Latest Additions

Meet our latest additions to the farm… Dexters!

20200417_192444[1]
“Crazy Lady” & Puddle (names still up for debate)
Crazy Lady has been a bit of a challenge – she’s rather wild and started out charging the fence at us and generally acting like a bull. She’ll now eat out of our hand at the fence, but we haven’t yet been able to pet her.

E has been perfecting his lasso skills so we can separate Puddle every couple days and handle her regularly. She is super sweet and has only kicked E twice.

Dexters originated in Ireland, and they are a small dual purpose breed that I will think will be well suited to the farm, as long as we don’t wear red!

 

These days

We recognize these are strange days: each one of us facing our own unique challenges and circumstances as we navigate the era of Covid-19 together. While going about “business as usual” doesn’t feel particularly genuine, dwelling on it doesn’t feel particularly healthy.

So with that, we will move on to why you’re probably visiting this website: local, ethically raised and delicious food!

We are still hard at it: focusing on producing a wide variety of scrumptious farm vittles! Check out our products page for more details.

We’re happy you’re here!

2018 updates

We’ve just made a few updates to the website about our offerings and where you can find us in 2018.  We are currently accepting reservations for the following:

Meat Birds – raised on 100% certified organic feed.  As soon as the chickens are old enough, they are moved to pasture where they eat grass and bugs, and they get to act like chickens! We raise them in small batches of 50 birds, and we accept a $10 reservation per bird.  Cost is $5.25/lb, and chickens are frozen whole (4-5 lb). First batch available the week of March 20.

Pasture-raised Pork – We use Mosaic Farm’s locally-milled, non-GMO, no-soy feed. Pigs are pasture-raised and rotated regularly to fresh pasture to ensure lots of grass-eating and schnarffling of windfall fruit and nuts. We currently only have 5 more half-pig shares available in 2018, and we accept a $100 reservation per half-pig share.

Looking forward to a fun 2018 season!

Another Day

Rain. It’s one of those things you don’t even realize how bad you need it until you finally get it.

I think I finally settled myself onto this brown and dry, cracked earth – a bit weary, a bit worn. Trying hard to keep things alive.

And then it came.

And now the grass coming up everywhere is such a vibrant hue of green it hurts my eyes. I haven’t seen color like that in months.

A fire in a fireplace that we didn’t have last winter puts me in a trance, and I don’t even think about the to-do list for a little while as I watch from under my blanket as it flickers and pops.

A reason to drink hot tea and play cards with the boys.

An excuse to go inside and answer long-neglected emails and letters.

The chickens are muddy, the pigs are muddy, the people and their feathers and fur are muddy too.

But the cover crop is in, the garlic is in, and the gutters are on.

And so I welcome it.

Where have you been Sweet Rain…

 

Spring Learning

Things are bustling around the farm this week – the last week of dry weather gave us time to get a few more crops in the ground. Crops that we pushed a little earlier than we would have liked are looking pretty snappy under the row cover, and the latest rain storm is more than welcome for the all the seeds and new transplants in the field. Nothing like hearing rain on big brassica leaves!

Since this is our first full season on our own land we are learning A LOT. Despite having a shelf full of farming and gardening books there are just some things you don’t learn until you try and either fail or succeed. There’s a lot to learn about our soil, this climate, what our customers will like. So we are in learning mode this spring, this year, always really, and trying to remember to be patient with that process.

We’ve updated the website with more info about what we’re growing this year – contact us if you’re interested in reserving pork or chicken!

 

 

 

Welcome

Welcome to Wooden Mallet Farm’s new website. I’m new at this so it may take me a short while to get the website fully functional, but thank you for visiting! Check back regularly for updates.