Sojourner Farms LLC

Hello everyone,

We hope the New Year finds you well. It’s hard to believe that this is our seventh annual Sojourner Farm Newsletter and that Andy and Stephanie (and Sylvan) have been working with us for almost 2 years (in May). Following is an update of the products we offer.

BEEF

We are continuing to expand our cow herd and are hoping to have 5 beef ready for processing by this fall. Thank you to those of you that bought our 2010 crop of steers and we really do appreciate your feedback and comments.

PORK

Our pork production had a few challenges early in the year but did well through the latter part of 2010. Our next batch of 6 feeder pigs will be ready for processing in early March and we still have 2 of those available. We’ll also have ground pork/breakfast sausage and bacon available by the package in early March.

POULTRY, TURKEYS, EGGS

Every year Sojourner Farm has its highlights and challenges. In 2009 one of our biggest challenges was dealing with our local fox family who helped themselves to a large number of broilers. Fortunately, mama fox and her 2010 litter of pups mostly honored their truce with us and we only lost a few chickens to predation. Our broiler sales went well this past year and we were sold out by mid December. We’ll be adding a fourth batch this coming summer to better meet your needs and hopefully have birds available for sale later into next winter.

We had a shortage of eggs late last summer and fall. Our new laying hens are now in full production so please spread the word to neighbors and friends since we now have plenty of eggs.

We did have a challenge with our flock of turkeys early last summer. A protozoon (carried by earthworms) reared its ugly head and we lost a high percentage of turkey poults early on. Luckily the remainder of the flock responded to an old-time natural remedy of adding cider vinegar to their water and once we started using this we had no further losses and were able to meet our Thanksgiving orders.

NEW OFFERINGS

In holding with one of our farm themes of “letting nothing go to waste” we had accumulated quite a supply of lard when processing our pigs. One of our projects this winter was to turn this lard into homemade soap. We’ll be adding this soap, in addition to ground pork and beef, to our offerings at the REAP Farmers Market this summer. These products will also be available for sale on the farm.

SOCIAL

Some of you have been to one of our Farm B-B-Q’s in past years. This past August we were honored to be chosen as the “inaugural” host farm for the first annual Corn Moon Dinner. We’re sure that those of you who were able to attend will agree, it was a resounding success. The food and company were excellent and fortunately Mother Nature cooperated and the rain held off until the evening was finished. Hopefully this event will continue to occur annually at different host farms in the area.

Our next big social event will be an on-farm outdoor wedding. Phill, our son and first farm helper, is coming back to the farm with his lovely fiancée Margaret next summer for an August wedding.

Just like almost everything else these days, our production costs have gone up over the past year. We’ve tried to off-set some

of these increased costs by increasing our production/sales volume to gain efficiencies of scale whenever possible. Despite these attempts at improved efficiencies, we’ve had to raise our projected prices a bit for the coming year.

We thank you for your continued support and encouragement and really appreciate the word of mouth referrals you’ve sent us this past year. Keep spreading the word. We look forward to another rewarding (and hopefully not too challenging) year. As always, we love to have people visit the farm during the summer so feel free to contact us to arrange for a visit.

You can find this year’s order form on the home page.  We’ll gladly continue to take orders through the summer as the supply allows but, since our chicks/turkey poults have to be pre-ordered several months ahead of the growing season, we can only guarantee chicken orders received before April 1 and turkey orders received before May 1. Our supply of beef (and pork to a lesser extent) is limited so those are reserved first come first served.

Please feel free to contact us with any questions and we look forward to your feedback.