Circle M Farm

O my o my. Just when we think we’re out of the woods on getting our final winter-harvest animals out of their pastures and off to their meat lockers, we run into some other ginormous roadblock. This time it’s a literal one – nearly two feet of snow that fell slick and heavy overnight. Our finished steers, scheduled to be processed tomorrow morning, were beautifully cooperative wading into the trailer through the drifts tonight. But then we had a touch-and-go exit from the field, sticking then skidding, trying to get the truck and heavy load out of the wide-open gate and around the sharp turn onto our skinny dirt road while keeping our curious young steers in the pasture. All this while avoiding the ravine on the opposite side! How could anyone imagine that farming is boring? We go from one adventure to another around here. And we do a lot of yelling.

We often look and sound pretty ridiculous, yet we’re not foolish enough to imagine our adventures are over for the winter. But those of the animal-catching-and-moving variety will be completed, one way or another, before Christmas. The chickens, turkeys and lambs left without a hitch by the last week in November. If the roads are mostly clear in the morning, we’ll carefully travel 40 minutes north to where the steers will meet their destiny tomorrow. We’ve managed to get 5 of 7 hogs onto the cutting floors of several local butchers in the past two weeks, and we’ll take the last two next week.

A lovely black and white sow from our spring litter will remain and be the Hog Mama for next year. We’ve named her Pigalicious and the busy black ducks will move in with her for the cold season to keep her company and share her warmth and heated water. Well, 5 ducks will. The other 4 will participate in the final animal hauling escapade of the year when we take them, plus 5 more roosters and 10 well-beyond-laying stew hens down our Amish friends’ scary steep driveway to be processed in their giant garage on December 19.

Then we’ll be set for a quite Merry Christmas, with lots of meat to eat and lots of meat to sell. Please do let us know if you’d like some of the delicious 2009 Homestead Meat harvest! We have one more half hog available, and one more quarter steer. We’ll be packing the remaining cuts into wonderful mixed Market Baskets that will be ready for pick-up and delivery in the week before Christmas. See our Market Basket Specials tab at left for a list of what’s available. You can also reserve the individual cuts listed under the Meat Prices tab. Contact us with a comment or call 608-523-4341.