The Weblog
This page contains news, event information, and other items added by Ian and Adam, the resident farmers at Old 99. We send out a message every week, but most are set with a delete date about two weeks later. I archive some of the posts if they have content other than weekly availability of produce and meat.
You can send me questions too, which if they are of a general nature, I can post to this Old99 blog.
Old 99 Farm, week of July 13 2014
The season of bounty has arrived, new crops to harvest each week. Raspberries, vegetable marrow, zucchini, squash blossoms, kohlrabi, beet, cucumber, are the latest.
Now’s the seasonal test of supporting your local farmer, whoever that may be.
Case in point, eggs. I have moved my price up and down as the hens are more or less productive, to keep supply and demand in some balance. But as you well know I don’t offer the produce of my farm at lowest prices, and it needs to be reminded that shopping for bargains is at odds with buying food local, direct and in season. If you buy eggs and you come here for other things, why not buy eggs too? Too expensive? Sure if you compare to the $3.50/doz eggs offered the Hamilton Market and elsewhere. If you can’t convince yourself of the nutritional value of eggs from organically fed, free range (on pasture 24/7) chickens, then you surely won’t see value in the better lifestyle of my hens, or that I keep them two years instead of one (egg production per bird drops by half but they eat the same). Nor will it matter to you that I don’t have automatic feeder and waters, so I have to walk twice a day to the eggmobile to feed and gather eggs, which amounts to about 20 minutes a day for caregiving. And the benefit to my farm fertility and ecological impact of pastured chickens won’t count for much, I wouldn’t expect.
So if you can’t see fit to pay a price for eggs that accounts for all these benefits, albeit hard to quantify, maybe you could ‘dollar cost average’ like they advise in the stock market: buy a few dozen here at my price and a few at the supermarket price such that your average cost of eggs is within your budget and conscience. How about that?
I have three beeves at the butcher, one steer and two yearlings, so-called baby beef. Quarters (50 lb)will be available starting July 31st. So far I have not changed my price from last year, at $5.00/lb hanging weight. Ground beef is is priced higher now at $6.50. Some steaks are up too.
We took our first honey crop off last week and now have liquid and comb honey for sale. Very fragrant, light in colour, delectable. Bring a jar, swap a jar. Same price as last year at $15/L ($12/kg) for liquid honey in 1 L mason jars.
Healthy eating,
Ian and Camelia
PS you should make a trip to the farm just to see the garden; it’s luscious. And the Maremma Pups are now 6 weeks old and full of life and curiosity.