Predators Beware

Derin sticks his tongue out for the camera while Rowan expresses her delight at our newest family member.

The livestock and farmers at Shelterbelt Farm can sleep a little easier at night knowing that Derin is here to protect them. Derin is a 2.5-year-old Akbash dog who has been guarding poultry in Virginia. Akbash and other types of guard dogs–the most common are Great Pyrhenes and Maremmas–have been bred for the purposes of livestock protection (not for herding, which is a specialty of other breeds like English sheepdogs). Like all dogs though, livestock guardians have a range of personalities from aggressive to downright shy. Derin is at the extremely timid end of this spectrum, so it will be interesting to see him in action. His docile personality has definitely won him points with our 5-year-old daughter Rowan, who is thrilled beyond words to have a “big dog with good manners.” (her words)

Our farm sits nestled in a region of NY blessed by large tracts of forested land, including Shindagin Hollow State Forest. We celebrate sightings of bobcats, fisher cats and many other weasel family relatives, black bears, coyotes, hawks, owls, and more.  The return of large predators to this area is exciting… except when it means our farm is their buffet.

While our love of nature and ecology is a large piece of what drew us to farming, our feeling of responsibility for the well-being of our animals is one of the main reasons we keep farming. We dreaded morning chores the past two seasons because more often than not we were walking into the aftermath of predation, and it was never pretty. And it was heartbreaking to lose the animals we nurtured so carefully to such casual violence. We tried highly charged electronet fencing, Nite Guards, snares, baited live traps, and even guard geese, but still we would lose birds more nights than not.

We hope Derin’s presence (perhaps aided in the future by another guard dog) will draw a boundary around our place signaling to the predators to keep out. In addition to the emotional toll, we simply cannot build a profitable farm when we experience 50% losses of our poultry. This year we are getting our first sheep, and I suspect losses would be even worse once the local coyote population caught wind of their presence. We’ll see how Derin does bonding with sheep, since he’s really only known poultry. Hopefully his instincts kick in and we have a year with minimal losses. We’ll keep you posted!

Now Accepting Pork Reservations!

We picked up 10 adorable Hereford x Mulefoot cross piglets last week, and they’ve been settling in well in their new home. Being the intelligent, curious creatures they are, they’ve already learned all about electric fences and how to use a nipple drinker, neither of which they had encountered at their previous home.

They are also diligent explorer/bulldozers, and in just 2 days they completely dug up the soil within their fenced area, churning it into a decent seedbed that we’ll covercrop as soon as we move them to a new area later today. We are supplementing their diet with a 100% organic grain ration this year.

Pigs are such a delight to have on the farm; it’s always sobering when I think that come October we will be sending them off to become food for our customers and our family. But every year I re-read this article on The Ethics and Morals of Raising Animals for Meat by our friend and mentor Karma Glos, which begins with this quote:

“A peasant becomes fond of his pig and is glad to salt away its pork. What is significant, and is so difficult for the urban stranger to understand, is that the two statements in that sentence are connected by an and and not by a but.”      –John Berger, 1980

As Karma points out, there is no life without death. Reading this I feel all over again the weight of the responsibility we have for these animals’ lives. We give the pigs freedom to express themselves, we protect and feed them well, and we give them a quick and stress-free death. Their death nourishes families through the long winter, while their droppings and diggings on the farm allow new life to flourish in the soil. With the next farrowing the cycle begins again.

Half and whole pigs are available for pre-order with a $100 deposit. The remainder is due upon pick-up, most likely in October, and the price is $4.95/lb based on the hanging weight (this includes processing fees.) You will get to request cuts to your specifications.   Please visit our Products and Prices page to see an image of what a typical half-pig contains. Email Erica if you’re interested!

Mud Season

According to the calendar, Spring is here. Those of you living in warmer microclimates (like just 15 min. away in downtown Ithaca) may even be seeing all kinds of signs to corroborate the calendar’s claims. But here at Shelterbelt, we’re in that seasonal purgatory where there’s still little to show for the transition to Spring – no snowdrops, no forsythia, just a few songbirds returned. It’s Mud Season, where every step outside goes ‘squish,’ and as we track it all inside, the mud room of our house begins to really resemble its name.

Not that I’m complaining. This is the weather we expect in mid-to-late March. It helps us build up the kinetic energy we need to sustain ourselves through the frenetic activity of Spring on the farm. Last year around this time it was 80 degrees, and while that felt pleasant, it wreaked havoc on fruit tree blossoms, Black Locust tree blossoms (our primary source of Spring honey), wildlife, and farmers. March is supposed to be cold and muddy, right?

Still, now that we have our 2013 farm plan in place, after a Winter of researching and planning, we are anxious for the season to start! Kicking off the growing season will be the arrival of 10 piglets in mid-April, then a livestock guard dog to watch over all our critters, followed by turkey poults in late June, and finally, in July, our first sheep arrive! We’re getting a small flock of Katahdin ewe lambs. The bees have been here all winter, hunkered down in their hives, and so far it seems 3 of my 4 hives have survived the ravages of wind and snow and mites. Perhaps most exciting for us this year is that we’ll resume work on our home on the farm, with a planned move-in date of May 2014!

It promises to be an interesting season, and we’re glad you’re along for the ride with us.

Why No More Chicken?

We have decided not to raise meat chickens this year, and here we attempt to explain to our supporters and customers why we’ve made this choice.

There’s a lot for a farmer to love about broiler chickens: they are ravenous insect-eaters who can decrease pest pressure in orchards and pastures, their back-end output fertilizes soil, and they’re ready for harvest in a relatively short 2.5-months, providing quicker financial return than any other animal on the farm. So why doesn’t every farmer raise them? And why is Shelterbelt no longer raising them?

The flip side of broilers is that, even on pasture, they require voluminous quantities of feed to achieve the size consumers expect (~4+ lb carcass). Because we feel strongly about not supporting the genetic modification of crops, we either need to purchase expensive organic feed or develop custom rations using non GMO ingredients, which presents other challenges. It is a fact that any soy or corn (the typical primary ingredients in poultry feed) that is not certified organic is almost certainly genetically modified.

Why our concern about GMO’s? Surveys of existing research on GMO health effects in mice, like this article from Environmental Sciences Europe, are enough to cause us concern. But beyond that, we don’t favor any economic model that patents life forms for the benefit of corporations, taking control out of the hands of farmers.

Speaking of economic models, this is another challenge of raising broilers. By the time we buy in the chicks and organic feed, and then factor in processing costs (whether we do it ourselves on-farm or pay someone else to do it) and charge $4.50/lb, our margin on 300 birds is $318, and that needs to cover our labor and contribute to overhead costs. Granted, this also includes keeping 20 birds for our own freezer, but still I think you can agree it’s not a large return for 10 weeks of caring for these birds. Chickens raised on organic feed should more rightly cost $6/lb, but we would rather not charge that much.

The word ‘sustainability’ has gotten worn thin by misuse, so I generally avoid using it. But in this case, it’s appropriate: for the sake of our ability to sustain our farm into a volatile future, we want to produce as many of our farm’s inputs as possible on the farm. Sourcing chicks and large quantities of feed from off the farm for an enterprise that doesn’t contribute significantly to our the financial sustainability of our farm business doesn’t seem to fit.

If something in this equation changes, we’ll definitely re-evaluate our decision, and we’ll let you know if we do! In the meantime, you can buy certified organic chicken from Kingbird Farm or non-organic chicken from other producers at the Ithaca Farmers Market, and also source locally-grown non-organic chicken from Grassland Farms at GreenStar.

The Turkeys Will Graduate Soon!

This year’s turkeys have been fattening up and scratching studiously, and will soon be ready for your holiday feast.

Our broad-breasted bronze birds free range within the protection of a portable electric net, and we supplement their greens-and-bugs diet with a non-GMO ration made from squash seed meal and organic corn. They will be ready for pick-up on Sun. Nov 18. They’ll be processed in early November, so the birds will be frozen for a couple of weeks before pick-up day.

Turkeys are $4.50/lb, and we aim for a range of sizes from ~12-21lbs. There aren’t too many left, so use the link below to reserve yours while you can!

Reserve your Thanksgiving turkey here!

Get Your Fresh (or Frozen) Chicken Here!

We’re raising two batches of chickens this year. Both are now fattening nicely on a diet rich in bugs, greens, organic corn and squash seed meal. They’ll be processed in mid-June and late July, and available for pick-up fresh from the farm on Sat. June 16th or Sat. July 28th, or frozen any other time. They’re $4.50/lb and will be packaged in shrink bags to help them keep up to a year in the freezer (but you’ll want to eat them before that anyway!)

They’re going fast, so use this form to reserve them while you can! Frozen birds will continue to be available until we run out, which will likely be sometime this Fall.

Spring Pushes Ahead Despite Weather Chaos

Rowan with a duckling from our new home laying flock of Khaki Campbells

Night temperatures have been dropping into the 20′s, and we got 5 inches of snow last Sunday, April 22nd. So it feels like February. But the sun is setting around 8pm and there are leaves on most of the trees. April? Talk about confusing! We’re not sure what to make of it all, but despite the weather irregularities, Spring is marching ahead on the farm, with baby animals arriving every few days.

Our 4.5-year-old daughter Rowan has her first mini-flock of 6 ducks. We have 8 gawky Chinese White goslings sharing brooder space with the now half-feathered broiler chicks. The goslings seem to think they are chickens, which is perfect since they’ll be responsible for guarding the chickens on pasture once the geese are a bit older (their timid peep isn’t exactly threatening yet, but they’re only a couple weeks old).

Yesterday we brought home 10 curious, adorable piglets. They are thrilled to be on pasture, and are happily eating up the grass and clover where the foundation for our home will be built in a few weeks. If you’re interested in pork, please see details on our Products and Prices page and reserve yours soon as we’re already nearly sold out for 2012!