Ready to go!

Hunter is ready to give out samples of sausages. Come on by the harvest festival in ashland.

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HomeGrown Harvest Festival - Ashland 9/27

Little Sprouts will have a table at the Ashland Home Grown Harvest Festival tomorrow, Sept 27.

We will have samples of our sausages (and maybe some other products) and offering some for sale right at the festival (frozen of course).

Dont miss out!  See you there!

• Sunday, Sept 27
• Lithia Park, ashland
• 3pm to 6pm

Power backup for the winter

Anyone living in a rural area of southern oregon knows that we will spend some amount of time "in the dark" each winter. Power outages are a fact of life here.  So there are certain "preparations" we much make to prevent harm during those outages.  Its not just "keeping the lights on" but also preserving frozen product, keeping babies warm, keeping water flowing, etc.  The stuff of life.

We have had a small diesel generator for a few years, and used it multiple times to great success. It is small though, about 5 KW only. This means always choosing which  breakers or appliances to drive, and often switching things out as needs change.  So this year, we decided to be better protected with a larger generator, one capable of driving ALL of the critical systems on the farm / house.

After lots of research, we settled on a PTO generator.  This is a generator that utilized the tractor engine as the power source, connecting to the PTO of the tractor just as any implement would. Going this route makes the generator easily portable but more importantly... all we have to pay for is the electrical generator itself, since the tractor provides the power and we already own that!

This allowed us to go much larger on the generator than we could afford as a single unit. We were able to budget in a brand new, top quality generator capable of producing 15KW continuous.  That's in the 50 to 60 amp range at 240 volts! Enough to provide all the power we need for extended outages.

The brand chosen is Winco. They are made in america, high quality, great reviews, and reasonably priced.

We have the generator plug wired in, and tested it yesterday... worked beautiful! We were able to run everything, even the AC units, oven, pool pump,  milking room and dryer simultaneously. Very impressive!

For a small farm, this is a great option if you can spare the tractor while the generator is running.

Let us never forget...

Seasons are changing once again. As we complete the harvest and move into the winter, this is a time of reflection.

Let us never forget that we are caretakers of this marvelous earth, tending the garden of our father, the creator. Everything we do is ultimately for him. How we manage our land, our family, or lives... Should be centered around recognition of our true place in the universe... Managers and caretakers of Gods creation.

Life is good, Enjoy the harvest and give thanks where thanks are due. 

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Last melon harvest

Today we stripped out the last of the crenshaw melons. There was about 200 to 300 melons left in the patch for this harvest. we also pulled what few watermelon, honeydew, and canteloupe there were.

Its sad to see summer ending, but we are very happy with the number of melons we were able to grow for our hogs. There was even enough to take a small batch to the medford food coop for sale.

We will definitely plant the crenshaws again next year!

posted from Bloggeroid

Celebrating "Eat Local Week" at Medford Food Coop with more samples!

This week is "Eat Local Week" at the Medford Food Coop, and Little Sprouts is glad to be helping them celebrate ! We will be in the store wednesday and thursday giving out samples of our new sausage flavors.

We plan on having  these available for sampling (and buying directly from the Coop) :

English Bangers - both traditional with crackers and gluten free
Garlic and Pepper sausage
Hot Italian Sausage
Pork Breakfast sausage - mild and spicy

The Coop will also be carrying our fresh pork chops and sirloin chops!

Even better.. all of this will be available at NEW LOWER PRICES!

We hope you can take a moment to stop by and say hi as you try our new flavors.

All these are made with organic ingredients and our own pork, organically fed, pasture raised, heritage breed, non-gmo, no hormone, no chemicals, no anitbiotics, heritage breed, humane treatment, and FRESH produce fed...

Two Sections of Winter Garden in the ground

We managed to get 2 sections in the ground as a good start on the winter garden. We planted turnips and cauliflower.

There are 8 rows in each section, at a length of 65 yards.  That's about 200 ft x 8 rows = 1600 feet of plants.  Not as much as we'd like but certainly decent!

We are using the drip-sprout technique... planting with our Hoss Seeder, then lay the drip tape in the track, and let it run frequently for short periods all day. That keeps the soil wet at the top to sprout without overdoing the water.  Hopefully this will help contain the inevitable weeds of a new plot.

Now we wait!

The winter feed garden

Here it is! The winter animal feed garden ready to go. Just add soil, water, time.

Cabbage
Cauliflour
Kale
Turnip
Rutebega
Carrot
Kohlrabi
Parsnips
Beets

Hoping we can get them in the ground before this weeks rain.

posted from Bloggeroid

Website Updates!

Ta Da!

Finally, after  what.. 2, 3 years? We have finally taken on the task of updating our website. It has grown horribly out of date as the farm business progressed, and somewhat confusing.  Hopefully we are correcting both.

You will notice a new set of pages, and updated information all around. The goal is to better explain how we work, why we are doing this, and what to expect as a customer.

Even if you have been a customer for a long time, we encourage you to browse around the website.. ask any questions, and provide any feedback you have.

Thanks for your support!

Soy.... We are what we feed

I ran across the article below discussing  the top ten reasons of 170 reasons that soy is horribly bad for anyone.  Yes....  Soy      not a health food miracle but rather toxic substance.  But many people today have come to that realization already.  The missing piece I wish to point it out  is that most,  the vast majority,  of all farm animals are fed soy daily.  Soy is the number one protein source for farm feeds.  The end result is that soy compounds are present in all commonly produced eggs and meat.  So even if you are avoiding soy directly,  consuming any meats or eggs that are not specifically labeled soy free brings all the same health problems.

In fact, we have found that many people who are allergic to eggs are fine consuming or soy free eggs.  This is because they are not truly allergic to eggs but to the soy that comes through the eggs from commercial soy based feeds.

This is why little sprouts has been soy free across the board for over 2 years.  Yes it makes our products cost more  because other protein sources are substantially higher in cost than soy.  But we are committed to the health benefits for our animals and our customers. 

Here are ten good reasons to avoid soy,  both directly and in the meats and eggs we consume :

http://www.thehealthyhomeeconomist.com/170-scientific-reasons-to-lose-the-soy-in-your-diet/

Chickens coming soon!

Good news! The roosters are finally at size! In fact, they look good!

Since animals build bone structure first, then meat and last fat... they still need another 3 or 4 weeks to fill out, but when they do these guys look super!

Thanks for your patience. After this in initial startup we should be in a continual cycle to harvest every few months. Remember that real chickens (heritage breeds) take 2 to 3 times longer to grow than todays commercially modified breeds.

These guys look like it will be worth the wait!

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New Products! Pork Ribs, tenderloins, sirloin chops

We are pleased to announce the arrival of more cuts of our delicious healthy pork! We now offer:

Tenderloins
Baby back Ribs
Sirloin Chops

And we added both spicy and mild pork breakfast sausage.

Dont miss out! Quantities limited!

Heirloom Crenshaw Melons bound for Medford Food Coop

We are taking a load of these lovely vine ripened, organically grown, heirloom crenshaw melons to the Medford Food Coop today.  Dont miss your chance to try one of these... supplies are very limited!

A sample of these beautiful melons, super sweet and healthy

Run by the food coop and grab one.. you will not be disappointed. A sweet canteloupe - honeydew flavor with awesome aroma and creamy flesh.

you can also order some for home delivery through our online store.

Get one and experience how well our pig eat!

Crenshaw Melons are in!

Today the melon patch looked like a sea of yellow... a good portion of the crenshaw melons were ripening! We dropped everything and started harvesting before they got over ripe. A while later there are about 500 lbs of melon resting comfortably in the cool fermenting room of the kitchen, which doubles as our walk in cooler for harvest.

Some of the melon harvested today

We will be putting the melons in the online store for purchase right away.. these things are super yummy and healthy! The rest are super healthy pig food.