Dropstone Farms

Garth and I — cranky, internet-nerd introverts — are really, really opposed to spam. We both hate it when the act of purchasing something from someone automatically signs you up for their mailing list.

Unfortunately, I forgot to ask everyone who ordered chicken at the farmers’ market two weekends ago if they’d also like to sign up for our mailing list. I need to update the form to put a little “add me to the list” checkbox, I guess. But in the meantime, if you did not receive an email from me at about 9:45pm on August 9, you are NOT on our mailing list. If you would like to become so, please sign up here! And note that this is not the same thing as reserving a chicken! Please do that here for August 21-23 chickens.

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Email is out to our mailing list subscribers about the new batch of chickens! They will be ready starting August 21. Copy/pasting here in case you are not on the mailing list (if you are interested in chicken, you should sign up).

This batch is NOT antibiotic-free!! Scroll down for more info.

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The order form is up for our next batch of chickens! Sign up here: http://tinyurl.com/chickens2010-3

These chickens will be ready on August 21. They are pastured at Day Road/Suyematsu Farm, home of Laughing Crow Farm, the Bainbridge Island Winery, and more. For now, we will take reservations for 65 birds out of a flock of approximately 75.

For your reference when ordering, we will have at least one more batch of 100 birds after this one, scheduled to be ready on about October 2. So you can expect to be able to order more in about a month, to pick up in ~7 weeks. The last batch of chickens averaged about 4.5 pounds, and we expect this batch to be about the same.

The cost will be $5 per pound total, with a $5 deposit per bird, to be paid when you reserve them, to offset initial feed costs. This deposit will be deducted from your total when you pick them up.

Most of the details are the same as last year:

• We are raising a breed of chickens that is developed from French and Amish heritage breeds: “Freedom Rangers” from JM Hatchery.
• The chickens are fed Certified Organic grains grown in Canada (BC and Alberta mostly), and the pasture is untreated.
• The WSDA permit that applies to farms of our size requires that the end consumer (you) pick up the birds on farm within 48 hours of processing. If you can’t make it in person, you can have someone else pick them up for you.
• Orders will be allocated first-come, first-served. We will take reservations for fewer chickens than we have in each batch, in case of flock loss. This batch consists of about 75 chickens, so we’ll take orders for 65 to start with, and keep a waiting list after that. Folks on the waiting list are likely to be able to get chickens.
• In the unfortunate, and (we hope) unlikely case of significant flock loss, the last to sign up will be the first to have their deposits refunded and their orders canceled, and our sincere apologies — and priority ordering on the next batch.
• We will also likely have “factory seconds” available for less — as a result of errors in processing, these may have broken wings or legs, or need to be skinned, or otherwise be cosmetically damaged but perfectly safe and delicious. Please let us know if you would like to be on the list for these! We may also have pet-food-only-grade chicken; let us know also if you are interested in these.

Important note! This flock received a six-day course of an antibiotic, sulfamethazine, for a suspected coccidiosis infection, with medication ending 40+ days before processing. The instructions say not to consume the critter within 10 days of medicating, so I think we are safely beyond that.
However, if you are worried or strongly opposed to antibiotics in your food, probably best to wait for the next batch in early October.

More info about our chickens and the ordering process is available here: http://www.dropstonefarms.com/about-us-faq/about-our-colored-range-chickens/

Your order will not be considered finalized until we receive a deposit from you! You can send a check for $5 per bird to:

Dropstone Farms
5454 Rose Ave NE
Bainbridge Island, WA 98110

If you prefer to pay with cash, or in person, or via trade, or some other alternative arrangement, let us know and we can work it out.

Reserve your chickens here: http://tinyurl.com/chickens2010-3

Please feel free to forward this to interested friends & family. And as always, please contact us with any questions, comments, concerns, or ideas, or just to say hi — we love to hear from you!

Lauren & Garth
Email: farmers@dropstonefarms.com
Phone: 206-855-5493

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We moved the sheep & goats from our yard to the neighbor’s pasture. The sheep don’t much like walking on a lead and the shy little Soay REALLY do not like it — to the extent that it’s easier just to carry them.

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We took a day “off” this weekend (Visited farmer’s markets and farms around Chimacum. And shopped for hay.) and headed up to Port Townsend. We perused an antique store and found a perfectly functional corn planter and a brightly painted Planet Junior-type wheel hoe. We’d been eyeing these tools for years but could never justify the price for a new one. However, our valuable antique cultivator was priced at about a third the cost of a new one. A bargain!

The antique dealer, however, seemed a mite confused that we were evaluating his antique with an eye toward using it in our garden. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that his antique was, in point of fact, a thrifty and useful tool.

It wasn’t as awkward as the time Lauren had the following conversation about an antique egg scale:

“So how can it accurately weigh eggs with this sticker missing?”

“Well, you are just going to use it for decoration.”

“No, I need it to grade eggs for sale.”

“…”

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This is what a baby robin looks like.

Note the more-than-superficial resemblance to a baby chicken, like one of the three that used to be able to get out of the coop.

Now, imagine that Oscar (Note to readers: Oscar is my dog) finds such a baby bird, partially feathered out, behind the coop. Imagine how concerned both you and Oscar might be that such a critter has escaped both its housing and my notice. Terrifying.

And I had no idea what species the poor bird was. Turkey? Chicken? How old? Which of the seven flocks does this critter belong to? Very stressful.

Until, of course, after much chasing through blackberries, I manage to pick up the critter. At that point, the mouth gaping behavior presented a clue that this might not be a domesticated bird. The second, and more definitive, clue was when at least two robins began tripping their shit and dive-bombing me while emitting emergency bird distress calls.

I took their point and set the chick down and wished them all the best.

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She was determined to set but we don’t have a rooster, so we bought her some fertile eggs to sit on. They are hatching! She is so happy!

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We now have an official mailing list. Hooray!

Please sign up on the list for general farm notifications. For now, this will just be notices when we open signups for chicken (5-6 batches of 50 over the course of the summer) and turkeys (30-50 available fresh for Thanksgiving).

Sign up here!

Feel free to forward the signup form to anyone who might be interested. You can also find it here: http://www.dropstonefarms.com/about-us-faq/subscribe-to-poultry-notificiation-list/.

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A struggling mall in Cleveland converts their food court to a giant greenhouse.

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Fall is the season in which you can’t find a jar to put your lunch in because they are all full of canned food. Spring is the season where the empty jars overflow their drawer and spill out over the counter because you’ve eaten all of your preserves.

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I dislike power tools as a rule. The don’t do very many things, they cost too much money, and they break. Plus, any tool that’s designed to cut, abrade, or scrape wood in any way conjures up images of just how similar wood is too bone and flesh. However, expedience demands power tools and the compromise I’ve reached is to buy used power tools. This one is a saw from Hardwick’s, the greatest hardware store in the world for a mere $20. A saw with similar functionality purchased new would cost $70-100. My 24v cordless drill cost me $27 at a pawnshop in the Most Miserable Place on Earth. Certainly I feel I’ve gotten my money’s worth even though I don’t expect the tools to last me for the rest of my life. Being as most tools nowadays are built of semi-disposable plastic parts, I don’t think that’s much of a sacrifice.

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We hosted Thanksgiving on Thursday for my mom and her husband and two friends of ours from Seattle and Port Hadlock. We had:

Turkey from Olympic Pastured Poultry
SMASHYpotato (Lauren’s name)
Buttermilk biscuits with homemade buttermilk
Glazed carrots
Green salad with pomegranate dressing from Butler Greens
Stuffing from our friend Skip.
Some sort of cucumber/dill salad from Finland that I don’t remember the name of.

Reactions to the menu:

Pastured turkey is something else. It’s more like duck than conventional turkey. There was a layer of fatty tissue on the front of the breast and the dark meat was a deep red like a fine duck. The drumsticks were shot through with heavily developed tendons that, I can only assume, arose from the bird running around doing turkeyish things. While I’m skeptical of Farmer Theo’s somewhat eccentric methods, I’m impressed enough with the product to start burying the occasional cow horn in my garden.

SMASHYpotatoes are, as they’ve ever been since we learned the recipe from Lauren’s Aunt Bonnie, just lovely. Potatoes and sweet potatoes combined with garlic and parmesan are such a satisfying alternative to marshmallow-coated orange potatoes.

I forget where Lauren got her recipe for biscuits, but there’s nothing like buttermilk biscuits to use up the leavings after making butter.

Green salad. What can I say? Every heavy meal needs a light course. Nom.

Stuffing a la Skip. He made two stuffings. One a conventional and delicious stuffing with mushrooms and sausage. The second had quince and cranberries and pecans. It was fantastic.

As I mentioned, I can’t recollect the name of the Finnish cucumber/dill salad, but it also was great. It was sliced cukes, dill, sugar, and vinegar. The fun part of this dish was that, in addition to being awesomely good, we got to discuss how cucumber salad with vinegar and sugar was reinterpreted in Finnish, Chinese, Japanese, and Thai cuisine. Some things have cross cultural appeal, I guess.

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