048 Heritage turkey from pasture to plate, vegetable gardens best tomatoes, worming pigs

This “longer than usual” CoopCast includes…

Updates from around the farm:

• Heritage Turkey for Thanksgiving - yum!!!!
• Losing a chicken and a farmers “instincts”
• Prepping for winter by moving chicken fencing (poultry netting) and pig fencing

A trip to the cold Veggie Patch to discuss some HOT tomato choices:

• Review of our top 2012 tomato varieties
• A brief lesson on determinate and indeterminate tomato plants as well as heirloom and hybrid.

In the CoopCast Community

• Josie asked about worming pigs?
• Lots of people have been asking “when is sign up for X, Y or Z”?

047 Ordering pastured turkeys, Thanksgiving on the farm, eating healthy tastes bad

This coopcast is a bit of Thanksgiving fun with the theme of “plate” (from pasture to plate) running through the segments.  So pull up a chair, have a seat on the farm and join us for a Thanksgiving discussion!

Farm updates:

• Customer looking for pastured turkeys the week before Thanksgiving,
• Pig fencing takes a hit from deer, 
• General farm updates

CoopCast Community:

• We just talk more about food… and answer a question from Josh about our breakfasts.

Farmers Choice:

• We discuss food… In particular how we have noticed that eating good food from the store never seems to taste very good.  Can healthy food taste good?

046 Prepping the farm for winter, poultry netting recommendations, the difference in processing turkeys

Updates this week on the farm include:

• Winter prep continues - fencing for winter paddock and the trouble with fencing in the fall,
• Tomatoes out of greenhouse after a really hard freeze,
• Moved pig feeder out of the mud

In the CoopCast Community

• Prop 37 - didn’t pass - is it all about business!
• Mackaenzie shares a tip to make your Facebook faned pages visible
• Question on our recipes,
• Robert asked about our recommendations on poultry netting.

Farm U

Was inspired by a question from Stuart:

• What are the differences in processing chickens and turkeys?

043 Putting the vegetable garden to bed, late season farming, how to cook a heritage turkey

Updates from around the farmstead:

• #farmerandy shares his Big Buck story of dispair,
• We put the veggie patch to bed with compost and the rototiller,
• Pigs moved to a new section of pasture,
• Pig pasture maintenance and seeding on the old pasture,
• From the pasture to the plate we talk about canning chicken in the pressure cooker,
• Final sales of year and the risk to cash flow

In the CoopCast community:

• We talk about cooking a heritage turkey (http://www.localharvest.org/features/heritage-turkey-recipes.jsp),
• A listener who didn’t know he could raise his chickens on pasture,
• Some general listener feedback items from Facebook, iTunes and Stitcher.

In the news:

• We talk about a non-functioning pair of oxen in Vermont and what should happen with them:
  • http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2012/10/21/163257176/despite-protest-college-plans-to-slaughter-serve-farms-beloved-oxen

Foolow the links on the left to the full podcast feed!

042 Fall farming updates from livestock to vegetable gardens and a discussion about farmer and consumer commitment

Updates around the farm include:

• We were featured on Libsyn’s Rockin New Podcasts! - http://imake.libsyn.com/rockin-new-libsyn-podcasts-chicken-thistle-farm-coopcast
• The growing season is officially over with a hard freeze last week,
• We finished turkeys by processing the last of the Midget White Turkeys,
• We got our municipal water bill from over the drought months (WOW),
• Winter preparations are ongoing including cleaning out the chicken coop and starting to put the vegetable garden to bed,
• Farm stand review for the year.

This week we are having 2 related farmers choice segments about commitment:

• From the farmers side, what levels of commitment are required to your livestock, land and customers?  We talk about this in relation to a listener email about his journey into becoming a farmer.
• From the consumer side, what and why are you committed to a farm or farmer? And how do your actions speak louder than your words when it comes to demonstrating that commitment?

(This episode was recorded on the eve of our 13th wedding anniversary, hence the commitment theme!)

(all episodes and the rss feed are over on our podcast page)