June WWOOF'ers: Two Southerners Experience Northern Hospitality

So what do two 20 somethings do when their college town gives them the boot? Drive to rural Minnesota and volunteer on an organic livestock farm, right?

Having been unfulfilled by the post graduation lifestyle of very few job opportunities and doing something for the sake of a paycheck, Ashley and I finally got the opportunity and a bit of courage to pursue a cause we are quite passionate about; organic farming and sustainability.

These days, people are becoming more detatched from how their food is raised, produced, handled and shipped to stores than ever. We saw plenty of documentaries (Food Inc.) that led us away from processed food, but getting the information is like dipping your toe into the kiddie pool to see if its cold. By using the WWOOF website, we wanted to dive straight into the deep end of the organic food movement.

We were fortunate to find the Stout Family (Joey, Jessi, Azure, and Aurelia) through WWOOF and more fortunate that they would have us for a month stay.

This first post documents our first week on the Humbleroots Heritage Farm.

Week 1:

We showed up, got the tour and went straight to moving hay to the respective turkey and chicken houses. At this point, all the turkeys and chickens were in the same place, so naturally two suburban college kids had to gather the 100 chickens, by hand, and place them in their new, recently hay laden coop. Welcome to livestock farming! We also made roosts out of branches and twigs, because chickens and turkeys like to be off the ground at night.

In between visiting other farms (Earthrise was kind enough to share lunch and we got to pick thistles and sample strawberries at Coyote Grange), we had some time to get our Minnesota fishing licenses and try our luck at fishing the land of 10,000 lakes. A little beginner's luck struck my fishing pole that day and I caught a catfish.
Lunch next day was delightful. We really couldn't have asked for a better first week experience at Humbleroots.

More to come!

Scott and Ashley

Program helps beginning farmers get started | Minnesota Public Radio NewsQ

Program helps beginning farmers get started Minnesota Public Radio NewsQ

Til next time

Thank you all for purchasing Poulet Rouge from us this round! We are currently sold out of the batch set to be processed in August. Have more chicks starting the last week in June so hold your horses and I will let you know when I begin to market them. Feel free to contact me and let me know that you are interested.

Turkeys are selling well...please reserve your soon if you want the yummiest turkey in the state!

2010 Pricing on Turkeys and Chickens

It's that time of year again and I am already going strong. Turkey and chicken orders coming through strong. I just finished up my brooder house and got my lights set up. Bring it! Let's talk prices...products still the same great breeds; Heritage Turkeys- Bourbon Reds and adding a few Black Spanish this year because they fit all my requirements, rare and need to be publicized, beautiful and good foragers...and 'ze Poulet Rouge Rangers, (said in ze Pink Panthea Frensh Axcen)...still no antibiotics or medications, always out to pasture and feed naturally!

So here we are in 2010...

Heritage Turkeys will be $7.50 per pound and you will be responsible for the processing fees (about $6.50/bird). Deposits ($20)will be required for a commitment, so we can keep in on the up-n-up. Again, we will have 2 different weight variations due to the sex of the turkeys. The ladies will be about 6-10 pounds and the fellas will be around 13-16. Last year we were able to make everyone happy as we were within a pound or two of every one's ideal turkey weight. We thought it worked out well last year to process then the Thursday prior to Thanksgiving and have them available for pick up at our farm Sat. AM or at our family's home in MPLS Sat PM. We had about 20 people on a waiting list last year so we upped our numbers but are hoping that the calls will again exceed our availability...makes us feel we are doing the right thing!

I am running Poulet Rouge every 6 weeks...my first batch being available in early August and then again 6 weeks after that. They will be $3.50/lb and you will pay processing (about $2.50 per bird). Deposits ($3.50/bird) will be required upon commitment. I am going to require a 5 bird minimum this year as it got to be too much running around to deliver 1-2 birds.I love our new processor (way up in Ashby)! They have made me happy over and over again. For anyone who doesn't know. These are delicious birds, they are slow growing, taking 2 times as long to grow to processing weight as Cornish Cross and thus have a mush happier life. They roost (whereas Cornish X lay in their own excrement due to skeletal problems) and create flocks...they also range all over our property, greatly increasing my satisfaction. They will be available for pick up from our farm and, as always, we'll get the city cats their country birds!

Call me at the farm or email me for any orders! Happy Earth Day!

We've got Spirit, Yes we do, We've got spirit, How bout YOU?

Loco Ono is "not lucky, just cute"

I mean, is there a difference on whether I wait for spring or spring it myself? Emotionally and physically, I need it to be here. March is the hardest month for me...gloomy, flooded, mud...and, in every way, I am at my wits end. I can tell my body needs to be cleansed by the heat of the sun (I begin to break out in March), I usually begin to have restless nights and bad dreams; Tuesday night I beat a EBD (Emotional-Behavior Disorder) kid up that I work with at the High School after driving a big pick-up through the river to an island, last night I forgot both my kids at my mom's house (could' ve been worse, huh...) and then had to turn around and get them but I was running and the running path was full of walkers...aaahhh..I was held up behind a bunch of people mosey-ing around, knowing that I had to get my children and I was going to be late to work. Granted, they are not terrible dreams, but they are stressful- all playing on my own weaknesses.


He's saw, first hand, what a leprechaun does to a
class room and it ain't pretty...good thing the lil'
fella couldn't get his pot of gold out through the
window...Azure got a gold coin!

Needless to say, I need something...I cannot force the sun to shine and heat our ground, dry up our mud, I can't end the school year whenever I want so that I can enjoy the summer with my kids..but I can (and did) get some spring chicks! Some new Indian Runners and Blue Swedish ducks, Auracana bantams, Buff and Partridge Cochins (with fuzzy feet). And they arrived yesterday!

Why can't I get this picture to upload at the correct angle... In real life,

the ducks and stuff are not laying on their side!

Manually sprung spring

we have known for a long time we would be doing this remodel- hence the

ultra tacky hallway wall etc- forgive them

This March is an exception though...not only do I have all of the above, but...we are remodeling our bathroom/hallway/closet and our whole house is a mess...full of old bathtubs that need to be moved out, sheetrock that has been removed from the closet that will soon (how soon?) host our first ever shower! See, in our little farmhouse bathroom (always an after thought back then for those hard-working, Norwegian Bachelor Farmers- no lie, Noble was a NBF until very late in life when he married Edna), had a bathtub under a slanted roof that could hold no shower, our sink had our one and only closet (in the whole house) behind it and our hallway is exceptionally wide with a great South view.

So we removed the sink, gutted the closet and are tiling that to be our new shower, a clawfoot tub that we harvested from an old house last year will go in the same place as our old tub was, and our new Buff colored concrete countertop that is hosting the hand painted sink I picked up in Sayulita, Mexico last year is under the window with the Southern view in the big hallway. It is spectacular...or will be when it is done. In the meantime, we are tip toeing around the mess, and bathing/showering at Theresa's (our exquisite neighbor). Deep breath....

All natural slate tiles covering the bottom 4 feet of the entire bathroom (this view is where the clawfoot will go) and these same tiles will be the walls for the shower.

the Good, the Bad and the Ugly

The Good Little Gilt of our Litter of Perfection (see last years post for some of her when she was first born. She must be about 200 lbs, as with the other 2 gilts and the single lil' boar. For those interested, we have decided to experiment with the practice of not castrating. We believe in the humanity of it and think we can overcome Boar taint with the simplicity of our breed and keeping some distance between our uncasterated boars and any females. Note: we will be keeping the boar meat for ourself until this experiment is proven one way or another...those of you who buy from us need not worry~!

The Bad BillyBoar, the escapee Mr. Purple laying in his bed of feed. He left his barn digs, broke the shoot of the feeder, dropped over a ton ($200+) of feed on the snow and made a bed in the sun..meanwhile, we are still sleeping on hand-me-down, free mattresses. i long for the day to spend 200 bucks on a new bed!

The Ugly... yeah, I know...what is it. Yesterday I was looking for some specific screws in Joey's junk drawer. We have separate junk drawers because, although I like mine messy...I don't like it messy like his. Anyways, I reached in and grabbed a wire and this came out...Just exactly like this...there is a necklace someone made him from before we met, 2 cell phone cords (we haven't had cells in over 4 years), string, dental floss and the list goes on...it is so chaotic that I absolutely love it and am going to try to preserve it (like a windchime, perhaps)...any suggestions?