If you’ve seen our display at farmers market you know that the “Whats’s In Season” sign is part of it! This is our way of sharing with you when certain products are available. This chart is unique to our farm!
Many of you have been asking about chicken. For Apple Creek Farm this is a seasonal product. We begin raising our meat birds (broilers) in late March so they are fully feathered and ready to go out onto pasture when the grass is green. We raise broilers March – September (when there is fresh grass) and offer them fresh each week through the summer and frozen throughout the winter.
Each year we raise an increasing number of these chickens for weekly processing and the last two years we’ve sold out of our supply before our processing begins in Mid-May. So our lack of chicken is not because of the corona virus, rather due to it’s popularity!
FRESH CHICKEN available each week beginning mid-May
We’ve also sold a great deal of beef this winter. We’ll be restocked in two weeks and look for both greater variety AND the return of your favorite cuts including chuck roasts, meaty soup bones, stew meat and more!
What about Spring Lamb? Isn’t that in season?
Nope! Our lambs are born in February and March allowing them to nurse from their moms (our ewes) until May. This gives them time to learn to eat hay and then head out to pasture with their moms to learn about what plants are good to graze and how to be model farm residents by responding to our claps and daily moves to fresh pasture. We train the lambs to come when we clap so that they can easily be moved from one field to the next.
The lambs spend their summer growing while grazing. This is a slower way to finish them (by this we mean prepare them for eventual harvest) and is what makes our lamb lean yet tasty (never gamey). Our lambs stay on the farm until September or October when we choose which ewes (girl lambs) will be kept for our breeding flock (moms) and which will be harvested. This is why lamb generally isn’t available until September at the earliest.
Our goat kids are born in early to mid-May. They spend six months with their moms (our does) out on pasture and in the woods eating lots of deep-rooted perennials and invasive plants such as bittersweet. At six months the kids are weaned and join the lambs in their daily pasture moves. Our goats take a full two years to finish and as a result goat cuts are generally not available until September or October.