Hi Folks - Happy Spring!  It has been a while since our last update.  Anna and I both ended up in bed for about a week because of a bizarre virus that she and I got.  It knocked us out long enough to put a delay on an already busy spring.  We recovered to an overflowing inbox and lots of work to catch up on out on the farm.

We've finally finished the interior of the butcher shop, thanks to our interns Matt, Heather, and Isaac, who pulled the weight of the farm while I was out.  We have just made the first sausage in the on farm butcher shop, and now have all of our ingredients and supplies set up.  This means: slicing can begin!

We had hoped to have the shop finished about a month ago to begin slicing rewards, but here we are, and we thank you for your patience.  We will begin slicing and packing on Monday, which means you will receive an email sometime next week giving you an estimated delivery time for your goodies.  We will probably stagger deliveries due to the sheer volume of rewards.

Attached is a preview of one of the postcards some of you will be receiving.  Thanks to Bryan Chang for the great photos!

Thanks for your support!

Brooks, Anna, Kaj, and Leila

Hello everyone - spring has sprung with a vengeance in central Pennsylvania!  We've got green leaves, grass, cows back on pasture, and happy pigs and chickens.  

Thanks to everyone for responding so quickly to the reward survey, it helps us to begin scheduling when rewards will go out.  As long as our wall finishing stays on schedule in the butcher shop, we should have a space ready to slice and package meats by the end of next week!  That means rewards will be arriving soon after.  Thanks also go out to those of you who have replied and said that you can take your meat rewards at the farm or our farmers markets.  Save us some postage!

Scattered Seeds is 70% funded!!  Please help our friend Frankie exceed his goal so he can document his trip across the country to farms like ours.  He'll be bringing his friends, mentors, and Italian cultural ambassadors, Carlo and Gigia, along for their first trip to the U.S. to see the sustainable ag movement first hand.  One of their stops will be a huge party at our place on July 14th, to which you're all invited!  There will be salumi workshops, piglet petting, and of course, food and drink for all, including some whole roast pig.

Sugar Mountain Farm, a Vermont farm owned by Walter Jeffries and his family, is also building a federally inspected butcher shop on the farm!  Walter's plans include everything from slaughter to cured meats, for a true Pasture to Prosciutto experience!  Walter's blog has been one of the most helpful and inspiring resources for us while we increase our pig numbers and build infrastructure.  We have been consulting Walter for his experience in building catenary arches over his head in his house, and his shop, with the hopes that we can build our own thin-shell ceiling in our drying room.  

Please help these friends exceed their goals and realize their good food dreams!

Brooks, Anna, Leila, and Kaj

Hello all you local food supporters.  This one is a very important update.  Now that we've completed our project (on kickstarter, anyway), we've been hearing more and more about other wonderful local food projects around the area, and one in particular that is really close to our home, and possibly close to yours!

Scattered Seeds, a documentary project by Francesco Tripoli, aka Frankie, is a road movie that explores cross-cultural celebrations within the sustainable food movement.  Basically, two of Frankie's inspirations in food and life are coming to the US from Italy to experience a tour of farms dedicated to clean, healthy, humane food production.  Like us!  Throughout the trip, there will be farm dinners, parties, tours, and general good food and drink.

Now is your chance to be a part of the whole thing from the start.  Frankie, Carlo, and Gigia, will be visiting and partying at our place in July this summer, to be documented for Scattered Seeds.  Several other lucky farms from Maine to California will be included in the film.  Help get the project going by either participating in the project on kickstarter, or eating and drinking with our guests.  The project is so close to home, for us, in fact, that Frankie has recently agreed to work with us through the summer, salting and curing meat!  So help a brother out and get this thing off the ground.

A couple of spring photos to get you thinking about the green grass again - our pigs back on pasture, recently moved from the deep bedding in the barn, and one of our newest additions - a Devon calf a few hours old!  We're working on lots of stuff at the moment - watering system for all the animals, finishing the shop, and now, getting quotes for our project.  We will hopefully finish the interior in the next couple weeks and move on to the aging room project when that is finished.  More photos of the inside to come.

Also to come soon is the survey for our project, asking your preference for rewards.  There may be some delay due to the volume of rewards, but we'll let you know as we get through the donor list and parse out when things get shipped.  Thanks for your patience and support in good, clean food!

Enjoy the Spring,

Brooks, Anna, Kaj and Leila

What an amazing way to finish!  We almost doubled our goal thanks to all of you, and as some of you have stated in your comments, now the real work begins.  We never expected such a wonderful response from so many people and we're humbled by the fact that you have all invested in us and a cleaner, more responsible food system.

In the coming days and weeks, you will receive contact from us about your address, etc. as we prepare to fulfill rewards.  We will also let you know if there is any delay in fulfillment of said rewards due to the high volume of donors :)  

Most of our on-farm shop is complete at this point, and we will be cleaning up the construction a bit and taking some pictures as we prepare to break ground for the aging room.  We're working with a local concrete contractor to pour the walls, floor, and ceiling, and the whole facility will be covered by earth so we get the benefit of the stabilizing temperature of earth.  Pictures of all of these things will be on our facebook page and sent to you through updates on kickstarter.  

I can't say enough how fortunate we feel to have the support you all have offered in financial backing, words, and action (asking to become long-time buyers of our product).  We hope this trend continues for us and for other clean food producers, as we see it as one solution to a broken system.

In more happy news, I woke up this morning to two litters of piglets!  Funny how the world works....we only have 9 sows and two of them decided to celebrate getting our funding by having babies :)  Pictures to come soon!

Our warmest thanks,
Brooks, Anna, Leila and Kaj

Well, it has been way too long since our last update.  We generally spend the winter trying to find some downtime, reading old issues of farming magazines that sat neglected during the peak season, and catching up on the little things.

This year, however, is the first we've spent on the farm we purchased last April (coincidentally, or not, depending on how you think, the same day our second child was born!), and the time spent making due with substandard infrastructure makes things go frustratingly slow.  So, instead of resting this winter, we're 'plowing through' and building the infrastructure we need in order to make work more efficient during the season.  This can get to be a real drain, as the peak season hours generally means working daybreak to 8-10pm and hustling like a mad man (and woman!).  So to continue as much as possible through winter is tough.  Enter the PASA conference....

Every year in February, the Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture hosts the annual "Farming for the Future Conference."  Its a meeting of farmers, butchers, and consumers who are all interested in changing the food system for the better.  We attended talks on CSA management, intern/apprentice relationships, multispecies grazing, farm financial planning, and of course, salumi production :)  Needless to say, we were invigorated by the camaraderie of the farmers and their encouragement and support for our kickstarter project.  So, if you're in the east and you're looking for more good food people, here is a quick list of folks we saw at the conference who helped boost our energy for the winter:

Spiral Path Farm - Organic veggie CSA and a HUGE inspiration for us in farming
Keswick Creamery - on-farm cheese making and lots of other goodies
Forks Farm - pasture-raised meats and everything else in central PA
Birchrun Hills Farm - also cheese - note the theme, these folks are taking a farm-produced good and turning it into a shelf-stable, delicious and nutritious product.  sound familiar??
Earth Springs Farm - more organic veggies, lots of Asian varieties
Georgia's Finest Organic Farms - beautiful organic produce in the south
Essex Farm - full food CSA in upstate NY
Polyface Farm - Joel Salatin, the original grass innovator in VA
Jujo Acres - Grassfed beef and an inspiration to us
Wild Purveyors - taking on the logistical side of sustainable food
Freshfarm Markets - Marketing farmers like us for years in the DC area!
Fair Food Philly - Selling delicious farm products in the city of brotherly love
Elderberry Pond - another inspiration for us: farmers who REALLY change the food system
Sugar Mountain Farm - also family farming pigs and more and ALSO building a USDA shop on farm!
Blooming Glen Farm - Interns turned farmers who run an organic veggie CSA and gave lots of great advice on people management

Overwhelmed?  That's just a little taste of PASA.  Comment with your favorite local farms and link to them so we can all benefit from the diversity of food producers out there.  

Brooks, Anna, Kaj and Leila