P is for picking up chicks

Our first group of  chicks of the season arrive at the farm today!

(Beth is off to pick them up at the post office and will post pics of the process of introducing them to their new home.)

Our chicken season begins with a pre-dawn (5:15 a.m.) call from the local post office letting us know that our chicks have arrived. Yes, just-hatched chicks are sent through the U.S. mail (this practice began in the early part of the 20th century). Security concerns following the 9-11 attacks threatened this practice, but small farmers, backyard chicken keepers,  and hatcheries across the country made thousands of calls to their representatives to preserve this tradition - not to mention a lot of jobs.

Our van backed in to the loading dock at the post office.

The chicken boxes on the post office cart.

Because we pick up hundreds of chicks at a time, we just go to the back of the post office and collect the chicks from the loading dock. We've done this for a number of years, so the post office employees know us well. When Beth picked up this morning they asked, "Where are your helpers?" One or two of our boys usually ride along when we pick up the chicks. They were at grandma and granpa's house this morning.

Beth taking a couple boxes of chicks from the van.

Today's order was for 800 meat birds. That's eight boxes (100 chicks each)! As it gets hotter, the number of chicks per box will decrease. Day old chicks need to be at about 90 degrees. Hatcheries gauge packing density by predicted temperatures during shipping and are amazingly good at keeping chicks healthy. In nearly ten years of getting chicks in the mail, we've only had one bad experience - this happened when there was a sudden spring cold snap during transport.

Beth taking chicks into the brooder.

Since we've been brooding our chicks in six sided steel boxes four years ago, we've not lost any chicks to predation during brooding! Thanks Frontera Farmer Foundation for funding this project, it has certainly been successful.

A box of chicks ready to get out.

Jody showing the chicks their waterer.

When chicks arrive it is critical that they get water. We hand-dip each chick's beak into the water bowl, so they get a drink and know where the water is.

Jody demonstrating how to hold a chick safely.

Chicks at the water bowl.

A box of chicks is almost as cute as a box of kittens!

Here are chicks discovering the feeder.

M is for Marion Street Cheese Market

As the CVSF meat CSA has grown and we've wanted to add delivery sites, we've looked for places similar to where we've already had success - namely wine and cheese shops. (See my post on K is for Kellner).

One of the best in the Chicago-land area is Marion Street Cheese Market. We're proud to deliver our meat CSA to the best wines shop, cheese shop, and bistro in Oak Park, IL. We are continually impressed by co-owner Eric Larson and executive chef Leonard Hollanders commitment to local, artisansal food and sustainability.

Eric Larson

                                                          Leonard Hollander


              Leonard Hollander

Marion Street Cheese Market is a Greeen Certfied Restaurant and recently earned a three star rating (one of only three "three star" Green Restaurants in the region - we, also, deliver to one of the other 3-star rated restaurants in Chicago, you'll learn about them in a future post!)

K is for Kellner

That's Tracy Kellner of Provenance Food and Wine, in Logan Square and Lincoln Square in Chicago.

CVSF has had long relationship with Tracy and her husband Joe Patt. We first met Tracy at the Logan Square Farmers market five years ago. She was the markets cheesemonger when we started vending meats and delivering CSA shares there.

As the market season was coming to an end and we hadn't gotten all of our holiday turkeys pre-sold, we asked Tracy if she would like to offer them to her store customers. She said "Yes", and we went from there. On a cold November day we delivered turkeys - indoors- to about forty of her customers. That was a nice change from our outdoor market stall that cold fall.

Seeing the success of this venture (and the fact we hadn't really considered the logistics of delivering meat shares on brutally cold winter days or wet and dreary spring ones) we aske Tracy if she would like to host our CSA delivery as well. Again, "Yes."


When Tracy and Joe added a store in Lincolns Square, we added a CSA delivery there. Tracy and Joe are huge supporters of local foods and farmers and we're grateful for the relationship that's developed over the years. We even attended Tracy and Joe's "surprise wedding!"

It has definitely been a mutually beneficial relationship between Provenance and CVSF! We're definitely richer because of it - most of the riches are non-monetary; but the we've earned a fair number of dollars as well.

Thanks, Tracy!

J is for Jack

Jack is our youngest, but is quite easily the most enthusiastic about farming. A couple of months ago he told me: "Dad, when I retire from being a pro soccer player, I want to be a farmer just like you."

 Whether it's helping pick eggs, feeding the pigs or moving the cows to a new pasture, Jack wants to help. If I have tractor work to do, he rides along. When I go to pick up feed or farm supplies, Jack rides with. The whole time is filled with questions about what, why, and how we do things. In his nearly six years, Jack has absorbed an incredible amount of knowledge about our sustainable farm.

Last year, at the end of a long day in Springfield for the Local Food Lobby Day, Jack and his brothers insisted that they come along to our meeting with Lieutenant Governor Simon.

All our boys are emeshed in our farming enterprise with Jack most of all.

G.H.

Ten years ago, when we were starting what we thought was the only Community Supported Agriculture vegetable farm in  LaSalle county, another farm was getting theirs in the ground as well. That farm is Growing Home Farm (aka Les Brown Memorial Farm) in Marseilles, IL just 13 miles east of Cedar Valley Sustainable Farm.

Larry O' Toole

It wasn't until our second season that we were made aware of Growing Home (G.H.). One day, a CSA member brought Larry O' Toole with him when he came to pick up his weekly box of vegetables. Meeting another sustainable vegetable farmer in the endless desert of corn and soybeans was a breath of fresh air, and the beginning of what continues to be a fruitful collaboration between our farms - that continues today. (In fact, I when I finish this post, I'm going out to till compost into our small garden with a tiller borrowed from G.H.)

Over the years, Cedar Valley Sustainable Farm has done A LOT with G.H. We've hosted trainees on our farm, helped put in transplants there, shared seed orders, eaten potlucks, complained, commiserated, and celebrated with Larry an the G.H. staff.

After hurricane Katrina (and the less well know but equally devastaing Rita) I and two staffers from G.H. traveled to southwest Louisiana to volunteer for two weeks. We left just after Thanksgiving 2005, for New Iberia where the Southern Mutual Help Association had a bunkhouse for volunteers set up in a church building. The multiple skills required for farming translated very well to helping with the storm recovery.

In 2008, upon our return from vacation in Texas, our walk-in freezer failed. We called G.H. for help. Larry and a crew of four others showed within an hour and helped move everything to alternative freezer storage. It is not a stretch to say that GH save our business that day! We're grateful to have G.H. as part of our community.

E is for....

Sustainable farming evokes pastoral images and often romantic notions of being balanced and in harmony with the land and it's ecology. Don't get me wrong, on our best days at Cedar Valley Sustainable Farm we enter a blissful state of flow that seems to exist outside of time. It's exhilarating; and, ten years in, this happens more and more often.

That's not always the case, sometimes there's a there's pressures, pushes, and pulls of time, of family, of deadlines, of weather, of bills, of .... that make our usually elastic bands of resilence brittle and ready to snap. It's at times like these that we have to dig down and find the strength and courage to - ask for help.

One of the times we needed help was when we were applying for our first Frontera Farmer Foundation grant. Part o f the application is tax returns and financial information including the current years taxes. When we applied January 31st was the application deadline. This was a tight turn around for us to get our taxes completed and the financial statements we needed were new to us (My degree is in English, and Beth's is in Education, so finance is not a strong suit).

We'd done our own taxes for the first couple of years on the farm - Beth was still teaching and the farm business was pretty small and seemed simple. In our third year, we decided to have our taxes done professionally by a CPA that neighboring farmer recommended. Unfortunately, his expertise seemed to be even less than ours. With the Frontera deadline looming, we felt overwhelmed; but Beth thought of a solution. A good friend of her's from high school (and a "farm-girl"), Carrie Echols, had her own CPA practice locally.

So, we reconnected with Carrie. She understood farm taxes and accounting and was willing to learn about our unique (community supported agriculture) business approach. Carrie worked with us to get everything completed by the deadline and has been our accountant ever since. It's liberating to know that we don't have to have all the answers and a comfort to have experts we can turn to when we need help. Sustainabilty is NOT about being totally self-sufficient; it's about cultivating and encouraging interdependent relationships that strengthens the whole system.

B is for Butcher

Okay, we run a meat CSA - that's community supported agriculture. (If you're new to this and would like to learn more our farm and CSA visit us at Cedar Valley Sustainable Farm. If you'd like to find a CSA in your area got to Local Harvest. If you're in Chicago, visit The Local Beet.)

Raise our animals in ways that nurture their true natures. We're mindful that their well being is dependent upon us, just as our sustenance is dependent on them. It is a relationship grounded with respect and reverence.

But, to become the nourishing goodness that goes into our monthly shares, their lives must end. We take great care with our animals and work to ensure that the same care is taken when they become meat.

Luckily, we have a fantastic  butcher who does his job as thoughtfully as we do ours. His name is Scott Bittner.

Scott runs the only buthcher shop in the state of Illinois that can do certified organic butchering for red meat animals (beef, pork, lamb, goat). Although we are NOT a certfied organic farm, this is important to us and our customers as it means that only organic methods and ingredients are used in the processing of our meats (no MSG, added nitrates etc).

Bittners (Scott and his wonderful staff) are an important part of our farm's community, and we appreciate all they do!

 

Sometimes it hurts…

Sometimes it hurts…

Much of the joy we receive from farming is in the connections we have with our customers/members and the other businesses that make CVSF go. At each delivery, we get to talk with our extended farm family. Usually, we hear about yummy dishes made with our meats and good words about our eggs. Sometimes, there’s a comment about something we’ve shared of our farm or lives in a newsletter or on our face book page. Rather than loading our animals on a truck for some distant commodity market and that being the end of our story, our CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) business model allows us to complete the circle and connect with our eaters. Farming the way we do make us happy, the many allies we have make us wealthy.

Last night’s delivery was bittersweet. Linda, a long-time member (When I say that Linda is a long-time member, I mean that Linda - and her husband Bill – joined our vegetable CSA in our first season nearly ten years ago. They’ve remained stalwart supporters ever since. They’ve cooked out with us by our creek, and we’ve pot-lucked with them at another member’s home. We’ve shared our lives and they’ve shared ours), was picking up her share after missing her last couple of scheduled deliveries. We learned that Linda had lost her Bill several weeks ago.

When Linda walked in to pick up her share, I gave her a hug and told her how sorry Beth and I were for her loss. She told me it had been a hard day – lots of memories of Bill. We spoke some more and talked inevitably of food. Linda told me that, for a while, she hadn’t done any cooking. It was an activity she and Bill did together. Recently, a friend whose son wanted to learn to cook reached out to Linda. For the past couple of weeks, Linda and this young man have gotten together to cook dishes with our meats; teaching cooking, she has found comfort and connection with our food. In a small way, our work has helped comfort a grieving friend. This makes me proud. I’m sad, but proud.

Today, Beth is on her way to Arthur, IL to pick up frozen chickens we’ve stored in a meat locker there since the end of our pasture season. While she’s there she will stop in to Central Illinois Poultry Processing to offer our condolences to Andy Jess and his family. This winter, Vera Jess died unexpectedly. We’ve grown to know the Jesses as they have processed our chickens for going on six years. Andy and Vera founded the Illinois’ first and only poultry processing plant that can do certified organic processing. The Jess’s hard work and attention to detail allow small, sustainable, and organic poultry growers across Illinois – and neighboring states to offer the best and most humanely processed chickens possible. The Jess’s business makes our business possible. We thank them, and mourn their loss.

Connections are important and enrich our lives, but sometimes they hurt, too. Rest in peace Vera and Bill; you are missed!