Hello Mailing Listers!

I have 10 lambs heading to the butcher on Feb 4th.  That means I need to clear some freezer space!  

SO...

Heres the DEAL!!!  OFFER GOOD UNTIL 2/3/13!  Get your grass-fed meat while its cheap!

7$ per package for ground lamb!  $10 per pound for leg of lamb!  $7 per pound for 4H Pork Sausage!  4$ per pound for ground beef!  

$100 Mystery Box O Meat!  Pork?  Beef?  Lamb?  Chicken?  Steaks and roasts and chops and whatever else might be lurking in the freezer may make it in there... 14-15 pounds of goodies.

Reserve your whole lamb today!  9$ per pound hanging weight.  They look fantastic right now, should be absolutely amazing.

I will be taking reservations for sides of beef.  Next summer is going to be very busy and I may be simply wholesaling our beef rather than selling retail cuts here at the farm.  SO...if you have a freezer and are interested in Belted Galloway Beef and you want a fantastic deal, reserve your side of beef today.  $6 per pound!  Cheap!  

Call me or email michael@greenakeys.com to set up an appointment to come on out.  

Michael

443-340-9986

Hi everyone!

We are pleased to extend our summer sale through Labor Day.  Join the meat CSA this weekend and pay only $300 for three months of meat!  After the sale, the price is rising to $400 so join this weekend and SAVE!

Prices for Thanksgiving turkeys are also going up.  Buy your Thanksgiving turkey by the end of the Labor Day weekend for only $80!!!  Starting Tuesday, the price increases to $100.  Then on November 1, the price rises again to $120 so buy early and SAVE!!!

We will be available all weekend, so give us a call or email us and come on out to the farm.  Dont wait, as more than half of our turkeys are already spoken for!!!  One price per bird, Hen or Tom.  Come on out! 

Gobble Gobble!!!!

Michael@greenakeys.com

443-340-9986 c

410-857-0357 h

2301 Cross Section Road, Westminster, MD 21158

Hello everyone on the Greenakeys.com mailing list!  HAPPY FOURTH OF JULY!

WE HAVE BEEF!!!  

CALL US 410-857-0357 or email michael@greenakeys.com to make an appointment to pick up!  We will be available all weekend.

The beef is back from the butcher.  An entire freezer and a half of the stuff.  So much we couldnt even use the center organizing divider thingy things because the meat wouldnt fit!  Needless to say, we have lots of wonderful beef, albeit a bit unorganized now.  But thats ok because...its fantastic!

We also have some of the best lamb cuts we have ever had.  The last five lambs were yearling ram lambs and boy, let me tell you, its just spectacular stuff.  Really top notch lamb.  Fabulous.  

And there are a few chickens available but we are starting to get low in inventory so get them while the supply lasts!

AND FOR THOSE OF YOU WHO WOULD LIKE BEEF STOCK WE HAVE A LIMITED SUPPLY OF BEEF BONES - $10 PER BAG

Come on over this weekend and pick up some fantastic Beltie Beef for your summer cookouts.  

Steaks, hot Italian beef sausage, lamb chops, ground beef, Philly Cheese Steak style chipped steak, rack of lamb, chuck roasts for barbecue beef, butterflyed leg of lamb, ground lamb, lamb shanks, beef short ribs and whole chickens!

Prices (Per Pound):

BEEF

Ground Beef - 5

Hot Italian Beef Sausage - 10

Chip Steak (philly cheese steak style) - 8

NY Strip steaks - 22

Rib Eye - 20

Filet Mignon - 35

Sirloin Tip Steak- 16

Beef Chuck Roasts/Arm Roasts - 8

Beef Short Ribs - 8

BEEF JERKY - 4 OZ PACKAGES FOR $8 EACH

LAMB

Rack of Lamb - 30

Ground Lamb - 10

Lamb Chops - 20

Leg of Lamb - 16

Lamb Shoulder roast- 12

Lamb Shanks -8

CHICKENS

WHOLE CHICKENS - $20 each

CSA Option:

3 months meat CSA with about 15 pounds per month for $300 payable up front.

Due to a scheduling conflict with both of my daughters and a couple of important people who have promised to help process, I have decided that we will be processing on SUNDAY MAY 20 at 8:00 AM  I know this conflicts with church for some folks.  Im sorry about that.  If you are interested in helping please feel free to come over early and leave when you have to or stop by in the afternoon.

SUNDAY!

Also, I need to apologize for the multiple emails this morning.  For whaterver reason the small farm central server has issues with sending emails when I use my Safari browser.  I was not trying to spam everyone!  Im using a different browser so I hope the issue has been resolved.

See you on Sunday morning!

Michael

Chicken processing is scheduled for this Saturday.  Please let me know if you are interested in helping.  We can always use more hands. I will be giving free chickens to those who help out for the day.  Rain or shine.

Processing day begins at 8 am and will last until the birds are finished.  Depending on numbers, we will probably finish about 3pm.  We need help with both the eviscerating and also the bagging and labeling so if you feel squeamish about the process, never fear!  There will be something you can do to help.

We only have about half of the birds spoken for so far, so spread the word!  The best chickens you have ever eaten will be available for pick up either this Saturday after processing or all day Sunday.  The price?  $20 per bird.  They will be in the 3-5 pound range with a few much bigger than that.  They are starting to look like white footballs.  Well, wet white footballs.  :)

They have been fed organically, raised on pasture and are ready to go.  The birds look fantastic and it should be a great weekend for processing.  Come on out!  

Michael

Chicken processing is scheduled for this Saturday.  Please let me know if you are interested in helping.  We can always use more hands. I will be giving free chickens to those who help out for the day.  Rain or shine.

Processing day begins at 8 am and will last until the birds are finished.  Depending on numbers, we will probably finish about 3pm.  We need help with both the eviscerating and also the bagging and labeling so if you feel squeamish about the process, never fear!  There will be something you can do to help.

We only have about half of the birds spoken for so far, so spread the word!  The best chickens you have ever eaten will be available for pick up either this Saturday after processing or all day Sunday.  The price?  $20 per bird.  They will be in the 3-5 pound range with a few much bigger than that.  They are starting to look like white footballs.  Well, wet white footballs.  :)

They have been fed organically, raised on pasture and are ready to go.  The birds look fantastic and it should be a great weekend for processing.  Come on out!  

Michael

Chicken processing is scheduled for this Saturday.  Please let me know if you are interested in helping.  We can always use more hands. I will be giving free chickens to those who help out for the day.  Rain or shine.

Processing day begins at 8 am and will last until the birds are finished.  Depending on numbers, we will probably finish about 3pm.  We need help with both the eviscerating and also the bagging and labeling so if you feel squeamish about the process, never fear!  There will be something you can do to help.

We only have about half of the birds spoken for so far, so spread the word!  The best chickens you have ever eaten will be available for pick up either this Saturday after processing or all day Sunday.  The price?  $20 per bird.  They will be in the 3-5 pound range with a few much bigger than that.  They are starting to look like white footballs.  Well, wet white footballs.  :)

They have been fed organically, raised on pasture and are ready to go.  The birds look fantastic and it should be a great weekend for processing.  Come on out!  

Michael

Chicken processing is scheduled for this Saturday.  Please let me know if you are interested in helping.  We can always use more hands. I will be giving free chickens to those who help out for the day.  Rain or shine.

Processing day begins at 8 am and will last until the birds are finished.  Depending on numbers, we will probably finish about 3pm.  We need help with both the eviscerating and also the bagging and labeling so if you feel squeamish about the process, never fear!  There will be something you can do to help.

We only have about half of the birds spoken for so far, so spread the word!  The best chickens you have ever eaten will be available for pick up either this Saturday after processing or all day Sunday.  The price?  $20 per bird.  They will be in the 3-5 pound range with a few much bigger than that.  They are starting to look like white footballs.  Well, wet white footballs.  :)

They have been fed organically, raised on pasture and are ready to go.  The birds look fantastic and it should be a great weekend for processing.  Come on out!  

Michael

Greetings mailing list peoples!

The baby chicks arrived yesterday.  I got a call at 7 am from the post office that the 200 chicks I ordered had arrived and were ready for pick up.  After getting the kids on the school bus, I motored into Westminster and picked up two big boxes of peeping peepers.  Chicks are able to go about 48 hours without eating or drinking after hatching.  They retain the egg yolk in their abodmens before hatching, this supplies them with the nutrients necessary for the first two days.  The boxes have many air holes and the chicks body heat keeps them warm in transit.

The brooder room was set up ahead of time.  As I took each chick out of the box, I dipped their beaks into the waterer.  The baby chicks need to be taught how to drink or they will dehydrate quickly.  They arent the smartest creatures in the world.  I dipped all 200 birds into the water and the baptism seems to have worked.  They all took multiple drinks before exploring their new world.  They have about 12 gallons of water available, many feet of feeder space and plenty of warm pine shavings for bedding. 

I have a special heating device called an Ohio Brooder that I built for the chicks.  Its a 4x4 box with two heat lamps inside.  The temperature stays about 90-92 degrees inside. Very warm for the chicks who need the heat since they dont have insulating feathers for another 3 weeks.  The chicks can self regulate their temperature needs by moving closer or further from the lamps.  When they are cold or stressed, they will peep.  Sometimes very loudly.  When I checked on them this morning, they were quiet as churchmice.  They are warm and happy.

Unfortunately, Im not warm and happy.  After a couple of phone calls and a trip to the feed store, I have found that the price of chicken feed has increased by about 50% this year, give or take.  Organic chicken feed is at an all time high.  Corn prices are through the roof.  Last year a bag of conventional feed was running between 9 and 11 dollars per bag, depending on when I purchased it.  This year, conventional feed is about 16 per bag and, gulp, Organic feed is...36 dollars per 50 pound bag!!!  Wow.  Talk about unsustainable.

Let me give you a basic idea of what a batch of 100 birds will eat in their lifetime.  Depending on circumstances, and there are many factors to consider, a bird will consume about 2.5 to 3 pounds of food for every pound of meat they produce.  Thats a rough estimate.  Efficency of forgaging, weather, temperature, health, stress, all can have a large impact on how well the birds convert their feed into weight.  But a good estimate is that 100 birds will eat 1 50 pound bag of feed the first week, then 2, then 3 per week, then 4, then 5 then 6 bags per week then about one 50 pound bag of feed per day for the rest of the time until they are ready to process.  A good estimate is about 35 bags or 1750 pounds of chicken feed to finish out 100 birds.  

So to feed 200 birds with conventional feed, it will cost about 1100 dollars for a batch of birds.  You can more than double that, almost $2500 in feed costs to grow out 200 birds on organic feed!  The birds themselves cost a dollar each.  So we are up to 2700, plus some additional housing costs, bedding, grit, and some homemade feeders and the costs are closer to 3000.  Then the processing costs hit, which, thankfully I can absorb most of it due to my owning a processing trailer.  Lets say, $2 per bird for processing.  (USDA processing is about $4 per bird)  If I can average $20 per bird, thats about a 4 pound dressed bird, we can gross about 4000 from 200 birds.  The total we can "make" is less than 900 for 8 weeks of work.  $125 dollars per week.  That job at Starbucks is looking better and better!

And the kicker is that these costs are figured for the Cornish Cross chicken, the ubiquitous chicken house bird that grows crazy fast.  Heritage breeds or slower growing hybrids are much less efficient in converting feed into meat.  Red feathered Freedom Ranger birds can take 10-12 weeks to grow out instead of 8 weeks for Cornish Cross.  Add in another 750 dollars in Organic feed for these birds and POOF!  No profits for Farmer Mike!

This isnt a rant, or whining about how farming doesnt pay.  Its simply an educational moment.  A chance to show our friends and customers and the public just what goes into what we do and what goes into the decisions we have to make.  Should I raise my birds with organic feed?  Should I raise my prices?  Will our customers pay more than $5 per pound for chicken?  Would I pay $5 per pound for chicken?  :)

Conventional grains have serious issues attached to them.  GMO feeds, pesticides, fungicides, herbicides, fuel, corporate ownership, etc. All of these issues are important to me.  However, its also important to be able to make enough money that raising the birds is worthwhile, and profitable.   You can see that raising chickens with conventional feed makes MUCH more sense from an economic perspective.  From a moral perspective, a sustainable perspective, it is a difficult decision.  What I find is that ultimately, poultry farming is not sustainable.  Feeding corn is not sustainable.  Even raising birds on pasture is not sustainable.  Its DEFINITELY superior, but not economically sustainable.

We will probably not be raising chickens for sale in the future.  We will still do small batches of turkeys for the holidays, as turkeys can forage for up to 30-50% of their diets where chickens will get at most 5-10% of their diet from what they forage.  Geese and ducks can derive even a higher percentage from what they forage.  Chickens, not so much.  Ive pretty much stopped eating chicken in my diet.  Other than chicken soup made from spend laying hens, I cant remember the last chicken I cooked!  Unless we raise them ourselves, we dont eat them.

I welcome feedback from everyone.  I would love to hear your thoughts and ideas and solutions and complaints!   Let us know what you think.  How much would you be willing to pay for a pasture raised chicken?  How important is organic versus conventional to you?  How often do you eat chicken at home?  Do you buy conventional chicken at the grocery store?  

Let us know!  

Michael

March Meat CSA pickups are ready.  If you purchased a share, come on out and pick up your next Box O' Meat.  

If you have not yet purchased a Meat CSA share, what are you waiting for!!!!  The Meat CSA is a rolling program where you can start at any time.  3 month packages start at $300 for 15 pounds of meat per month for 3 months. $600 for 30 pounds a month.

There are still 3 whole lambs available for purchase.  Easter is right around the corner so give us a call and we can reserve one of these 50 pound lambs for you.  $6.50 a pound for whole lambs until Easter!  We have several animals still available to send for processing so dont worry if we run out.

Pork arrives the first week of April!  We have purchased 2 pasture raised Berkshire hogs from Evermore Farm in Westminster.  Cant wait!  

The farm is humming right along.  The garlic has been growing beautifully, the pastures are greening up, the garden is tilled and flats of cauliflower and brussels sprouts are going in today.  Crazy weather means this may be a very tough year for gardening.  We will keep you updated with what we have for sale this year.  

Michael