Picking up Pastured Poultry & Delivering a Single Sheep

It’s been a busy weekend, and it’s not even over yet since we’ve still got Memorial Day!

Friday afternoon I went out the back roads through places I’ve never been, and ended up at Mountain Fork Farm to pick up my order of pastured broilers.

Yes, I know we have chickens here on our farm. And yes, I thought about raising some for the freezer. There’s just one catch, but it’s a BIG catch. If I raise them, I have to process them, which is a nice way of saying I have to chop their heads off, scald, pluck and gut each chicken. I’ve done it in my time, but at this stage I don’t have the stamina for such a big project, so I decided to support some other farmer who does.

It was a nice drive, and what I saw of the farm was gorgeous. They had a canopy set up a little ways down their driveway, right before you go through the gate to their property, with chickens in coolers ready for pickup. I wish I’d thought to ask how many acres they have. It has to be pretty good sized, because I couldn’t even see their house from where I was.

The first thing you see is a big greenhouse in a field to the right of the driveway. They also sell a wide variety of vegetables that are grown using sustainable agriculture methods, so no doubt get a lot of use from the greenhouse.

They have a shed not far from the greenhouse with big coolers for the chickens and such.

There was a big field to the left, and the road winds on back through the trees. I could hear chickens way off, and I know from their website they raise turkeys, Berkshire hogs, Dexter cattle and horses. I was disappointed not to see any of that, but maybe I’ll be able to go back again another time.

Saturday I spent catching up on work in the house, with laundry and cleaning and baking a couple of Cherry-Orange coffee cakes, several pizza crusts, bread for us, and “Birdie bread” – made with whole grains and veggies, cut up in cubes, and fed to my picky parrot.

Today we delivered a ewe to a friend’s farm way out back of beyond. You even have to drive through a creek to get to the farm. I reckon they don’t go anywhere during hard rains! They were supposed to be home by mid-morning, having gone to a Fiber Festival earlier this weekend. We got there mid-afternoon, but nobody greeted us but the dogs.

Of course, that’s a pretty big greeting, considering they are HUGE Great Pyrenees, and there were about ten of them prancing around us. They will not, however, win any awards for vicious watchdogs, as they were far more interested in seeing if we would pet them. Of course, we’ve been there before, but even the young pups we’d not seen before were eager for their share of attention.

We wandered around the yard for a while. The dogs were all barking and the one inside was going nuts. I knocked at the door. No answer. What to do???

Fortunately, they have several pens, and there was one unoccupied behind the house, complete with shade tree, so we put the ewe in there, got her a bucket of water, left a note in the screen door, and went back home.

The funny thing is, a couple hours after we got home Kim called me. I figured she was going to comment on the new sheep and tell me where she’d been. Wrong! I said, “Did you find the present we left for you?”

Turns out she hadn’t, and she’d been home the whole time. I’m not sure where she was working, but her mother was in the house and never realized we were out there, or unloading sheep in the pen right by the house. I figured there was no way they could NOT know we were there considering how the dogs were carrying on, including the one in the house. We’d left a note in the screen door and left a sheep, so there’s no denying we were there!

At any rate, the sheep got delivered, and I got to check out a bunch of the ewes and lambs she had running around.

We’ll do the check and registration thing to each other through the mail, so … all’s well that ends well?

We tried a different route home, and I couldn't resist snapping a picture of this lovely red barn we passed. Oh… and Robin… you won’t believe how many wild turkeys we saw on the way to and from their farm! They never stood still long enough for a picture, but I promise, we really did see LOTS of them!