Farm Store Closing

November 20, 2015 6 Comments

We are making some major changes in our farm to keep the farm profitable and sustainable, and to reduce our work load. We are closing our farm store and self-service egg refrigerator at the end of the year. We have frozen chickens, convenience packs, honey, Everyday Miracles Salve and lamb available as long as supplies last. Next year we will be selling strictly wholesale to stores. We will continue to produce our pasture raised eggs and sell them in the stores that are currently carrying them and will likely add a few new stores.

Next year we will not be raising broiler chickens or turkeys, and we will not have eggs or other products for sale here at the farm.

Earlier this summer we felt that God might be directing us to stop raising broilers and turkeys and stop selling retail here on the farm. We decided to wait until Thanksgiving to make the final decision. As time went along we discovered more and more reasons why we should stop raising broilers and turkeys and close the farm store. We will not list them all, but the main reason is to reduce our work load. Farming is hard work and requires long hours. It is time to make some changes. We do not want our children to get discouraged and feel like a sign I saw recently which said: “Because of the heavy work load, the light at the end of the tunnel has been turned off!”

Luke asleep instead of playing mandolin
We have felt exhausted like this more than once this year!

Much of “Sustainable Agriculture” is not Profitable Or Sustainable
In explaining why we are closing our on-farm store, I think it is important to explain where agriculture is financially here in America – how we got where we are, and how we as sustainable farmers have been trying to make things work financially.

In a speech given on Oct. 21, 2007, former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan explained that the Federal Reserve has been involved in financial engineering in the U.S. using a technique called “Creative Destruction” to move people out of lower paying jobs such as farming, manufacturing, and the textile industry into higher paying jobs such as health care and education. The result has been that farming, which years ago was a profitable business enterprise, has become unprofitable for most farms. (See my article on Creative Destruction in the May 2008 newsletter at: http://www.jehovahjirehfarm.com/articles/2008/05/12/creative-destruction-related-to-farms/)

According to the USDA, most farms in the United States earn ALL THEIR HOUSEHOLD INCOME FROM OFF-FARM SOURCES! The USDA’s projection is that the median farm income for 2015 will be -$1,504! In other words, most farms are losing money, not making money. (http://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/farm-economy/farm-sector-income-finances/highlights-from-the-2015-farm-income-forecast.aspx)

Let that sink in. Do you know of any other profession where most of the businesses are not making any money for labor even in the good years? Most of the farmers in America are working for free. Actually, with a farm loss, many are paying to work for “free”. This is ridiculous and is not sustainable. Anything that is not sustainable will sooner or later come to an end. And then where will the food come from? Think of that the next time you see the bumper sticker – “No Farms, No Food”. The thing that so far has kept farmers going is their passion for farming. They love to farm and will do whatever is possible to keep on farming, even if it means farming for free. But sooner or later, the reality of what they are doing will dawn on them, or some event will happen that will force them to stop farming.

As our family evaluated whether we should continue to raise broilers and turkeys and operate our farm store, we realized that something had taken place in the sustainable agriculture movement that we did not see before. Since most farms were not really making money from farming, we were encouraged by people like Joel Salatin, sustainable agriculture seminar speakers, and county extension agents to sell our products directly to the public through farmers markets, CSA’s, and on-farm stores so that we could get the retail dollar for our products. That worked. It enabled farmers to get some money to put toward their living expenses. Other farms have added agritourism to keep their farm going.

What we as farmers did not fully realize is that by selling retail, we were actually adding a new business enterprise to our farm. When a store sells a product at retail price, they have a lot of labor, overhead, and other costs that go along with selling the product. The difference between the wholesale price and the retail price is not free money as many farmers tend to look at it. It takes a lot of time, planning, marketing, and preparation behind the scenes to sell directly to the consumer. What is happening is that the farmer is working for free on the farm to produce food for others, and then working a second job in retail (selling at farmer’s markets, a CSA, or on-farm store) which is actually providing their income.

Selling retail makes the farmer’s work load greater for another reason. The farmer has to have a variety of products to sell if he/she is going to attract customers to their farm market stand, CSA, or farm store. If a farmer had only one product, such as eggs or one kind of tomatoes, they would not sell very much. Each product or vegetable takes time to produce. Because of the limited retail market at each location, the farmer can’t take advantage of the economy of scale like large farms do in reducing the production cost per item. In a Weston A Price, Wise Traditions Magazine article titled “The Real Cost of Real Food”, one man shared how that with his 100 hens he would have to get $11.52 a dozen for his eggs in order to get paid $10 an hour to produce them. (http://www.westonaprice.org/health-topics/the-real-cost-of-real-food/) Because of the need for a variety of products, some sustainable farmers are producing products at a loss in order to have products to draw customers to their farm or farmer’s market stand. Those loss-leader products represent a lot of labor over the course of a year that never gets paid for, and means that the farmer has to work more even more hours at something that does make money.

Selling retail works, but we have been hearing from many sustainable farmers in the last several months how exhausted they are. They feel like they can never get everything done that needs to be done. Sheri Salatin, who with her husband Daniel (Joel Salatin’s son) manages Polyface Farm in Virginia, stated several weeks ago in a blog post: “I’ve been way too busy this year and to be brutally honest, if every year is going to be this hard, I’m ready to quit. No it’s not been a bad year. No, there was nothing tragic. I’m almost embarrassed to admit, because I know many out there who have had some major health concerns or lost loved ones this year. It has just been one of those years where… Let’s see, how can I explain it? Well, I have a list of things to get done every day and if I don’t plan my day and run it ‘just so’ not everything that I needed to get done that day will get done. And nothing on the list is optional for another day.” (http://polyfacehenhouse.com/2015/11/farm-wife-friday-a-farm-table-discussion/)

In the comments section, almost every response is from a farm woman who is feeling much the same way as Sheri.

What I have shared with you about what is happening in sustainable agriculture is negative and discouraging. I share it to help you understand why we feel it is important to close our retail sales and the extra work load that it creates. But we are not feeling negative or discouraged about our farm. Instead, we are looking forward to the future and staying sustainable. Selling eggs wholesale to stores is a profitable enterprise for us. We are getting paid for our farm labor. The name Jehovah-Jireh means “the Lord will provide”. We feel that one of the ways God has provided for us is by showing us how to make a living from our farm.

We are moving forward. We recently converted our pullet raising shelter into another hen shelter and bought some more organic hens. We are still caring for the same number of birds, and the labor is much the same, but the hens are producing an income whereas raising baby egg layers did not produce an income. The increase in egg income should more than offset the loss of on-farm sales. Our family feels like the light at the end of the tunnel has suddenly gotten brighter. We are looking forward to a break from a very, very busy summer and fall. Closing the farm store and some of our other farm enterprises will enable us to give more attention to the hens so that we can hopefully provide even better eggs for you. We will miss seeing those of you that come to the farm, but you will still be able to buy our eggs and BARC pet food in the stores. We plan to continue to keep in touch with the farm newsletter, and will probably send it out about three or four times a year.

You may also like to read:
The End of Organic Farming Might be Sooner Than We Thought by Cara Parks, Oct. 12, 2015 http://www.refinery29.com/2015/10/94908/small-organic-farm-businesses-unsustainable-agriculture

I’m Not Sorry — A November 2015 blog post by Shannon Hayes, pasture based farmer and author of The Grassfed Gourmet Cookbook: Healthy Eating and Good Living with Pasture-raised Foods http://theradicalhomemaker.net/tuesday-post/i-am-not-sorry/

Some local farms that use organic feed and raise broilers on pasture:
Rights of Man Farm, Ijamsville, Md. http://www.rightsofmanfarm.com/index.html
Nick’s Organic Farm, Buckeystown, Md. and Potomac, Md http://nicksorganicfarm.com/
Dayspring Farm, Middleburg, Va http://dayspringfarmva.com/

This fall we are adding a “Winter Garden” to each of our hen shelters. Previous to this, at the south end of the hen shelters there was a fenced area with wood chips on the ground which we called the picnic area. It was a place where we could confine the hens when the pasture was too wet, there was snow on the ground, or the pasture conditions did not permit the hens to be on the pasture that day. It is an important management tool to keep the pastures from being destroyed. By covering the picnic area with a greenhouse, the hens can now enjoy dry bedding and the heat of the greenhouse on those cold winter days in January and February. In the Spring the plastic on the sides will be rolled up and the roof covered with white plastic giving them a large open air pavilion. Hens, like us, do not like the hot sun in the middle of a summer day. It will provide more shade for them to lounge around in while they wait for the cool of evening to come so they can range the pastures before bedtime.

Hens in the winter garden
The hens are already enjoying dust bathing, scratching and just being in the Winter Gardens.

Meet Your Farmers – Part 4

August 11, 2015November 3, 2015 Leave a comment

Luke

Age 16

Luke is our dairy manager and takes care of milking our two milk cows. He also enjoys doing mechanic work on our equipment and helping keep everything in working order. He has almost completed his required driving hours on his learner’s permit and is looking forward to getting his driver’s license this fall.

Luke plays mandolin and fiddle and enjoys singing bass. He also enjoys biking.

Melody

Age 14

Melody is our cat “manager” and is responsible to make sure the cat farm workers are adequately fed, but not feed too much that they get lazy and don’t take care of all the mice and rats. She loves cats and has them all named. She can often be seen holding a kitten or petting a cat. She is also one of her Mom’s right-hand helpers.

Melody is the right name for her. She loves to sing and has a good clear soprano voice. She also sings alto. Her favorite instrument is the piano/keyboard. Several months ago she bought an acoustic-electric bass and has learned to play it well enough to play it when we sing together as a family. She also enjoys writing stories.

Meet Your Farmers – Part 3

July 14, 2015November 3, 2015 Leave a comment

Joel

Joel (26), our oldest son, works full time on the farm. He is also beekeeper and the Heavenly Honey brand honey that we sell comes from his bees. Joel’s main responsibilities are running our feed mill, mixing the feed and feeding the chickens. He is our egg delivery person and is the one who delivers our eggs and BARC dog food to the stores each week.

When it comes to any problems that are computer related, Joel is the person that we turn to. He has a knack for understanding computers and how to fix them. He is also the webmaster and web designer for our websites. Joel also has an interest in health and helping others to be healthy.

Joel is a talented musician. His favorite instrument is a 12 string guitar which he often plays by ear. He also plays 6 string guitar, harmonica, and electric autoharp. He has written a number of songs and sings lead and tenor.

Nathan

Age 22

Nathan

Nathan, our second oldest son, is also working full time on the farm. His responsibilities include raising the pullets (young laying hens before they lay their first egg) and managing the pastures.

He owns the sheep and is a real shepherd at heart. Its amazing how he can tell the sheep apart and often knows who its mother is, or who the lambs are. The sheep have been thriving under his care.

Nathan is musically talented and plays the fiddle and sings lead, tenor, baritone and bass. Every day we hear his cheerful whistling around the farm.

Meet Your Farmers – Part 2

June 17, 2015June 27, 2015 Leave a comment

Myron

Myron
I grew up in Gaithersburg, Md and have lived in the area since 1970. I have about four years of college, but I never completed a degree, nor have I really needed one. While in college, I worked in an accounting department and discovered that working behind a desk was not for me. I worked for 14 years in the Washington DC area as a finish carpenter and cabinet maker working on high end custom homes and additions. That gave me experience to be able to restore the house on our first farm and the house on our current farm.

I am the farm manager. This year, we have made some changes since we have a lot of good help on the farm. I am freed up from some of the day to day work to put more focus on planning, taking care of the finances, feed formulation for the hens, writing the newsletter, and other management responsibilities. I am a farmer at heart and still spend a significant part of the week working with the guys on various aspects of the farm.

As you may have realized from reading my articles in the newsletter, I love to research various subjects. We have a number of websites where I have published my research. In addition to farming and health related research, I have also done considerable research on spiritual subjects and issues facing the church. I am currently writing a book exposing the rampant sexual abuse of children and other failures among Amish and conservative Mennonites. Cathy and I both grew up in the Mennonite Church, but we no longer consider ourselves “Mennonite”.

I love farming and producing high quality, health giving food. I love learning, and what I am finding about the soil, farming, and how it relates to health, is like an unexplored pioneer frontier and adventure to me. Like George Washington Carver, I keep asking God to teach me and it is amazing the things that He reveals is the oddest places. I don’t feel like I have all the answers, because the more I learn the more I realize that life and farming is not as simple as I thought it was.

Daniel

Age 18

Daniel is our third oldest son and is working full time on the farm. His responsibilities include raising the broiler (meat) chickens, and taking care of the new baby chicks. While all of us guys do mechanic work, Daniel is the one with the most intuitive knack for seeing what is wrong with a machine or motor and how to fix it. It is great to have his mechanic skills here on the farm. He bought a fixer upper tractor and has been working on it and learning a lot about diesel motors. He is also a natural at doing electrical work.

He also built a blacksmith shop that we featured several years ago in a newsletter.

Daniel is musically talented and plays the accordion and sings baritone and bass. He also follows in his father’s footsteps by being a natural tease.

A Sustainable Farm that Isn’t

June 17, 2015June 27, 2015 Leave a comment

The hard, heart breaking reality that sustainable farming is not as sustainable as we once thought it was.

My heart ached as I stood at the edge of a field on another farm and looked at what had once been Salatin style pull pens, used for raising pasture-raised chickens. The pens laid smashed together on a pile in the woods. That style of chicken pen is named after the man who promoted the design and method. The pens at one time had been two feet high and 10 feet wide by 12 feet long. The pens are called pull pens because they are pulled across the pasture by moving them one pen length a day. It is a very labor intensive system. Almost every farm here in America that starts raising chickens on pasture uses this method. The method is romanticized and made appealing to new farmers.

A pile of smashed Salatin style chicken pens that had at one time been used for raising chickens on pasture. It represents the smashed dreams of two sustainable farmers, and the unsustainability of what is supposed to be sustainable agriculture.

Turning around from where the above picture was taken, this is the view of what had once been the pasture where the pasture-raised chickens had been raised. The farm was located in Maryland State Park property. After the sustainable farm failed, the land (about 50 acres) has become a wasteland filled with noxious weeds, thorns, and poison ivy. About four years ago the Maryland Forest Service planted it in trees to reforest the land, never to be farmed sustainably again. The last crop that a farm grows is trees. (We have not yet been able to prove to the world that sustainable farming is the answer to feeding the world and that we are more sustainable than big corporate agriculture. We have more work to do.)

The farm, Full Circle Farm here in Maryland, went out of business over 10 years ago. The pile of chicken pens represents not only the labor of the farmers and their wasted funds, but it also represents the smashed dreams and hopes of a man and a woman who had been told that the system that they were using was the answer to conventional confinement agriculture. They thought they were practicing sustainable agriculture that would last and endure long after the conventional, confinement, big corporation chicken houses had gone out of business for being unsustainable.

Little did they know, as beginning farmers, that the method that they were using was not sustainable and that few people who would try it would be able to make a living wage with it. Most of them would quit after a few years.

I am writing this in hope that the many farmers and want to be farmers who subscribe to this newsletter do not make the same mistakes that I made and that Full Circle Farm made. I used to think that it was me that was having the problems and that others were being successful. I kept hearing glowing reports about how great everything was on other farms. But as I have observed things over the years, and from reading articles in Stockman Grass Farmer Magazine, I have pieced together that the profits were not there that those giving the glowing reports made it sound like it was. From my perspective, the reason that many sustainable pasture based chicken farms are no longer in business is not the farmer’s fault, but the fault of the system that they used. If you are experiencing some of these failures, it is not you, it is the system you are using. Chickens will not be super healthy just because they stand, sit, and sleep on the cold wet ground with grass on it 24/7. If we are going to have sustainable pasture based farms and last long after the conventional, confinement chicken houses have gone out of business, we need follow a different method.

There are a number of reasons why pull pens are not a sustainable method of raising chickens on pasture.

It requires too much labor for the few number of chickens that the farmer is raising to make a living wage. The pens have to be moved once or twice a day or the chickens will sit in their own filth. If you have 20 inexperienced apprentices running around your farm working basically for free, building and pulling pens is good grunt work to keep them busy.
The chickens are not protected enough from the heat, the cold, the rain and wet ground, and from predators. I will not go into details, but it is not a humane method. The death loss is too high. Every chicken that dies represents a loss of profit. The overhead costs and feed invested in the dead chickens are still there.
Because of the high labor input, it is difficult to have enough time in a week to raise, process, and market enough birds to be able to make a full time income. In other words, the hourly wage is below minimum wage. That is why most farms using the pull pen method stay part time or shut down. It is not profitable. They have to have off farm income to live on. For a sustainable farm to be sustainable, the labor input has to be low enough for the number of birds raised, to be able to raise enough chickens with a normal day’s work to make a living. Those that have promoted this method of pasture based farming have made it sound like the animals do most of the work. That is not true.
Pull pens are a micro version of confinement chicken rearing, only it’s on pasture. The chickens have very little space to move in their small pen.

Likely, unbeknown to the farmers at Full Circle Farm, there was another significant factor that may have contributed to them not being able to sell enough chickens to make a go of farming and be sustainable. The farmer who had taught them the method of raising chickens on pasture had a big name recognition and was illegally delivering chickens that were not USDA inspected across state lines into Maryland to customers relatively close to Full Circle Farm. At that time period in Maryland, Full Circle Farm could only sell their chickens at their farm because their chickens were processed under Federal exemption and were not USDA inspected. People had to go to their farm; the chickens could not be delivered to drop points like the other farmer was illegally doing. It is one thing for a farm to compete with a legal competitor, but it would have been very difficult for them to compete with a competitor with name recognition that was doing things illegally to provide what the customers wanted and taking business away from them.

The black market of illegal pasture raised chickens coming from Pennsylvania and Virginia into Maryland and Washington DC continues. If you are a farmer that is doing this, please stop. If you are buying this black market chicken, please stop. If the illegal chicken and illegal raw milk does not stop coming across state lines, it will endanger the sustainability of all pasture based farms.

For sustainable agriculture to be sustainable, the farmers have to stay in business. As sustainable farmers, we need to look out for each other and help each other and not take business from other sustainable farms by doing things illegally or misrepresenting our products as something that they are not. If you are a consumer, do not hurt the sustainability of the sustainable farms in your area by supporting the big guys (or the little guys) who are doing things illegally or are misrepresenting their products. One of the most common misrepresentations is a farm giving customers the impression that their chickens and eggs are organic when they are actually not feeding their chickens organically and are feeding non-organic feed. Non-organic feed is much cheaper than organic feed. Contrary to what you might think, a pastured chicken actually eats more feed than a confinement raised bird because they get more exercise and because they need to keep themselves warm during cool weather and on cold nights. It is important that the feed is organic.

Sustainable agriculture is a team effort of farmers and consumers. If we do not make sustainable agriculture sustainable, big business, confinement, “pasture raised” animal operations will be what is sustainable.

For those who are farmers
Here in the United States, much of the information that we have been given about raising chickens on pasture is outdated by 20 years or more. There have been a lot of advancements in the last 20 years that we as small growers have not kept up with. Europe with their free-range chickens, and the larger poultry breeders have a lot of beneficial information for us to learn from. Raising chickens on pasture is a lot more high tech in meeting their nutritional and other needs than we have been led to believe. Small mistakes in nutrition and management can end up costing a farmer a lot of money and may mean the difference between making a living and going broke. Here are some valuable resources that have been beneficial to us:
The following three books available from 5M Books – http://www.5mbooks.com/agricultural-books/poultry-books/poultry-signals-training.html
Poultry Signals
Broiler Signals
Laying Hens

Online Resources:
Ross 308 Broiler Handbook
ISA Brown Egg Layer Alternative Management Guide
ISA Brown Nutrition Management Guide
Hy-Line Brown Egg Layer Red Book – A Management Guide

Meet Your Farmers

May 21, 2015May 31, 2015 Leave a comment

Each of the next number of months we will tell you a little bit about two members of our family and their role on the farm, their interests, and the talents that they contribute. This month we will introduce the two people that you will likely meet when you come to the farm to pick up chickens or if you call on the phone.

Cathy

Cathy grew up near Hutchinson, Kansas. Her father was a dwarf and passed away from skin cancer when she was 20. She also had a severely mentally handicapped brother and sister who have also passed away. The challenges of helping care for her handicapped brother, developed character and strength in her.

We met in Bible college while we were singing on the college chorale on a 12,000 mile tour through the US and Canada. Cathy is a talented musician and can sing soprano, alto, and tenor. Her favorite instrument is the piano/keyboard, but she can also play the guitar, accordion, and autoharp.

Cathy with her beloved cookbooks.

It is said that an army marches on its stomach (its food). In the same way on our farm, we do our farm work on our stomachs. Good nutrition is important to Cathy and she keeps us well fed with a wide variety of foods and ways of preparing them. She likes to garden, not for gardening’s sake, but to produce the most nutritious food for her family that she can. Cathy cooks almost exclusively from scratch using whole foods from our garden and farm, with only a small part being purchased. Bread, cookies, and other baked goods are made from whole wheat that she freshly grinds into flour just before making the item. Cathy and the girls can or freeze over 1,000 quarts of fruits and vegetables each summer.

If you have a question about how to prepare chicken, turkey or lamb, she is the one to ask. She loves to talk about cooking and also loves to hear about good ways of preparing and seasoning food that you have found. She loves it when people stop by between chicken processing dates to purchase products and chat. Cathy also has a strong interest in heath and how to help people to be healthy.

Kara

Kara is our oldest daughter and is 20 years old. She works full time on the farm as cook and gardener. She also helps with chicken processing, and processing eggs. Kara enjoys gardening and is in charge of our greenhouse where she raises plants for our gardens and flower beds.

Kara, like her mom, is a good cook. The guys say that they can’t tell a difference between her cooking and her mom’s. So if you have cooking questions, she can probably answer them too.

She enjoys singing and can sing soprano and alto. Kara also plays the flute.

Kara also has an interest in health and herbal healing. This past winter she completed a herbal healing course from Dr. John Christopher’s School of Natural Healing and is certified as a Family Herbalist. Kara is the one who makes the Everyday Miracles Salve that has been so helpful to us.

Jehovah-Jireh Farm

Category: Farmers

Farm Store Closing