A note from our farmer
Brian and I have belonged to a meat CSA http://www.chestnutfarms.org/ for a few years now. We love being a part of Kim and Rich's extended farm family and look forward to their monthly e-mail updates. From time to time I have shared them here, this one I think is most intersting because it touches on a few areas: slaughtering, raising animals as family, and the impact of federal law on the small family farm. Read up if you are curious. And support your local family farmer!
We hope you had a wonderful holiday season and enjoyed the company of good friends and family and some wonderful food! THANK YOU for the wonderful Christmas cards and goodies- we cherish our connections with you and your family and it is such fun to see how our children are all changing and growing. The holidays are such fun and the joy of spending time with loved ones over a table or around the tree is to be savored. We were blessed with a full week of time ON the farm (no distributions or markets for ten days!!) with both our older daughters here. We played a lot of board games (we are a serious Yahtzee family and have been known to have a two-day Risk event), took walks, played with our animals and of course did chores together. It is nice to know that our girls are still able to haul grain and move hogs, not to mention round up our escaped cattle! It was also great fun to cook supper together. Caroline made lots of cookies and Marlisa bakes a wonderful loaf of bread, so we were very well fed.
January is always a great month for cleaning out, taking stock and setting a new course. We clean our closets, barns, freezers and take stock of the year just passed. Suddenly soups, stews and salads are back on the table, we have purged the closets of the boots with three holes and the sweatshirts that just aren’t going to hold together another year. Renewal is good, but it also gives a warm glow to the over-indulgence of the holidays just passed.
This is to remind you that your January CSA Share will be distributed SUNDAY, January 8th from 3 to 5 pm at Waltham Fields Community Farm - Our oldest daughter, Marlisa will be there to help out which will be a treat for me - Sam has a basketball game and at 13, is not yet driving legally so Rich will take him there : ) We really look forward to connecting with you!!
Bullet Points for the Speed Readers:
· Animal Harvest or HOW can you DO that??? NOTE: NOT FOR FAINT OF HEART!!
· Piglet Christmas - Princess Take TWO!
· Farm Policy Update: The latest strategy to eliminate family farms!!
· Good Eating: The never-ending Crock Pot
· Recipes - Great Ground Beef
Chestnut Farms is a Family livestock farm. We raise cattle, sheep, hogs, and poultry on our farm in Hardwick. One question that arises again and again is how can you raise and animal and then eat it?? (the quick answer is that we harvest livestock in their late adolescence - anyone who has raised teens seems to understand the concept of harvesting at that stage!!).
Animals give birth year round and grow year round. However, we do tend to send proportionally more of our animals to the Harvest Home (okay, slaughterhouse) in the fall and early winter - after years of doing this, we have learned that fewer births in January and February mean lower mortality and better outcomes for the babies so we have moved to this model. As a result we are finishing up a large harvest - In the last two weeks of December we sent 14 cows, 40 lambs, 35 hogs and 250 chickens to harvest. This has given us time to reflect on our practices and make sure that we are honoring our mission of care and compassion for our animals literally from birth to plate. When we spend six months to two years feeding and watering an animal, we become attached to it, we really care about how the transition from barn or pasture animal to CSA packages occurs and we want to make sure that process is as humane and respectful as possible.
Rich and I, along with our children have become fairly adept at loading and moving the livestock. We have developed systems of moving animals from pasture to trailer that tend to be slow and steady. We do not rush them nor do we move quickly or raise our voices. Poultry excepted (that is a whole other grab and load - see turkeys), we are generally able to literally walk our animals onto our livestock trailer. We try and make sure that we load just before we leave and we make sure that our animals are comfortable on our trailer. We also use slaughterhouses that take our animals by appointment, rather than holding pens, so when we drop our animals off they go from our trailer to the kill floor. While this places an added burden on us (we have to make sure our animals are loaded and ready to go when they have an appointment - NOT when it is convenient to us), we are happy to know that they won’t be spending a day or longer in a pen with unfamiliar animals in an unfamiliar food prior to literally walking the plank.
Our livestock are driven by either Rich or our friend Scottie to one of our two slaughterhouses. ( I drove the previous trailer and managed to hook the axle on piece of ledge, thereby ruining the axle and have been banned from that particular farm chore ever since!) The slaughterhouses are both family owned and operated and we all share a young son of about the same age. Rich and I know the owners and their employees well at this point. Both slaughterhouses are also fully USDA inspected, so when we arrive, an inspector comes out and makes sure the animals on our trailer are healthy. The inspector is a government employee and is paid from our tax dollars - NOT from the slaughterhouse, so it ensures objectivity and code enforcement. The inspectors also move about from one slaughterhouse to another every six months to two years, so they remain faithful to the UDSA health regulations and are not tempted to compromise safety for friendship. The slaughterhouses are small and each has a fulltime inspector for only two rooms, versus a larger plant that might have one inspector for several floors of rooms for killing and processing.
The animals leave our trailer and go to the kill floor where they are stunned and then killed. The process is quick, humane and important to us - we know the man doing it at each of the two places and both are wonderful with animals - really. I know that sounds odd, but to us it is important that the person doing the harvesting is caring and respectful of our animals. Being the kill guy at the slaughterhouse might attract someone with a bit of nuttiness, but these men have been doing the job most of their adult lives (both are in their forties) and both are great guys.
Following the quick death, cattle, sheep and goats are then skinned while the pigs have their hair burned off. The animals are beheaded, gutted and hooves are cut off. The organ meats are separated and prepared for packing later. If the cow is suspected of being over 30 months by law the head must be sent for testing for mad cow disease. Otherwise, heads, hoofs and guts are placed in a large barrel and sold to a company that re-grinds it into pet food (One such company is literally called Scooby Recycles!) The carcass is separated into two parts and hung in a meat locker for a period of “relaxing”. In the case of hogs, sheep and goats it can be only a day or two; in the case of cattle it is up to two weeks of what is known as dry-aging. That means hanging a carcass in a dry area to let the rigor mortis pass and the relaxation of the muscles to set in so the meat becomes more tender.
Once the carcasses are properly aged, they are moved to the meat processing room. Here, several people work together to cut up our animals and package them. The meat is fresh at this point - as it has been since slaughter- but as soon as it is cryo-vacum sealed it goes into a large bin that is part of a set of trays. These trays are wheeled into a large, super cold freezer room and the cuts are immediately frozen for your enjoyment when you thaw it at your home. After the meat has spent a day or so in the freezer room, it is wheeled back out and packed into boxes. Someone from Chestnut Farms (and over the years, ALL of us have done this job many times ! ) then drives back to the slaughterhouse, anywhere from 4 to 16 days from dropping off the animals, to pick-up the boxes of meat. These are transported back to the farm, placed in our walk in freezer. Several days before a CSA distribution, the boxes are set up and then assembled into shares. The shares live in our 23 chest freezers (all Craiglist freezers!) until we are ready to load for distribution and bring them to you! It takes about 2 ½ hours to load the large blue trucks for our share distributions.
Hopefully this answers some of the questions about the processing - but as always, feel free to ask about anything - we DO run a fully transparent farm and our goal is to connect you to the entire process of livestock birthing, raising and harvesting.
Speaking of birthing, every so often we have a piglet that has a rough start. Just before Christmas, we had a new mom accidently step on one of her piglets. She was startled in her pen and become anxious so she didn’t look to see where she was stepping. The piglet survived the mishap, but with a large flap of skin torn ¾ of the way off her buttock and lots of exposed and bleeding flesh. Fortunately, we were able to bring her up to the farm house and evaluate her. She received some first aid (iodine) and a warm bed and bottle of milk. Our kids named her Christmas. Over the last week, she has really come into her own personality. She reminds us of one of our early sows, Princess, who used to rule the barn with an iron hoof! What Princess wanted, Princess got - hence the name. Every fall, she would take her litter strolling up and down the street in front of our farm to enjoy all the acorns and hickory nuts that fell. Escaping from her pens was never a problem - Princess could untie any knot.
Christmas has a similar personality - when she wants something she squeals - LOUDLY - until her need is met. We let her out of her crate several times a day to run around and play and eat. Christmas has transitioned to yogurt - but REALLY prefers the Greek Style (expensive) over the store brand - and will squeal to get it whenever she hears someone in the kitchen. She also loves running around our dogs and I think she knows she is tormenting them - they are all well versed in livestock and never aggressive, but it is SO funny to watch her chase Dozer, our 190 lb (at last vet visit!) Saint Bernard around. Christmas squeals and runs at Dozer; he tries to back up and sniff her; she keeps coming at him; he turns tail and runs! Given the cold, Christmas remains in our laundry room/entrance with a clean towel in her crate each day and lots of yogurt - I have a feeling we will have a long connection to her : )
In the never-ending battle between the government/corporate Farm World and the REAL family farmers (not the guy on the commercial talking about how he grows 7000 acres of lettuce to supply McDonalds) the U.S. Labor Department has proposed rules to essentially outlaw child labor on family farms!!!!. The ONLY exception would be farms directly owned by the parents - no LLCs, no corporations, no grandparent farms, nothing. According to Lancaster Farming, Michael Hancock, assistant administrator for policy at the Labor Department’s Wage and Hour division noted that the rules governing farm labor have not been updated since the 1970’s and changes are needed to address working with tractors and other large farm machines. “farming is the single-most hazardous occupation, as measured by fatalities, for children.” NEWSFLASH: Are there ANY OTHER occupations left that children can actually work in?? Hmmm… Coal mining is the singe… NOPE can’t work there; hmmm…Timber Harvesting is the single… NOPE can’t work there - Farming is THE ONLY real job that children can perform!
Further digging reveals that nearly 29 of every 100,000 farm workers die on the job, according the National Safety Council - However between the ages of 15 to 25 the death rate is only 21 per 100,000 and statistics are not available for workers younger than 15 b because there isn’t enough data on them. I do have a Masters of Science (translation: Lots of stats courses) in Public Policy from Carnegie Mellon (another life) and my analysis of these statistics indicates that to increase safety on my farm, all the workers should be between 15 and 24!! However, reality is not a politically palatable as the PROTECT OUR CHILDREN tagline that this current proposed government regulation carries.
The proposed farm labor law changes would OUTLAW any child under age 16 from “ working in a yard, pen, or stall occupied by a bull, boar, or stud horse maintained for breeding purposes; a sow with suckling pigs; or a cow with a newborn calf (with umbilical cord present)”, it also prohibits them from driving ANY tractors, pickup trucks, atv’s using power equipment such as a chainsaw . These regulations may make sense for city or suburban dwellers, but when children grow up learning how to respectfully and safely operate equipment it is both necessary to the family farm and good experience.
Given the advice of lawyers and supported by our insurance company, Chestnut Farms is technically a Limited Liability Company. Many small businesses of all stripes choose this organizational structure. Under the new labor law, Sam, 13 year old son would no longer be allowed to chop or split our firewood, feed or water any mother with suckling pigs or a newborn calf, go in a pasture or pen with a boar (Sweetie would miss his love!!) use an atv to round up errant cattle or hogs, drive the old pickup (we call her the White Caddy - best $279 we ever spent on a pickup truck!) through the fields to water the animals, or help us sort, load, vaccinate or castrate animals. God and government forbid if they found him helping slaughter and process poultry!
While these proposed changes may make sense to bureaucrats who never had to depend on family labor to literally put food on the table, they are another (maybe final) nail in the coffin that has become the family farm. It is not enough that if we have one single employee, we are legally obligated to know, understand and abide by all federal and state human resource laws, have a payroll service and post all “appropriate” workplace related signs. We are also obligated to provide a break room, monitor work hours (i.e. sorry, if the pig is having trouble in labor and it is 5 pm - you go home) and ensure a “safe and hazzard free work environment”. Now the government is trying to take away our CHILDREN!!! Feel free to read more at: http://www.dol.gov/whd/CL/AG_NPRM.htm
Frankly, we would not be in business without our children. All three of our kids have performed many, many hours of manual, dirty and tedious labor over the years on our farm. They all learned to drive by age 7 or 8; all can use a chainsaw, axe and maul and all are comfortable and competent around animals. You have met all of them at one point or another at distributions or farmers markets (outside of legal student employment hours). While these “child labor laws” may make sense to someone with a desk job and no real world experience, there is a huge need on the farm for full family engagement. Farming is not just a business, but a way of life.
In a humorous anecdote, we first read about these changes in a weekly newsletter put out by the NH Department of Food and Agriculture. I was furious and left it on the kitchen table to talk to Rich about after supper. While I was chopping vegetables, Sam was in the kitchen and read the newsletter - he very quickly understood the implications of the proposed changes and literally broke into the happy-boy dance!! - Until we explained that we would probably not be able to keep the farm or the animals without his help nor would have have a farm of his own one day, because it is nearly impossible to raise an economically viable number of animals in a humane manner without several people working together. Once he understood the full implications, he was very concerned about the role of regulations in our family farm.
The public comment period ran earlier this fall on these changes and there was a national outcry among family farmers. This caused a 30 day extension of the public comment period, which closed December 1st. We are following the Even larger crop farms in the Midwest rely heavily on their teen children to drive tractors and combines during a short harvest season. There is a very limited supply of competent farm labor available today in the United States and our U.S. Labor Department seems bent on eliminating the viability of the family farm through slowly squeezing our ability to get our work done. We will be monitoring the progress of these changes and keep you informed.
Winter brings many more braising cuts in your share - almost all of our cuts outside of the ground can be braised, but stew meat, roasts, shanks and whole chickens are my favorites. One of our shareholders recounted her Never-Ending Crockpot and I have to confess, I am of a similar stripe. The crockpot is my absolute FAVORITE method to prepare the majority of our meats. The meals tend to taste great, be warm and ready when we are and allows sequential dining when I am late coming in from a distribution or Sam has basketball practice. Depending on the number of diners, one can eat for several days on a single item. A personal example is the chuck roast - I cut up potatoes, carrots, onions and celery and browned the bottom roast in the morning. I added about 1 ½ cups of beef broth and set the crockpot on low for 8 hours. That night we had pot-roast for dinner. The next day, I chopped the leftover meat, took the remaining veggies out and added some mushrooms and red wine - this time I left the pot on Warm and we had beef burgundy over noodles with salad for supper the next night. Day three saw the remaining veggies back in the pot and I added 32 oz’s of Spicy V-8 Juice (it was what I had on hand from sometime last summer!) another couple of carrots, the remaining three mushrooms and left it on low for 12 hours. Just before supper, I cooked some noodles and served the minestrone soup over the noodles with hot biscuits.
Never did I rinse the crockpot!!
A similar week in our home centered around a whole chicken. I place chopped Garlic inside the bird and a bit of salt and pepper on the skin and put the whole thing in my crockpot on low for 8 hours. That night we had chicken mashed potatoes and a green veggie (garlic infused kale or spinach are family favorites). After supper, I stripped the chicken and saved most of the meat (about 2/3) for the next night -chicken quesedillas. The remaining bits of meat and the backbone went back in the crock pot with the juices. This time I did put the crockpot in the fridge for the day - later, I add a couple cups of water or broth, a couple cups of carrots, two celery ribs a freshly chopped onion or two and reset the crockpot for 8 hours low. About an hour before serving, I added leftover noodles or rice (whatever was in my fridge) and a package of frozen peas for a great chicken noodle or chicken and rice soup supper. Again - No Crockpot rinsing!!
Long Newsletter - It must be January!!! Below is a GREAT winter soup recipe - hearty, healthy and easy to make all at the same time!!
Yummy Winter Ground Beef Soup
Ingredients
2 cups sliced carrots or 1 (16 oz.) package baby carrots
1 box(10 oz) package sliced fresh mushrooms
2 cups whole kernel corn, drained if canned or thawed if frozen
1/2 small head sliced cabbage
3 cups peeled, seeded and cubed butternut squash
1 (28 ounce) can crushed tomatoes
3/4 to 1 cup water or broth of your choice
1 pound extra lean ground beef
2-4 finely chopped garlic cloves
1/2 to one (1 ounce) package taco seasoning
Salt and Pepper to taste
Directions
Place carrots in a large, heavy pot, then layer mushrooms, corn, cabbage, butternut squash, tomatoes, and water on top. Cover and bring to a boil over medium-high heat.
While the soup is coming to a boil, heat a large skillet over medium-high heat and stir in the ground beef , garlic cloves and taco seasoning. Cook and stir until the beef is crumbly, evenly browned, and no longer pink. You do not need to drain if you use Chestnut Farms Beef!! . Add beef to the soup, and reduce heat to medium. Continue simmering until the carrots are tender, about 1 hour. The butternut squash adds a great flavor and is locally available at this time of year!
Great served with freshly baked biscuits. Keeps well and is good the next day as well.
If you have read through this whole newsletter simply say “free bin item!!” to me at distribution and you will receive a free selection from our bits and pieces bin!!
Thanks so much for your connection to our farm!! Happy New Year and our best wishes for a warm and safe new year!!
Naturally yours,
Kim and Rich
We hope you had a wonderful holiday season and enjoyed the company of good friends and family and some wonderful food! THANK YOU for the wonderful Christmas cards and goodies- we cherish our connections with you and your family and it is such fun to see how our children are all changing and growing. The holidays are such fun and the joy of spending time with loved ones over a table or around the tree is to be savored. We were blessed with a full week of time ON the farm (no distributions or markets for ten days!!) with both our older daughters here. We played a lot of board games (we are a serious Yahtzee family and have been known to have a two-day Risk event), took walks, played with our animals and of course did chores together. It is nice to know that our girls are still able to haul grain and move hogs, not to mention round up our escaped cattle! It was also great fun to cook supper together. Caroline made lots of cookies and Marlisa bakes a wonderful loaf of bread, so we were very well fed.
January is always a great month for cleaning out, taking stock and setting a new course. We clean our closets, barns, freezers and take stock of the year just passed. Suddenly soups, stews and salads are back on the table, we have purged the closets of the boots with three holes and the sweatshirts that just aren’t going to hold together another year. Renewal is good, but it also gives a warm glow to the over-indulgence of the holidays just passed.
This is to remind you that your January CSA Share will be distributed SUNDAY, January 8th from 3 to 5 pm at Waltham Fields Community Farm - Our oldest daughter, Marlisa will be there to help out which will be a treat for me - Sam has a basketball game and at 13, is not yet driving legally so Rich will take him there : ) We really look forward to connecting with you!!
Bullet Points for the Speed Readers:
· Animal Harvest or HOW can you DO that??? NOTE: NOT FOR FAINT OF HEART!!
· Piglet Christmas - Princess Take TWO!
· Farm Policy Update: The latest strategy to eliminate family farms!!
· Good Eating: The never-ending Crock Pot
· Recipes - Great Ground Beef
Chestnut Farms is a Family livestock farm. We raise cattle, sheep, hogs, and poultry on our farm in Hardwick. One question that arises again and again is how can you raise and animal and then eat it?? (the quick answer is that we harvest livestock in their late adolescence - anyone who has raised teens seems to understand the concept of harvesting at that stage!!).
Animals give birth year round and grow year round. However, we do tend to send proportionally more of our animals to the Harvest Home (okay, slaughterhouse) in the fall and early winter - after years of doing this, we have learned that fewer births in January and February mean lower mortality and better outcomes for the babies so we have moved to this model. As a result we are finishing up a large harvest - In the last two weeks of December we sent 14 cows, 40 lambs, 35 hogs and 250 chickens to harvest. This has given us time to reflect on our practices and make sure that we are honoring our mission of care and compassion for our animals literally from birth to plate. When we spend six months to two years feeding and watering an animal, we become attached to it, we really care about how the transition from barn or pasture animal to CSA packages occurs and we want to make sure that process is as humane and respectful as possible.
Rich and I, along with our children have become fairly adept at loading and moving the livestock. We have developed systems of moving animals from pasture to trailer that tend to be slow and steady. We do not rush them nor do we move quickly or raise our voices. Poultry excepted (that is a whole other grab and load - see turkeys), we are generally able to literally walk our animals onto our livestock trailer. We try and make sure that we load just before we leave and we make sure that our animals are comfortable on our trailer. We also use slaughterhouses that take our animals by appointment, rather than holding pens, so when we drop our animals off they go from our trailer to the kill floor. While this places an added burden on us (we have to make sure our animals are loaded and ready to go when they have an appointment - NOT when it is convenient to us), we are happy to know that they won’t be spending a day or longer in a pen with unfamiliar animals in an unfamiliar food prior to literally walking the plank.
Our livestock are driven by either Rich or our friend Scottie to one of our two slaughterhouses. ( I drove the previous trailer and managed to hook the axle on piece of ledge, thereby ruining the axle and have been banned from that particular farm chore ever since!) The slaughterhouses are both family owned and operated and we all share a young son of about the same age. Rich and I know the owners and their employees well at this point. Both slaughterhouses are also fully USDA inspected, so when we arrive, an inspector comes out and makes sure the animals on our trailer are healthy. The inspector is a government employee and is paid from our tax dollars - NOT from the slaughterhouse, so it ensures objectivity and code enforcement. The inspectors also move about from one slaughterhouse to another every six months to two years, so they remain faithful to the UDSA health regulations and are not tempted to compromise safety for friendship. The slaughterhouses are small and each has a fulltime inspector for only two rooms, versus a larger plant that might have one inspector for several floors of rooms for killing and processing.
The animals leave our trailer and go to the kill floor where they are stunned and then killed. The process is quick, humane and important to us - we know the man doing it at each of the two places and both are wonderful with animals - really. I know that sounds odd, but to us it is important that the person doing the harvesting is caring and respectful of our animals. Being the kill guy at the slaughterhouse might attract someone with a bit of nuttiness, but these men have been doing the job most of their adult lives (both are in their forties) and both are great guys.
Following the quick death, cattle, sheep and goats are then skinned while the pigs have their hair burned off. The animals are beheaded, gutted and hooves are cut off. The organ meats are separated and prepared for packing later. If the cow is suspected of being over 30 months by law the head must be sent for testing for mad cow disease. Otherwise, heads, hoofs and guts are placed in a large barrel and sold to a company that re-grinds it into pet food (One such company is literally called Scooby Recycles!) The carcass is separated into two parts and hung in a meat locker for a period of “relaxing”. In the case of hogs, sheep and goats it can be only a day or two; in the case of cattle it is up to two weeks of what is known as dry-aging. That means hanging a carcass in a dry area to let the rigor mortis pass and the relaxation of the muscles to set in so the meat becomes more tender.
Once the carcasses are properly aged, they are moved to the meat processing room. Here, several people work together to cut up our animals and package them. The meat is fresh at this point - as it has been since slaughter- but as soon as it is cryo-vacum sealed it goes into a large bin that is part of a set of trays. These trays are wheeled into a large, super cold freezer room and the cuts are immediately frozen for your enjoyment when you thaw it at your home. After the meat has spent a day or so in the freezer room, it is wheeled back out and packed into boxes. Someone from Chestnut Farms (and over the years, ALL of us have done this job many times ! ) then drives back to the slaughterhouse, anywhere from 4 to 16 days from dropping off the animals, to pick-up the boxes of meat. These are transported back to the farm, placed in our walk in freezer. Several days before a CSA distribution, the boxes are set up and then assembled into shares. The shares live in our 23 chest freezers (all Craiglist freezers!) until we are ready to load for distribution and bring them to you! It takes about 2 ½ hours to load the large blue trucks for our share distributions.
Hopefully this answers some of the questions about the processing - but as always, feel free to ask about anything - we DO run a fully transparent farm and our goal is to connect you to the entire process of livestock birthing, raising and harvesting.
Speaking of birthing, every so often we have a piglet that has a rough start. Just before Christmas, we had a new mom accidently step on one of her piglets. She was startled in her pen and become anxious so she didn’t look to see where she was stepping. The piglet survived the mishap, but with a large flap of skin torn ¾ of the way off her buttock and lots of exposed and bleeding flesh. Fortunately, we were able to bring her up to the farm house and evaluate her. She received some first aid (iodine) and a warm bed and bottle of milk. Our kids named her Christmas. Over the last week, she has really come into her own personality. She reminds us of one of our early sows, Princess, who used to rule the barn with an iron hoof! What Princess wanted, Princess got - hence the name. Every fall, she would take her litter strolling up and down the street in front of our farm to enjoy all the acorns and hickory nuts that fell. Escaping from her pens was never a problem - Princess could untie any knot.
Christmas has a similar personality - when she wants something she squeals - LOUDLY - until her need is met. We let her out of her crate several times a day to run around and play and eat. Christmas has transitioned to yogurt - but REALLY prefers the Greek Style (expensive) over the store brand - and will squeal to get it whenever she hears someone in the kitchen. She also loves running around our dogs and I think she knows she is tormenting them - they are all well versed in livestock and never aggressive, but it is SO funny to watch her chase Dozer, our 190 lb (at last vet visit!) Saint Bernard around. Christmas squeals and runs at Dozer; he tries to back up and sniff her; she keeps coming at him; he turns tail and runs! Given the cold, Christmas remains in our laundry room/entrance with a clean towel in her crate each day and lots of yogurt - I have a feeling we will have a long connection to her : )
In the never-ending battle between the government/corporate Farm World and the REAL family farmers (not the guy on the commercial talking about how he grows 7000 acres of lettuce to supply McDonalds) the U.S. Labor Department has proposed rules to essentially outlaw child labor on family farms!!!!. The ONLY exception would be farms directly owned by the parents - no LLCs, no corporations, no grandparent farms, nothing. According to Lancaster Farming, Michael Hancock, assistant administrator for policy at the Labor Department’s Wage and Hour division noted that the rules governing farm labor have not been updated since the 1970’s and changes are needed to address working with tractors and other large farm machines. “farming is the single-most hazardous occupation, as measured by fatalities, for children.” NEWSFLASH: Are there ANY OTHER occupations left that children can actually work in?? Hmmm… Coal mining is the singe… NOPE can’t work there; hmmm…Timber Harvesting is the single… NOPE can’t work there - Farming is THE ONLY real job that children can perform!
Further digging reveals that nearly 29 of every 100,000 farm workers die on the job, according the National Safety Council - However between the ages of 15 to 25 the death rate is only 21 per 100,000 and statistics are not available for workers younger than 15 b because there isn’t enough data on them. I do have a Masters of Science (translation: Lots of stats courses) in Public Policy from Carnegie Mellon (another life) and my analysis of these statistics indicates that to increase safety on my farm, all the workers should be between 15 and 24!! However, reality is not a politically palatable as the PROTECT OUR CHILDREN tagline that this current proposed government regulation carries.
The proposed farm labor law changes would OUTLAW any child under age 16 from “ working in a yard, pen, or stall occupied by a bull, boar, or stud horse maintained for breeding purposes; a sow with suckling pigs; or a cow with a newborn calf (with umbilical cord present)”, it also prohibits them from driving ANY tractors, pickup trucks, atv’s using power equipment such as a chainsaw . These regulations may make sense for city or suburban dwellers, but when children grow up learning how to respectfully and safely operate equipment it is both necessary to the family farm and good experience.
Given the advice of lawyers and supported by our insurance company, Chestnut Farms is technically a Limited Liability Company. Many small businesses of all stripes choose this organizational structure. Under the new labor law, Sam, 13 year old son would no longer be allowed to chop or split our firewood, feed or water any mother with suckling pigs or a newborn calf, go in a pasture or pen with a boar (Sweetie would miss his love!!) use an atv to round up errant cattle or hogs, drive the old pickup (we call her the White Caddy - best $279 we ever spent on a pickup truck!) through the fields to water the animals, or help us sort, load, vaccinate or castrate animals. God and government forbid if they found him helping slaughter and process poultry!
While these proposed changes may make sense to bureaucrats who never had to depend on family labor to literally put food on the table, they are another (maybe final) nail in the coffin that has become the family farm. It is not enough that if we have one single employee, we are legally obligated to know, understand and abide by all federal and state human resource laws, have a payroll service and post all “appropriate” workplace related signs. We are also obligated to provide a break room, monitor work hours (i.e. sorry, if the pig is having trouble in labor and it is 5 pm - you go home) and ensure a “safe and hazzard free work environment”. Now the government is trying to take away our CHILDREN!!! Feel free to read more at: http://www.dol.gov/whd/CL/AG_NPRM.htm
Frankly, we would not be in business without our children. All three of our kids have performed many, many hours of manual, dirty and tedious labor over the years on our farm. They all learned to drive by age 7 or 8; all can use a chainsaw, axe and maul and all are comfortable and competent around animals. You have met all of them at one point or another at distributions or farmers markets (outside of legal student employment hours). While these “child labor laws” may make sense to someone with a desk job and no real world experience, there is a huge need on the farm for full family engagement. Farming is not just a business, but a way of life.
In a humorous anecdote, we first read about these changes in a weekly newsletter put out by the NH Department of Food and Agriculture. I was furious and left it on the kitchen table to talk to Rich about after supper. While I was chopping vegetables, Sam was in the kitchen and read the newsletter - he very quickly understood the implications of the proposed changes and literally broke into the happy-boy dance!! - Until we explained that we would probably not be able to keep the farm or the animals without his help nor would have have a farm of his own one day, because it is nearly impossible to raise an economically viable number of animals in a humane manner without several people working together. Once he understood the full implications, he was very concerned about the role of regulations in our family farm.
The public comment period ran earlier this fall on these changes and there was a national outcry among family farmers. This caused a 30 day extension of the public comment period, which closed December 1st. We are following the Even larger crop farms in the Midwest rely heavily on their teen children to drive tractors and combines during a short harvest season. There is a very limited supply of competent farm labor available today in the United States and our U.S. Labor Department seems bent on eliminating the viability of the family farm through slowly squeezing our ability to get our work done. We will be monitoring the progress of these changes and keep you informed.
Winter brings many more braising cuts in your share - almost all of our cuts outside of the ground can be braised, but stew meat, roasts, shanks and whole chickens are my favorites. One of our shareholders recounted her Never-Ending Crockpot and I have to confess, I am of a similar stripe. The crockpot is my absolute FAVORITE method to prepare the majority of our meats. The meals tend to taste great, be warm and ready when we are and allows sequential dining when I am late coming in from a distribution or Sam has basketball practice. Depending on the number of diners, one can eat for several days on a single item. A personal example is the chuck roast - I cut up potatoes, carrots, onions and celery and browned the bottom roast in the morning. I added about 1 ½ cups of beef broth and set the crockpot on low for 8 hours. That night we had pot-roast for dinner. The next day, I chopped the leftover meat, took the remaining veggies out and added some mushrooms and red wine - this time I left the pot on Warm and we had beef burgundy over noodles with salad for supper the next night. Day three saw the remaining veggies back in the pot and I added 32 oz’s of Spicy V-8 Juice (it was what I had on hand from sometime last summer!) another couple of carrots, the remaining three mushrooms and left it on low for 12 hours. Just before supper, I cooked some noodles and served the minestrone soup over the noodles with hot biscuits.
Never did I rinse the crockpot!!
A similar week in our home centered around a whole chicken. I place chopped Garlic inside the bird and a bit of salt and pepper on the skin and put the whole thing in my crockpot on low for 8 hours. That night we had chicken mashed potatoes and a green veggie (garlic infused kale or spinach are family favorites). After supper, I stripped the chicken and saved most of the meat (about 2/3) for the next night -chicken quesedillas. The remaining bits of meat and the backbone went back in the crock pot with the juices. This time I did put the crockpot in the fridge for the day - later, I add a couple cups of water or broth, a couple cups of carrots, two celery ribs a freshly chopped onion or two and reset the crockpot for 8 hours low. About an hour before serving, I added leftover noodles or rice (whatever was in my fridge) and a package of frozen peas for a great chicken noodle or chicken and rice soup supper. Again - No Crockpot rinsing!!
Long Newsletter - It must be January!!! Below is a GREAT winter soup recipe - hearty, healthy and easy to make all at the same time!!
Yummy Winter Ground Beef Soup
Ingredients
2 cups sliced carrots or 1 (16 oz.) package baby carrots
1 box(10 oz) package sliced fresh mushrooms
2 cups whole kernel corn, drained if canned or thawed if frozen
1/2 small head sliced cabbage
3 cups peeled, seeded and cubed butternut squash
1 (28 ounce) can crushed tomatoes
3/4 to 1 cup water or broth of your choice
1 pound extra lean ground beef
2-4 finely chopped garlic cloves
1/2 to one (1 ounce) package taco seasoning
Salt and Pepper to taste
Directions
Place carrots in a large, heavy pot, then layer mushrooms, corn, cabbage, butternut squash, tomatoes, and water on top. Cover and bring to a boil over medium-high heat.
While the soup is coming to a boil, heat a large skillet over medium-high heat and stir in the ground beef , garlic cloves and taco seasoning. Cook and stir until the beef is crumbly, evenly browned, and no longer pink. You do not need to drain if you use Chestnut Farms Beef!! . Add beef to the soup, and reduce heat to medium. Continue simmering until the carrots are tender, about 1 hour. The butternut squash adds a great flavor and is locally available at this time of year!
Great served with freshly baked biscuits. Keeps well and is good the next day as well.
If you have read through this whole newsletter simply say “free bin item!!” to me at distribution and you will receive a free selection from our bits and pieces bin!!
Thanks so much for your connection to our farm!! Happy New Year and our best wishes for a warm and safe new year!!
Naturally yours,
Kim and Rich