Besides the bucket’s worth we received today, it’s been a dry spring. You come to expect dry July’s and August’s, but April is too early for us to pull out our rain dancing (we can always use help). So the pastures are a bit dryer than we’d like at this point, but besides that the farm is in good shape.

2010 Piedmont Farm Tour

Thanks to everyone that made it out to the 2010 Piedmont Farm Tour this year. It was another great turnout and goes to show how much support local farms have around here. What you missed if you weren’t there:

- Our spring litters of pigs have been dropping since farm tour weekend. Farm visitors had the chance to meet our tiny newborn pigglets. After a bit of warring with the vultures, all the sows have hunkered down and are doing very well with their litters.

- Our three ages of hens- layers, soon to be layers (in July), and little tikes are growing well. This means that within a few months, we’ll hopefully be able to meet the demand for our eggs. Some of our youngest birds will turn out to be males though, so we will have some heritage breed chicken available this summer. This will be the only meat chickens we do this year.

- Speaking of breeding and incubating birds, we have loads of ducks now on the farm. Some are Cayuga, some are Buff Runners and Saxony crosses. So, as they’re mostly mutts, we won’t be tempted to breed them again and should have duck later this year.

- The strawberries have been glorious this spring, tomatoes are shooting up, fresh garlic and onions aren’t far off, and cucumbers and melons and peppers are in the ground. So far so good in the gardens.

Coming To Market:

What to expect at markets- we’re hitting our stride with pork, and should have a larger selection of pork cuts throughout the summer/fall. Fresh beef is only a few weeks away too, and that too should go for the rest of the year. So look forward to veggies, more eggs, more pork and beef, ducks, some goat and a few chickens this summer.

Events

Saxapahaw Saturdays have started, 5-8. We’ll be there selling, but if nothing else, come visit us and listen to some music. The Saxapahaw General Store (and the Eddy, the new pub opening next door) will be teaming with us at Farm to Fork this year, coming up May 23. Hope to see some of you out there, unfortunately it’s sold out if you don’t have tickets. We’re also planning the next “Final Banquet” out on the farm and it looks like it will happen late Sept or early October. We’ll keep everyone updated about that.

Besides that, we’ve been playing a mean game of softball in Saxapahaw every week. The farm and extended family have been duking it out on Sunday evenings- let us know if you want to join.

Farmers Markets: Where You’ll find us

Besides that, we hope everyone is looking forward to a great summer and we hope to see you either at the Farm (TR 2-6, Sat 10-4), in Greensboro (Curb mkt every other week, next is may 22), in Saxapahaw on (Sat 5-8), or in Carrboro (Wed 3:30-6:30, Sat 7-12)

Lata
Cane Creekers

(c) Photos courtesy of Luck Photography / Sarah Cook

Here’s what they had to say about the Breakfast Biscuits at Neil’s Deli in Carrboro, made with our sausage.

The food at Neal’s Deli is resolutely everyday and American — like breakfast biscuits stuffed with egg and sausage — but the eggs are steamed tender with a touch of pepper and parsley, and the wide, crisp biscuits are mixed from high-fat local buttermilk and organic flour from a nearby mill that’s been held by the same family for nine generations. The sausage patty is from Cane Creek Farm in Alamance County, where Eliza MacLean, an owner of the farm and a former veterinarian, advises farmers across the state on the transition from tobacco to pork. Every bit of that care comes through in the flavor of the finished product, a stunning bargain at $3.25. Read the full article here.

If you missed out on last year’s event, dont let this opportunity pass by. The Farm Tour is a great opportunity to: Spend the weekend outside. Meet people in the community. Take hayride tours. Learn about local food resources. Support your local farm. Have fun….

And for those of you who visited last year…. Come On Back!

We’ll see you April 24-25, 2010 from 1- 6pm on the 14th Annual Piedmont Farm Tour.

You can buy your $25 Buttons (tickets) online through the Carolina Farm Stewardship Association and at many local establishments such as Weaver Street Market in Charrboro.

PLEASE NOTE: Special Farm Store Hours this weekend. Due to the Piedmont Farm Tour, the farm store will be open 1-5pm on Saturday April 24th and 1-5pm on Sunday April 25th.

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

As some of you might have heard, our dear Ross Marley (aka Old Ross) passed away January 12th. Ross had looked after Braeburn Farm since 1975, working (and arguing) alongside Doc all the while. He knew the farm better than anyone, watching the farm expand, take on new missions, and eventually include many more animals than just horses and cows.

Ross had a heart attack as he was walking in a field. He’d said that was the way he wanted to go- out on the farm, doing what he loved. He even picked the most beautiful place on the farm to hang up his boots.

Somewhere underneath his ornery facade was a good man who cared a whole lot about this farm and community. His dip-spitting cantankerous self will be missed, and we hope he’s hanging out with cows somewhere on his Kubota in the sky.

Hope everyone had a great holiday season. Things were especially busy around Cane Creek this season, not just for us people, but for the animals as well. Few know this, but the animals get pretty excited for their holiday festivities. For example- after being born in the past few weeks, the baby lambs and goats, along with their parents, put on quite the pageant, complete with a wonderful manger scene and Christmas carols hee-hawed by our otherwise useless, but adorable, donkeys (who, interestingly, sounded a lot like Bob Dylan’s new christmas album). All the animals showed up (except of course for the cows-they’re hindu) and we had a wonderful Christmas eve meal of veggie scraps.

New Years was a bit more hectic- after 2 weeks of snacking on garden remnants, the pigs say they’re feeling gross and have threatened new year’s resolutions to diet. The ducks, as is their tendency, drank too much new years eve and still haven’t recovered (I got a call at 3am and had to come pick them up in an egg mobile). As for the cows, they by-pass the whole season until of course, the national championship game tomorrow (big texas fans, all you hear around the pastures is “hook ‘em horns”).

Are you still reading? Why? Anyhoot, everything is grand around here. We moved the pigs into our gardens and they’re busy eating, tilling, and fertilizing. The new lambs are adorable. Eggs have ceased for a while, and we’re stocked up on beef, so no fresh beef for a bit. We’re still at Carrboro every Saturday (9-12), Greensboro every other week (8-12; starting this weekend the 9th). Remember that we deliver every week to Chatham Market Place and Saxapahaw General. And of course our store is still open Thursdays 2-6 and Saturdays 10-4.

What else? It’s cold. Lot’s of frozen waterers, lots of over-alls. And although it feels weird, we’re evening looking through seed catalogs and starting to plan this year’s garden (any requests?). If you’re in the mood for some healthy home-cooked meals, come pay us a visit. Otherwise, just stay warm and we’ll see you all in time

Cane Creekers

So here is the schedule for the next two weeks. We would love to see you out at the farm store where you can pick up some delicious holiday goods. We have fresh beef, pork, a bit of lamb, cured hams, some bacon, etc at the store.

Tuesday Dec 22-  Store open 9-11
Saturday Dec 26  Store open 10-2
Saturday Jan 2- Store open 10-4, Carrboro market 9-12, (No Greensboro)

If none of these times can work, let us know and we’ll try to work something out.

If we don’t see you, have a great holiday