Home for the Holidays........

The girls moved back to Autumn Olive Farm on Saturday. They still had a few days of forage left at their last site at the Culture Museum, but Saturday was the best day to move them back home. There is a final site behind the 1850 farm, but its far too wet now to brush hog the fencing lanes to move them there. Instead, they will clean a 7 acre site here over Thanksgiving and then we will move them one final time to their winter location close to the house and stands of large pine trees that provide them natural protection from the elements.

Both areas used to be a pasture over 25 years ago. It is now filled with Autumn Olives, Morrow's Honeysuckle, Red Cedar and Poison Ivy. In the winter loafing times the Boer Bok will eat the thin bark off the Autumn Olives, killing many in the process. This will allow the native grasses and plants to start growing back that much sooner.

Like last year, we will feed them high quality alfalfa/orchard grass hay and free choice minerals. It is over 21% protein this year and they will have no need for commercial feed at all! We use large round bales and unwrap it is needed on plastic, saving every bit of the pure alfalfa powder to put into old cattle mineral tubs. They do seem to lose all civility when we serve up the green crumbles. We can't imagine wasting it. The hay has almost no seed so the manure produced is of a very high quality that we incorporate into our vegetable gardens.

In the meantime, I am in the process of getting everything set up for my meat business. You know, all of the fun stuff... liability insurance, LLC, inspections, etc. (I received my Meat Handlers License today.) I should have samples to the restaurants the first week in December. I hope you will see Autumn Olive Farms Boer Bok on several menus locally in December. We had our meat reviewed by an Executive Chef and will post his review on the blog next week.

We will also be featured in some upcoming publications. I will keep you posted on that as well.

Thanks for keeping up with us and we hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving.