Colonel's Blog, Earthdate 8 Feb 2023...
Hey Y'all! Check out our website https://www.air2groundfarms.com where I added milk and eggs to the Neighborhood Shop for local purchase.
Happy rainy Wednesday from the farm! The top pic is Shelley and I after feeding alfalfa pellets to the lambs this morning during a bit of a break in the rain. The bottom pic is the three calves born in January enjoying their hay this morning. The animals were all good, with the hogs being extra muddy. They love it! Yesterday I quipped that really muddy plus two inches of rain equals really muddy...Ha!...the joke's on me as we are now under a flood watch. Turns out, really muddy plus two inches of rain equals flood. We have three dirt county roads that lead to the farm. Two have low-water bridges that can fairly quickly become impassable during flood conditions. (We now know where the adage "Lord willing and the creek don't rise" comes from.) The third, which we call "the high road" doesn't have a low-water bridge and stays accessible even during flooding conditions. We spent most of the day yesterday inside except to take a shipping container to town. We include shipping costs in our shipping variety packs. We make no money on that portion, just attempt to cover the cost. We plan for UPS 2-Day Air which has been running just under $50 for our large container if we buy the label through a third-party shipping site. Well, yesterday it was triple that price so we sent it UPS 3-Day for only 150% of the normal cost. Not sure what is going on other than everything is expensive right now. Yesterday, we also made yogurt and cheese and I worked on the website. Today we plan to spend most of the day inside doing more things with milk and continuing to work on the website and YouTube channel while it rains and storms anywhere from 2 - 3 1/2".
As you know, we want to add pastured poultry to our list of premium products we offer to our local community. There are no facilities that offer inspected poultry processing within 4 hours of our farm so we will process the poultry on our farm, which is perfectly legal as long as it is 1,000 birds or less per year...but.... The federal government regulates the poultry processing via US Code originating in 1906 with additions in 1957 and beyond. The regulation is interpreted and enforced by the United States Department of Agriculture-Food Safety and Inspection Service. That is further delegated to the individual states, and in Missouri, falls to the State of Missouri-Department of Agriculture-Division of Animal Health-Missouri Meat & Poultry Inspection Program. So, although the US Code provides an exemption for our exact situation, we must apply for that exemption through the State of Missouri. The Missouri Meat and Poultry Inspection Program will not allow the application for exemption to be submitted in any form or fashion other than to have a State Compliance Investigator physically present on your farm and fill out and sign the application in person. Thus, yesterday we welcomed Compliance Investigator John onto the farm and submitted our application. John was the epitome of kind and most of the time he was here we spent chatting about the common niceties one would expect when first meeting someone. He left us with our approved exemption to allow 1,000 birds or less poultry processing. Oh by the way, he also informed us that Missouri requires a Registration of Meat and Poultry Handlers, which he graciously approved for us. We are listed as a "Farm to Fork" Distributor/Wholesaler. I kind-of like the Farm to Fork moniker. Add these to our Federal Employer Identification Number, State of Missouri Articles of Organization into a Limited Liability Company, Missouri Business Tax Registration, Missouri State Business License, Missouri Egg Retailer license, and Missouri Egg Distributor license and you see we are quite the credentialed bunch! This begins my thoughts on Food Freedom. I leave you with a question: Are you free to consume anything you want?
Check out Shelley's recent YouTube Short, "New Holland doing the heavy lifting" and subscribe when you get there!
Local Farm Report for 7 Feb 2023:
Harvest:
22 Chicken eggs
8 Duck eggs
5 Gallons of milk
Sales:
N/A
Cheers!
Rich & Shelley
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