I’ll blame the shortness of February for not getting a newsletter out. But we’re back on it with March. There were also some concerns about our state of mind on January’s newsletter. We were sober, but it does seem this long cold winter is making us a bit cookoo. We’re happily awaiting warmer times, and the growing grass and merry animals that go along with it.
In the mean time, we got more chicks and are working to reestablish our laying flock so we can provide those beautiful and tasty eggs to all of you. Our previous bunch of girls are now finally laying so look for our eggs at market.
Our pigs had slowed down a bit through the winter, and it seems we’ve been low on pork cuts for a while. Fortunately they too are kicking it into gear and we’ll be back on our normal schedule (6-8 hogs/week) here very soon.
As for the cows, we did pregnancy checks recently and this was easily our best year for fertility rates. We will also begin rotating the cows in our pastures tomorrow! They’ve been on hay recently, and they’ll be happy to start mowing fresh grass. As for our pasture management- thanks to Aaron’s work, we now have every pasture gps-ed and onto a map in the store. This year we will attempt “mob-grazing” as opposed to our “intensive-grazing” in the past. Both are great systems, but we hope this new technique will help fertilize our pastures even better.
Here’s the short of it: we will move each group of cows every day into a new strip of grass. They will eat what they can and then we’ll move them the next day. They won’t get to eat all of the grass (in the past we let them eat it down), and the goal is to have them mash their patties and the higher grass back into the soil- making healthier pastures and allowing us to use no fertilizer. That’s the short of it. Ask Doc if you want to know more (and have time 
We’ve started lettuce in the greenhouse. The onions are planted, and more will go in the ground this week, along with some taters. The strawberries have held up well in through the winter.
Our friend Sam is off this afternoon to a curing house with some of our Ossabaw hams. Check back in 9 months for some awesome prosciutto and in two months for some lardo (which means you have two months to learn what that is).
As for our staff- Aaron Edwards has left us to do farming work/education in Liberia (just the usual). He will be missed, but we have two great guys on the farm now to help fill the gap- Derek Werner and Leland Reilich, as well as Hailey Moses come summer.
Events – We will be part of the farm tour April 24-25. We are also helping plan some events for the Company Shops Market (Burlington Coop) for the warmer months. We have a lot of exciting ideas planned and we’ll keep you all in loop for those. We’re still doing Carrboro’s Saturday market each week, and Wednesdays start next month. We still go to the Greensboro Curb market every other Saturday (not tomorrow). And the store is still open Saturdays 10-4 and Thursdays 2-6, so come pay us a visit.
Hope everyone is well and managing the cold. We’ll see some of you tomorrow at market
Cane Creekers
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