Dave’s butchering.
Yep. We got a high tunnel this last year. It’s all planted and productive, and we’re excited!!! Lately, me and the dog are harvesting and eating peas, carrots, radishes, and lettuce. Dog is suspicious of lettuce. Has a surprising affinity for French Breakfast radishes.
New lambs. New high tunnel. New dog. Long winter!
Organic winter fertilizing: we clean out the barn bedding manure pack, then apply the aged manure to the pastures with the manure spreader to improve soil quality and pasture health for the spring growing season.
A walk around the farm to visit some of the locals. Produced by the farmers' niece and nephew at Fuzzy Dragon Productions.
Our farm uses livestock to improve land and pasture quality—cows are part of the process. Large animals in the managed grazing rotation help keep everything in check.
GRASS-FED BEEF ON THE MENU NOW
Cuts, dog bones, and burger for sale
Whole animal butchery offers exciting opportunities to be creative with our menu and use every bit of the animals we raise. From premium cuts to scraps, bones to fat, almost everything can be made into useful products that bring tremendous flavor and help us reduce our waste.
There are some unique challenges associated with it as well, like creating enough inventory of a certain cut for select dishes. But this challenge is also an invitation for creativity and fun. Chef specials allow for small quantities of interesting cuts with tasty preparation to shine for a night. We also get to control the intensity of our stocks and create an abundance of cooking additions that are invaluable to our kitchen.
It starts with the whole animal and takes on new meaning with the careful intention of a knife, or saw, or bandsaw, as seen in the video below. The freedom and greater depth of understanding gained from whole animal butchering makes the long process all worth it!
Click to play video
We had been excitedly awaiting the last of this season’s kids to arrive - especially from a farm favorite, Poppy Seed. With her striking coloration of black and white spots and splashes, she was sure to pop out some ADORABLE babies - and sure enough, she did not disappoint! Below are side by side pictures of Poppy Seed with her baby Peppercorn, who is a spitting image of her mother. Her other baby, Dill, is just as cute, with a friendly and playful personality. The family roams in the pasture with our other new mothers and their own fluffy kids. The mothers like to graze together while the kids compete in jumping contests and perform their shenanigans, finally collapsing in a giant baby goat pile for their owners to fawn over and photograph.
All is well on the Farm and, finally, all kids are accounted for this season!
Blaze and Bambi finally popped out some kids, and they’re pretty darn cute! At 9pm on Tuesday, April 7th, Blaze introduced twins to the world, both holding true to her colors and markings. The girl had a little trouble with her front leg, but a quick homemade brace later and she is good as new. She is now found bouncing around her brother and trying to climb her patient mom.
Bambi gave birth around midnight that same Tuesday, but not before trying to steal Blaze’s freshly cleaned and pre-birthed kids. I don’t blame her for wanting to skip a step and get to the fun part, but she still had a journey ahead of her. We put the kidnapping to rest by creating a special delivery room just for Bambi, which she enjoyed much more once her triplets were born and more than happy to occupy her attention. Bambi’s three kids came out striped, spotted, and marbled, making a dynamic baby goat pile to fawn over during nap time.
The baby goat herd is strong, but we are still waiting on more to come! They are sure to be welcomed wholeheartedly by their future playmates when they do.
If EVERYbody on the farm got to vote anyway…but we are ALL excited about grazing! On the farm, keeping the animals healthy and well fed (AKA '“happy”) is always the goal, so when the temperatures warm and the grass springs to life we all get energized. One of our goals at The Blue Goat Farm is to raise local, sustainable, high quality products for The Blue Goat Restaurant. How we manage grazing plays a key role in the “sustainable” part of that equation. We manage our livestock with the goal of IMPROVING the environment on the farm - every year the land is a little “healthier.” By that I mean more robust and diverse pasture growth, improved soil health, improved moisture retention, extended growing season, increasingly healthy forage/lifestock/wildlife, increased diversity of life by every measure. ONE of the ways we accomplish this is through the practice of high intensity rotational grazing (to the degree appropriate to the specific area). Sustainability is the goal….and these critters are eager to help (they do love to graze but it is a lot of work - so sometimes they take a break)…and hopefully everybody benefits.
On the farm this is one of the most exciting times of the year! The sun is out, the grass is growing and the animals are multiplying.
Ten lambs and a calf named Chloe so far. Expecting goat kids starting next week.
Unfortunately The Blue Goat Restaurant is closed - but the The Blue Goat Farm is bursting at the seams with life - quite literally - and the enthusiasm of these young critters is infectious….oops…sorry… poor word choice.
Let’s go with INSPIRING. We can all use some inspiration right now and these young critters are full of it!
Early spring foraging at Blue Goat Farm—wild nettles are in!