How does our CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) work you ask??

This blog post will serve as a resource to hopefully answer many of your questions about participating in our CSA. All CSA's work a little different, we focus primarily on pasture-raised meats. We plan to expand our annual/perennial gardens and orchard each year in hopes of offering shares of organic fruit and vegetables.

You've probably come here because you want to source your food from a local, responsible producer. We employ a variety of different agricultural practices that respect and honor the life of plants, land and animals. Our approach is rooted in permaculture, regenerative agriculture, ecological agriculture, organic, no-till and ancient native wisdom.

Steep Mountain Farm offers limited quantities of beef, lamb, turkey, roaster chickens and eggs. As we expand our vegetable production, we'll offer veggie shares.

We strongly encourage and promote the concept of "nose-to-tail" consumption. This is the best way to honor and use the entire animal. There is much less waste, and it also gets you creative with your cooking of various different and less common cuts of meat such as a shoulder roast, ox-tail, tongue sweetbreads, bones, etc. Also, when you purchase an animal in whole or in part directly from a farm, it's often sold by "hanging weight". This means that after the animal has been eviscerated and skinned, it is weighed and you pay for that weight. The more want from that animal, such as bone-in cuts, soup bones, offal (organ meats), etc. the less you pay per pound in the end. When ordering, please specify if you’d like “nose-to-tail”, we’ll include some of the extraneous cuts and offal. But don’t worry, it won’t go to waste if you don’t. We donate surplus organ meats to a raptor rescue center in Driggs.

Beef and lamb: half, quarter, or whole??

Most couples and small families find a quarter beef to be enough. When ordering your beef, keep in mind that you’ll get more variety of cuts if you take a half beef or more. Our butcher also charges a small fee for quarter shares due to the extra work involved. For example, if you order a half beef instead of a quarter, you'll likely see a rib roast, a brisket, skirt steaks etc. in your package. Otherwise, these cuts will likely be turned into steaks, cubes or ground up.

For lamb, whole is better than half. We raise a Painted Desert/Dorper lamb which has excellent flavor and tenderness, but is a smaller breed. The average hanging weight on a lamb is usually around 35 to 40 lbs. A whole lamb provides more variety in cuts, such as whole loins and racks as well as chops, neck steaks, more stew, ground, etc.

A whole lamb won’t take up too much real-estate in your freezer.

Whole turkey or butchered turkey?

We offer Broad Breasted white turkeys and Red Bourbon heritage turkeys. Broad breasted turkeys are larger and great for holiday parties or parted out into cuts for using throughout the year. Heritage turkeys are a slower growing bird, with more proportionate bodies and more dark meat that tends to be richer.

Here are a few ways you may order your turkey.

·        Whole bird with giblets for your holiday style gatherings.

·        You may order a whole turkey, and for an additional butcher fee of $15, we’ll cut and wrap your bird into breasts, thighs, drumsticks, wings, giblets and carcass

·        We also offer individually priced breasts, thighs, legs, etc. by the pound (see order sheet)

Roaster Chickens

We raise three batches of red ranger roaster chickens per season. One is harvested in early-mid June, the second in September, and the third in October. The price is $4.25 per pound. We raise red rangers because they are overall a healthier and tastier bird that is good at foraging and moving about the pastures. They take a little bit longer to grow to butcher weight, but it's well worth the final product and the rangers don't have the health issues the white Cornish crosses typically have which are commonly used in production settings. 

There are 2 ways to buy chickens:

·        Whole roaster with giblets   

·        Cut up and packaged into breast, thighs, drumsticks, wings, giblets and carcass for an additional $10 fee.

Please specify when you'd like your poultry, or we'll spread your order over the three harvest dates.

Deliveries

We do meat pickups in SLC after every butcher date. We try to deliver poultry fresh, unfrozen when possible. Local pickups at the farm are always welcome and encouraged. We are also somewhat flexible and occasionally make special arrangements for home deliveries or accommodate different drop locations. Tara commutes along the Wasatch front almost weekly and does various drops of eggs, milk, soap and occasionally other farm goodies.

Deposits

The reason it's "Community Supported Agriculture", is because you will send us a deposit or a partial payment for the products you order. This reduces the amount of operating funds we need to invest at the beginning of the season and softens the burden on us, your farmers.

By sending us a deposit, you are securing and committing to your order. Your order is not secure until we have received a deposit.

Below are the deposit amounts for each individual product. (*redundant on the order form).

• Whole beef -            $600
• Half beef-                $400
• Quarter beef-           $200
• Whole lamb-            $100
• Half lamb-                $50
• Whole turkey-          $20
• Roaster chicken-      $5      *Each chicken requires a $5 deposit.

Also, if you wish to make payments toward your larger orders, after your deposit amount is fulfilled, we can arrange accepting smaller payments until you receive your order in the fall. For example, If you want a quarter beef that will end up costing around $700, you can pay $50+/- per month throughout the season, so by the time you receive it, it's mostly paid for. 

Final costs, what to expect. 

Here is a summary of what to expect for each product:

• Beef. If you order a qtr beef, you may expect to receive around 80 to 100 lbs or more of final cuts. qtrs typically cost anywhere from around $600 to $800.
• Lamb. Whole lamb will be around the $200 range, and you can expect around 25 to 30 lbs of final product.
• Turkeys. Broad breasted turkeys dress out from 18 to 22 lbs typically and end up costing around $100 - $125. Occasionally they get bigger, say 26+ lbs. which are great for parting out. Red Bourbon turkeys dress out much smaller at 12 to 16 lbs. They take longer to grow and are therefore more expensive. Expect your heritage bird to be about $80 - $100.
• Chickens. Our pastured roaster chickens typically dress out at 4 to 7 lbs. and end up costing about $17 to $30 each. 

Hopefully this has been informative. If you have any more questions, please feel free to email or call, we'd love to hear from you!

Year in reveiw

Well it's been over a year since we moved to Wellsville! And what a year it's been! We officially changed our name to Steep Mountain Farm, a regenerative agriculture project. We believe this better represents what we are and where we live. We live at the foot of the Wellsville Mountains, which happen to be the "steepest mountain range in North America"! We like to give homage to these mountains as they are beautiful, and they provide a whole lot for us including valuable resources and recreation.

It's been a while since we wrote any blogs, so it seems appropriate to refresh our explanation of what the heck we're doing here! Simply put, we are performing small-scale regenerative agriculture, which means that we are attempting to "regenerate" and improve the land, soils, bio-diversity, and habitat using organic and ecological practices. This is a big, long-term challenge that is important to us and many others that support our endeavors here. We're not into this for the money, (hehe, good thing!) we are into this for the love of being close to the land, and being closely connected to our actions and the consequences of our actions. This 11 acre parcel of land we purchased was quite depleted preceding our arrival, much like a lot of farm land these days. Conventional practice is to cut and remove all the yeild the land produces, then import chemical fertilizers repeatedly to gain yeild after yeild. We want to replenish the soils and get this land to a point where it is much more sustainable and fewer inputs are required. We've started with Animals, they play very important roles in ecology and the cycling of nutrients. Land left alone to rest without positive animal impact is slow to mature or recover. We are and will be developing land management plans using animals in a rotational system to regenerate our soil health. 

Last year, our first season at Steep Mountain Farm, we had four beef steers, four Nigerian dairy goats, 30 turkeys, and about 65 laying hens, and a handful of gentle-roosters. We also took on an additional 19 calf/cows for three months to add what we thought was the appropriate stocking rate for the amount of dry matter we had in our pastures. The impacts the animals had were immediate and obvious, especially with the poultry. A while after the animals were moved and the pasture given a chance to rest, things were much greener and grew faster!

                                                       

We installed a "kitchen garden" using a sheet-mulch and cover crop approach after having the chickens on the area first. We'll expand our gardens and orchards as time and finances allow. We are not super keen on the idea of being slaves to annual vegetable production, so we will likely focus on a wealth of diversity of perennial plants, with annuals allowed to grow intermittently. 

We also completed our 'Sharn' construction using a used 40' shipping container, reclaimed barn lumber, straw-bales, and a handful of new materials. The Sharn is part goat and hay barn, part shed, where things like the tractor and other implements live, as well as an assortment of other tools, parts and materials. 

                        

Several other goals were accomplished last season, one more worth mentioning is the grant we recieved for a high tunnel! In 2017 as soon as the ground thaws, we will erect the 96' by 30' tunnel and begin preping the soil for cultivation.

For the time being (the depth of winter), we are just chugging along, trying to keep animals warm and alive, making plans for the coming season, and getting out in the mountains when we can for some ski adventures.

Stay tuned for more winter blog writting! (maybe)

 

Prepping for Cows

It’s strangely gratifying to have cows on the property. We see them outside through the windows, munching on grass or lying down and chewing their cud. They’re peaceful. When we walk to visit to the cows, they’re always waiting for us. Clearly they’re accustomed to getting grain when we visit them, but it is still warming to see them waiting to greet us. Cows are cool.

We believe that if we manage them correctly, they will be beneficial for our land and for the planet (that ought to raise some eyebrows from the enviro-crowd). They will provide meat that was raised cleanly and compassionately to us and our community. They also provide their own adventure, that of owning cows.

Still, as freaking rad as they are, cows aren’t meant for everyone. For the few who are considering adding cows to their lives and for the merely curious, we offer these considerations gleaned from our experience on preparing for cows:

1.       Make sure that you really want cows. This isn’t something that you do because baby cows are cute or because you have a few extra acres land or because you think it’ll be a good way to teach responsibility to the kiddos.  It’s work! Well, hopefully not a ton of work, but it’s definitely a responsibility. We recommend against livestock impulse buys.

2.       Have a plan and purpose for the cows. For example, during our first year in Wellsville we want four steers to grass feed for the season. They will deposit their turds on the ground and turn our soil. As a result, we increase our soil quality. We call them by name, pet them, run with them, feed them treats, and thank them for their work. Come fall, they succumb unwittingly and unwillingly to the cycle of life. After that moment, we will be unencumbered with cows until we decide again to get them. That’s our plan and purpose. 

3.       Make sure you can feed the cows. If you don’t have the grass to feed them, then you’ll have to buy it and store it. We researched the food requirements for 750 pound steers compared to the expected production of grass on our property. According to this math, we could have many more steers than we do, but we erred on the side of caution by picking a manageable number of cows. We didn't want to get cows to have them loose weight! Beyond the grass, they are provided with a mineral lick. For us, feeding them is easy while the grass is growing.

4.       They are going to need a fence, so have somewhere secure you can keep them. We lucked out on this program, since the previous owner left some easy-up fence panels that built a nice corral. In the corral we trained the cows on the electric fence, and now they are outside in the pasture minding two small, electrified strands. Our perimeter fence, less than perfect, may not be helpful to keeping the cows on the property. We probably ought to fix that.

5.       Have a program for checking in on the cows. If you’re feeding them hay, then you will see them often. If you are cell grazing like we are, you will need to see them at least few times a week. We will likely check in on them daily, even if it is just looking to see that their water is full.

6.       You’ve got to be able to pick them up. This is meant two ways. First, after you buy them, they will have to make it to your property. If you’re lucky, like we were for three of the cows, the seller will be willing to drop them off. If not, you’ll need a truck and trailer or will have to pay someone to transport them for you. Second, unless they’re there until they died, you’ll have to take them or their carcasses off of the property. You get the idea. Farminater found a horse trailer last year in the classifieds for $900, solving the problem for us.

7.       Consider the breed you would like and the cow’s history. We were looking for meat steers, so we bought cows that will ultimately taste good. If we were looking for milkers, we would have chosen a different breed. It was also important to us that the cows were drug-free (hormone free!).

8.       Lastly, if you are going to have cows, you can never know too much about them. Be curious. There’s lots of good stuff on the internet and in literature to increase your knowledge of our bovine buddies. Be observant. Watch your cow. Find out what you should learn about next. Cows are an adventure. Knowledge helps you enjoy it.

Well, that’s our two cents. If you’re up for it, get cows. If you’re not, you can always be a part of our cow adventure at Sustaining Adventures on Facebook!

Steers at home in their grazing cell paddock

Up and Down with the Wood Mulch Pile

In a short span of twenty minutes, I watch as hours and hours of work disappeared. The pile started the day large and beautiful. The light-colored chips from the cottonwoods differentiated themselves from the darker chips from other trees, helping to demonstrate the volume of a single bagful. The pile represented too many bags to accurately estimate, dozens. And each bag represented significant time cutting, sizing, chipping, and dumping to yield the mulch. For anyone who has chipped with a small, 2” chipper/shredder, you already know.

It felt good to bury my hand into the pile where the heat was almost unbearable. The wood was breaking down, preparing itself for burial into the soil structure. That was less than an hour ago. The loss is palpable.

The wood mulch pile, more down than up

We started out the season without any mulch available for spring projects. Last year, Farminater chipped maybe twelve bags of branches and twigs. All of those were now part of the sheet mulch in the kitchen garden.

Then we mulched the branches from much of the tree we are in the process of cutting down. That was used to finish the sheet mulching, cover the hugelkultur border on the kitchen garden, and sprinkled into the compost pile. That pile disappeared as well, hours of chipping going into the soil.

I finished chipping the various remaining piles of brush stacked around the house. They had been there all winter and needed to go. There was some cottonwood remaining, and a lot of other trees like box elder and rocky mountain maple. Those last two were significantly harder to chip, submitting only with reluctance to the 2” chipper chute. Within a few hours they went from being sticks, to being part of a pile, to their burial.

I watch the pile from yesterday moving quickly to create the deep mulch paths in the kitchen garden. It’s hard to see it go, but the garden needs the mulch more

than I.

A New Beginning

Most adventures have a beginning, a definitive moment when it is finally underway, like the moment you back out of the driveway with a week’s worth of camping supplies and climbing gear.

Last year, three of us bought a farm together in Cache Valley. This is our new adventure. But it’s hard to say when it started. This farm was an adventure that sort of creeped up on us and started all-of-the-sudden.

We first talked about the idea of owning property together back in 2005. The three of us shared a house in Cottonwood Heights with three other folks. That place was adventure central. There was almost always someone coming in from or going out to some adventure, and in between there were discussions of the future, of dreams, of ethics on the right way of living. Thus the seeds were planted that bring us to where we are now.

The vision has stayed alive over the last decade through intermittent discussions and searches for properties. Escalante looked awesome. Nate and Tara lived in Long Valley and we considered a few properties there and made an offer on one, and of course there was the dream property in Milburn that slipped away.

If there has to be a moment when this adventure started, that is the moment that we took possession (on paper only, of course, because can a person own the land, the sky, the water?) of a nice 11-acre parcel in Wellsville, Utah late last year.

Our goal is to create a diverse, system-based agriculture program that returns health to the environment while providing us with the lifestyle we want and a little revenue to cover some of our costs on the side. It’s our way of sustaining a life of adventure, with this particular one being the most close to the planet of them all.

We look forward to sharing our journey with you!

First farm partner ski tour in the beautiful Wellsville Mountains.

(Since we’ve adopted the name used previously by Nate and Tara, we’ve also adopted their blog site. All their old posts are still in the archive.)

Mid Summer around the farm.

Daddy Long Legs

breakfast for a guest

Rock Canyon

Yes, it is what you think it is...Jersey cow does not discriminate.

Baby peafowl

The camper we rent nightly.

Rascal, Barry's dog

Chorizo

Egypt Primrose