Growing more than berries...

Hi everybody. Long time no speak. (Sorry about that!) We hope you’re all healthy and doing well.

Things around Smallfolk Farm have been busy. Really busy.

We’re getting all geared up for Blueberry U-Pick, but with our cold and wet spring, berries are at least a week behind. Rather than opening the picking on the 4th of July weekend (or thereabouts) we are going to hold off. We’ll definitely post ahead of time to let you all know when it’s a go! Keep an eye on the website for more details as we get ready to open for the seaon.

We’re raising more chickens this year than ever before, 2000 for the whole year. We’ve been expanding our pasture and improving farm infrastructure to accommodate the increase in birds. Most of our birds are sold to Exact Sciences for use in their campus kitchen, but we also have plenty available for purchase from the farm.

A lot of Farmer Dave’s time has been taken up with the biggest farm project of all: raising our 18-month-old, Sophia, who is growing like a weed into an adventurous, fun loving “goz-inta” (as in, she “goes into” this and “goes into” that). It’s a good thing he likes being farm-dad, ‘cause the biggest news of all is that Jackie is pregnant again and we’re expecting another Blueberry on Dec 20th (3 days after Sophia was born, oh boy!) We’re excited and feel really blessed and grateful.

As with every season, some challenges and unexpected turns of fate always present themselves, and some things have fallen by the wayside this year. We are monitoring increasingly dry conditions, and hoping the aquifer and irrigation can help us bridge the gap for the rain we pray is coming soon. To focus on chickens, aided by the lingering, cold and wet spring weather, the garden is not as robust as last year. Though, our garlic crop is thriving in this weather. And we have some big plans for 2023, including:

  • Expanding our market garden offerings!

  • Hosting an herb and flower U-Pick!

  • Even more chickens!

  • Starting the fruit orchard - including apples, pears, peaches, plums, cherries, raspberries, and currants!


We’re very much looking forward to seeing everyone for U-Pick soon. One of the best things about every year is seeing new and repeat guests coming to sample the “blubes”, especially the little ones. So we’ll see you soon.

Best Wishes,
Farmer Dave, Jackie, Jim (Dave’s Dad), Sophia and Kurosh (doggo) and the once-and-future Blueberry #2

2020 Reflections

Sitting in October of 2020, it feels like a lot. Even so far, it was a *lot* of a year. Reflecting back, we have a lot to be thankful for. It was a good year for us. Really. Despite the chaos in the world, we’re thriving. I almost feel guilty typing it, but it’s true.

Jackie is 6 weeks from her due date with incoming ‘baby Forman.’ She’s reached the phase of pregnancy where everything — mental and physical — is hard, but nothing out-of-the-ordinary has gone on, she’s had a totally normal pregnancy with the baby registering as exactly average size on every scan and ultrasound. What a blessing ‘totally normal’ is.

We’re having work done on our house, with the plan to expand it. We had some delays and some more delays, and we had to break the work up into two parts: siding and winter-proofing the house now and expanding the living room (including a new upstairs new master bedroom and basement mancave) in the spring. Despite the letdown of not having the house bigger for the arrival of the baby, we’re grateful to be able to afford to improve and expand our home at a time so fraught with challenges. More blessings, more gratitude.

The farm season was an enormous success, with the blueberry U-Pick being both fun and profitable. We looked forward to seeing all the families out blowing off their lock-down steam and enjoying the simple, primal joy of foraging for food. The market stand was good, I learned a lot about what people wanted in terms of rounding out their own garden’s production. I especially liked watching the toddlers just shove handful after handful of berries — totally innocently and unapologetically — into their mouths, while there parents fretted and demanded they pay me extra. (Which I think I always declined. Toddler crop loss was priced in.)

It was lovely to meet so many people, and I hope to see you all again for another U-Pick season next year.

Looking ahead to 2021 season, we will be offering some additional products, including farm fresh eggs, pastured chicken, strawberries, and hopefully, many many more pints of blueberries. With the hope that we see an easing of lock-down restrictions and the abatement of the COVID-19 crisis, we hope to see even more people come visit us next year!

I hope you and your family weathers all the storms that have been and will ever be,

Warmest Regards,

Farmer Dave, Jackie, Kurosh and baby Forman.

Interesting Times

“May you live in interesting times.” – Proverb (or curse), apocryphally ascribed to the Chinese  

     Well, interesting times have come. Each day brings a week’s worth of news. We’re quarantined away from our friends and in with our immediate families and partners, and we’re not sure which is the more challenging to deal with.  Millions have lost their jobs practically overnight and there’s little doubt now (in early April) that the year ahead will be fraught with challenges. Even if it hasn’t materialized for most of us yet, we know many thousands of our friends and neighbors, perhaps families, perhaps ourselves, will become sick and could face the worst COVID-19 has to offer, and the quiet (and sometimes not quiet) anxiety of that is bleeding through the cracks of virtually everyone’s reality at some level.

     At least it’ll be interesting.

     Life on the new farm is rich with work and challenges, as Jackie and I knew it would be, global pandemic notwithstanding.  There is much ground to clear, to tame and reclaim from the honeysuckle and sumac, all of whom you’ll be unsurprised to hear care not a whit for the novel corona virus outbreak. Blueberries need soil amendments and weeded and mulched. Chickens, both for meat and eggs, are on their way, while new fences need to be erected where the egg birds will one day cluck and peck. The mobile coops and brooders all need some repairs and refittings, while some of the pasture grounds still needs cleared of invasives and small trees. The garden plots need leveled and regraded, expanded, a big load of compost and a big dead oak tree that is growing diagonally across their grounds needs to be felled.

     Much of farm life is unchanged in a way that is reassuring. The natural world goes on, and if you’re living in tune with that rhythm, that’s a comfort.  

     Of course there is still much uncertainty. The farmer’s markets are unlikely to open this year, and that source of sales for blueberries, produce and chickens won’t materialize. On-farm tours and you-pick blueberries will need to wait a year. My best restaurant customers, who have made my foray into pastured chicken possible, are running diminished take-out capacity and it isn’t clear yet they’ll be up for buying much in the way of pastured, premium chicken – that’s assuming I can succeed in keeping them alive once they’re moved to pasture: the predator pressure is unreal out here, from raccoons, coyotes and opossums. You like the taste of pastured chickens, and I assure you so does a pack of coyotes. It’s nothing some very spicy electrical nets shouldn’t prevent, but that also becomes a matter of cost, another expense weighed against an increasingly tightening budget.

     Here’s what I do know: I’m going to keep doing what I do, raising as high of quality pastured chicken, blueberries, and garden vegetables as I can, and making all of my products available for purchase directly. We can arrange delivery and go through all the appropriate hygienic / social distancing measures in both harvest and delivery, ensuring you and your family have access to nutritious local food.  

     We live in interesting times, but I’m thankful that I have an opportunity to go through interesting times with you.  

 

Our very first crop, garlic, pushes up into the spring sun.

Our very first crop, garlic, pushes up into the spring sun.

Exciting Changes!!

It’s been a while since the last post. But so many things have been happening here at Smallfolk Farm!

We’ve had an absolute endless amount of rain. The chickens are fine; they have coverings for themselves, their food, and water. But it’s made things difficult for the rest of the plants at Winterfell Acres. Winterfell Acres being the land we rent for hosting the chickens.

But no longer!

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As of today, Smallfolk Farm has a PERMANENT address! We couldn’t be more excited to be moving to our new Mount Horeb home. It’s a small farm, but we’re small folk. The dog, the wife, and I will have 8 acres, a farmhouse, and a nice old barn. This property is also a blueberry farm!

That’s right, soon Smallfolk Farm will be not only chickens, but also blueberries!

Exciting times for all of us. We cannot wait to share our bounty with you.

Not Quite Feathered, But It’s Okay

The birds are out in the orchard and quite content. Cornish across aren’t great foragers traditionally, but by limiting their food early when they go out to pasture, they learn to love grass, clover, and bugs more than their feed.

You almost might notice that these birds don’t have great feather coverage. Part of this is due to their youth, but it is also part of the breed. Don’t worry about their coverage. These birds were domesticated to survive with humanity highly involved. They will be warm, safe, and happy despite bald spots.

New Chicks!

The second batch of chicks if happily nesting in their brooder coops. These are Cornish Cross Chickens. Cornish Cross are the single most common bird raised for meat in the entire world! These birds grow quickly, have a good feed-conversion ratio (the efficiently turn chicken food into muscle), and have larger breasts than most breeds. Plus— look how cute they are!

Just a quick little video of the chicks from batch 2.

Finally Out in the Field!

It’s hard to believe we’re already one month into the season. Today was a busy day! I moved our 4 week old chickens out into the field for the first time AND I picked up our second round of chicks. Whew! The 4-week old chickens are old enough to be exposed to sunlight regularly and eat fresh forage. This allows them to live our their chicken-y nature in the closest approximation of their natural state while staying safe:

It was a big busy day, and it saw the first batch set up on the pasture in the orchard.

Day 16: Startin' to grow adult feathers!

It’s cold here in Madison, Wisconsin, but these birds won’t let the cold get to them. Happy and healthy, our Cornish Cross chicks are starting to enter their “awkward dinosaur” phase. As their chick feathers molt, their adult feathers come in downy and warm! Thankfully, their brooder coops are prepared for this weird Wisconsin weather. They are on track for release to pasture in 1.5 weeks!