple of days. The last incubated chicks are going to move out at the same time. We are reclaiming our garage from the poultry! We took a pause from incubating eggs. We will resume at some point, but are ready for a break from chicks. The garden is doing really well. We put straw down in the valleys between the rows and around all of the plants in the rows. It will help keep the ground cool and moist as the temps continue to rise. We finished bagging and freezing the birds this morning and are about to leave to get another load of pallets.

A couple of folks have asked about where we can sell the chicken we just processed. Unlike other livestock, poultry (to include rabbits) can be processed on farm for sale. The federal and state laws allow for this with an exemption to the normal processing rules. The poultry exemption we applied for through the state of Missouri allows us to process up to 1,000 birds (no limit for rabbits) per year for sale within the state of Missouri. If we were to desire for our birds to be sold outside the state, we would have to take them to a federally inspected processing plant. The closest one we have been able to find is 4 hours away and they are quite expensive. We decided that we would not go that route with the knowledge that we will be limited to sales within Missouri. We are still required to process the birds under sanitary conditions and keep records of the processing and sales. We had an inspector come to the farm and discuss our operation and then he granted us the exemption to allow us to process the birds. It is unfortunate that we cannot ship our poultry outside the state because it tastes awesome! The pics today are of 2 of the smallest birds we packaged yesterday. We opened the package, seasoned them with lemon juice and Greek Seasoning, and put them on the gas grill for an hour. They are amazing! They are juicy, tender, and full of flavor. We are very happy with the result and can honestly tell folks that it is the best chicken we have ever tasted. Of the entire operation, the one debrief item that we discussed was that next time, we will freeze some bags of water before hand instead of buying ice. This time, we bought 12x 20 pound bags of ice, which added about $0.75 per bird to our cost. We will try making our own ice to cut down that expense. Overall, we declare the Pastured Poultry Processing a resounding success.

Local Farm Report for 17 May 2023:

Harvest:

32 Chicken eggs

13 Duck eggs

0 Goose eggs

6 1/4 gallons of milk

71 amazing Pastured Chickens are now in the freezer—had 73 but we ate 2!

Cheers!

Psycho & Shelley