2009 Annual Newsletter to our Customers

Attention friends of Full of Life Farm, LLC:

Greetings from the Smith family here at Full of Life Farm. We trust you are well and looking forward to some warmer and drier weather (as we are).

This is our first newsletter to customers. I've spent a lot of time thinking about what to write in this newsletter. There are so many things I'd like to talk about with regard to the current state of our food system, it's relation to human health, and why buying food from your local farmer, where you can see for yourself how your food is grown, is so important.

I encourage you to come visit and see for yourself just how we do things here at Full of Life Farm. If you like what you see and if our products work for you, I would love to have the opportunity to provide your family with nourishing food, raised in a manner that mother nature intended. The positive feedback we received from several of you who purchased our chicken last year confirms we're on the right track.

A few words about how and why we process our chickens on our farm and how that affects you
Our number one goal is to produce the best food possible for you, our customers. Stress is one important factor that affects meat quality in animals. If we crated up our chickens in boxes and loaded them in the back of a truck and hauled them more than an hour to the nearest commercial processing facility (in Willamina Oregon), and had them wait who knows how long in crates (without food or water) until the processor got around to processing them, our chickens would obviously be stressed during their last few hours of life. We believe this stress impacts the quality of meat.

The answer to eliminating this stress is to slaughter animals on the farm. Oregon's laws governing processing of farm animals make this easy for all animals except poultry (and rabbits). With poultry, if a farmer wishes to sell them processed, he/she must either ship their poultry to a "state inspected" facility or build a state inspected facility on the farm. We know of only two farms in the entire state of Oregon who have managed to come up with the funds to build their own state inspected facility (we are not one of them).

So rather than accept high animal stress that that the current "system" seems to encourage, we have chosen the following business model when selling our pastured poultry:

First, our contract with you, our customer, is for live birds (i.e. not processed). When you purchase chicken from us, your invoice is clearly marked that you are purchasing live birds.

Second, We have an open-air processing pavilion with the equipment and expertise to dress your birds cleanly and efficiently and we will gladly do this at no additional charge to you, right here on our farm. Utmost care is taken to maintain a clean environment while we work and we chill the birds immediately in an ice water bath. If you choose to have us process your birds, they will be whole (i.e. not cut into pieces) and on ice when you come to pick them up. So let us know if you'd like us to process your birds, or pick them up live.

Please also remember, we invite you to show up early on pickup day and observe us processing chickens. We firmly believe that working under the watchful eyes of our customers holds us to the highest standards.

Now let's get down to business.

Chicken (broiler/fryer)
We're going to raise three batches of chickens this season (pickup dates in June, August, and October). The first batch of baby chicks has already been ordered. Only 50 chickens are available for sale from this batch and it's first come, first served. You can place orders and pay your deposit with visa or pay pal via our website (http://www.fulloflifefarm.com/order).

For the August and October batches, we'll take orders for up to 150 birds per batch. Again, first come, first served. You can go ahead and place these orders now also.

Chicken (stewing hens)
We keep layers for two production years. At that point, they don't lay enough eggs to be economical so we "retire" them. Although they are tougher than the young broilers, the taste is superior and the broth is exquisite. Stewing hens must be slow cooked in order to be tender. We will only have about 10 stewing hens available for sale in October. Again, it's first come, first served so if you're interested, go ahead and place an order via our website (http://www.fulloflifefarm.com/order).

Turkey
We will have approximately 12 turkeys available for Thanksgiving. They are the Broad Breasted Bronze breed and will likely be 20 lbs, give or take. As this is our first time raising turkeys, I'm not sure exactly how big they will be. Based on the date that we are receiving chicks, we are told to expect them to range from 16 to 24 lbs. But we ask you to be flexible on size and forgive us if we miss the target by a few pounds.

Also, we are trying to hatch some heritage breeds here on our farm. We should know in the next 30 days whether any of these will hatch. As heritage turkeys grow slower than the Broad Breasted Bronzes, they should only weigh 10 to 14 lbs by Thanksgiving. Or we could just wait until Christmas and let them grow bigger. But again, this is our first time raising these as well and we aren't really sure what to expect. One important consideration - these heritage breeds won't have the large breasts that the Broad Breasted Bronzes have. If big breasts are important to you, you should stick with the Bronzes.

If you are interested in purchasing a turkey, I recommend you go ahead and place your order and pay the deposit now (http://www.fulloflifefarm.com/order). We'll handle the orders on a first come, first served basis. If we don't have enough birds to fill all of the orders, we'll refund those deposits on orders that can't be filled.

Chicken Eggs
We have chicken eggs available now. Our hens are on grass and clover pasture and the egg yolks are bright orange and full of nutrition. We've got about 85 laying hens of various breeds that give us a colorful assortment of eggs. We don't grade our eggs and we wash them by hand with water only (no bleach or chemical rinse). Eggs sell for $5/dozen and you pay when you pick them up at our farm.

If you're considering purchasing eggs for the first time, call us before you come out to the farm so we can be sure to be here and show you around.

Rabbit
Ask us about rabbit if you are interested. We do have them available from time to time.

Beef, Goat and Pork
We won't have beef, goat or pork available until 2010. However, we have purchased foundation herds of these animals and you can see them when you come to visit or to pick up your orders.

If you'd like more detailed information about how we do things here at Full of Life Farm, you can visit our website at www.fulloflifefarm.com. And by all means, please send us your questions or feedback on what we are doing so we can continue to get better at what we do.

Lastly, we gain customers through word of mouth advertising. If you like our products, please tell a friend about us. And feel free to forward this email. Thank you.

Sincerely yours,

Bernard and the rest of the Smiths at Full of Life Farm, LLC

The Eggmobile - Maiden Voyage

We loaded them inside and parked it here in the middle of this pasture last night after dark (about 9:30). It's about 7:00am now and I haven't turned them loose yet. I think I'll string a section of poultry netting around the eggmobile to keep them close in this first day out. I'm affraid if I don't, they'll wander off because they don't really know this thing is their new home yet.The girls are all trying to figure out how to get out of this thing. They can see the grass underneath them through the wire floor but they can't figure out how to get to it.
Finally! The door is opened and one by one they start to venture out.
So far, so good.
I wonder if they will move clockwise or counterclockwise around it as they roam. I suppose clockwise since we're in the Northern hemisphere.

Building the Eggmobile - Chapter 5

The nesting boxes are 2 ft by 4 ft. compartments that often times have 4 or 5 hens inside them at the same time. We have four of these boxes on our eggmobile for now. The rack that they mount on is long enough to add four more as our flock grows.

Pictured here is the doorway that the chickens use to access the boxes from inside the eggmobile. The doorway has a plywood door mounted on a single bolt so that I can rotate it closed when I pick up eggs at the end of the day. I do this to keep them from sleeping in the boxes. It keeps them cleaner, and thus the eggs cleaner.

Next (below) you can see the access door that I use when I collect eggs. It is very convenient having the boxes located about waist height.

Just look at those boxes with their nice shiny new paint.

Notice the hose reel on the front. With 150' of garden hose, I can reach the gravity fed water lines that I installed along the edge of the pasture. I just use a rubber tub with a float valve on it for the chickens waterer.

The Eggmobile is Finished!

Tonight is the big night! The eggmobile is parked next to the hen house and tonight, after they all go to bed, say around 8:00, we're going to load each of them into the eggmobile and move them out to pasture.
I'm not really sure whether it makes sense to move them tonight after dark or get up early and do it in the morning as soon as the sun comes up. I think I'll probably wait until morning. But we'll get them loaded tonight.

The old hay wagon

My grandfather had a hay wagon that was made out of an old Model T truck frame. Our cows unearthed it from under a bunch of blackberry vines this past winter. Nobody has seen this thing for years because of the blackberries that covered it.

Dad told me the other day he parked it there when he was 15 years old. He was towing it down the lane and the tie rod broke and the wheels turned in opposite directions. So he pulled it off the road, unhitched it, and left it. That was 50 years ago.


The wood deck is completely gone now. It's buried up to the axles. The tires are all flat. But it looks really cool there in the middle of this old pasture.

I moved the cows today...

I spent about 4 hours moving the cows from one pasture to the other today. Most of the time was spent at the barn where I ran each of them through the headgate. I coaxed them in there with a little kelp meal (they love that stuff). But it still took about 3 hours to get all six of them to decide to walk into the headgate for a couple bites of snack. But they did it. And without any whooping, hollering, or hitting from me. I'm trying to train them that the headgate is not a bad thing so that when the time comes that I really do need to run them through it for some reason, it won't be a big deal. I think they enjoyed the experience.

Here they are in the other pasture.

Blackberry Munchers

Mara and the goats are hard at work trying to stay ahead of the blackberrys that are coming on strong now. They have their work cut out for them.

We put Mara and the goats out to pasture every morning around 8:00 and bring them back in about an hour or two before dark. Hopefully, keeping them in the barn at night will keep them safe from coyotes.

Building the Eggmobile - Chapter 4

We've added the feed bin to the back end of the eggmobile. It should hold approximately 1200 lbs of feed. We expect to only have to fill it once per week.

Chickens will have free access to this feed via the trough located at floor level along the back wall. It's hard to see but this last photo is a picture of the trough.

Food, Inc.

FOOD INC. is a 90-minute documentary that will be coming out later this summer and it features a small farm located in Virginia (Polyface Farm) that we have modeled many of our practices after. Joel Salatin is the farmer at Polyface Farm and you can read his blog entry about this film here http://polyfaceyum.blogspot.com/2009/03/food-inc.html.

Munching on grass

I love hearing cows munching on grass.

Building the Eggmobile - Chapter 3

Door frames are hung. The lower one is for chickens and will be open all day for the chickens to have free access to the inside of their eggmobile. Hens need to enter the eggmobile to access the nesting boxes. Closed at night, it will keep them safe from predators.

The upper door can be opened for people access.

The roof is on. Galvanized metal salvaged from somebody else's project.

We built fenders over the wheels out of plywood and 1x2s with screws to hold it together.

The floor is in. First we ran 2x4s over the top of all of the beams and cross supports of the chassis. Then we laid down 1"x2" welded wire and stapled it every 2 or 3 inches to the 2x4s.

Strip Grazing

At Full of Life Farm, we practice what is called "strip grazing" (or "rotational grazing" or "management intensive grazing"). The idea is to mimic natural patterns of herbivore populations in natural settings. The key principles of this system are first to keep the herd moving around so grass has a chance to re-grow before it is bitten off again, and second to keep them mobbed up which encourages them to eat all of the varieties of grass/legumes/weeds and not just their favorites. This practice results in better health for the grass, soil, and animals. Everybody wins.

Notice in this picture the grass on the right hand side of the cross fence has not been grazed yet. A single electric wire is all that is needed to control cattle. We'll move them to the right-hand side of this wire later today. And we work our way across the pasture that way.

Pasture Farming

This morning's images of springtime grass growing in pastures around our farm.