News and Blog
Growing up in small-town Arkansas, one of the highlights of the year was the county fair. I loved the smells, sights, coolness of the evenings, and the feeling of connectedness to community.
This week is, as it rolls around, is Fair time! We approached it with many mixed feelings. Our kids truly look forward to it with excitement and apprehension. Our son, Ben, is showing a heifer from our herd. This is the same little heifer that cracked Andy's ankle! But she has settled.....some!
We have the only grassfed animal at the fair. She is noticeably smaller (weight) than the others. She will be in a class by herself for this fact. So, Ben will get a ribbon for at least one class! She will then compete with the much larger, extreme formed, grain fed heifers. My heart cries a little for Ben that she won't be able to compete. Maybe not this year, but watch out! We are only improving, daily, in our knowledge and experience, as well as genetics!
If you are able to come to the Polk County Fair in Mena, look us up. We weren't able to set up a commercial booth this year, but will be around if you can come for a visit!! It would be nice to have some like-minded company around!!
Blessings to all! Tracy
August, how peculiar you are!
We are in awe at the hottest (?) month of the year! We have had several inches of rain, cool nights and beautiful, cloudy skies. What a blessing from above.
Our Large Black gilt, Daisy, had her first litter of pigs August 3. (That was also Andy's and my 17th wedding anniversary. What a gift!! ) She had 7 pigs, one died at birth. There are 5 boars and 1 gilt. We have been amazed at her. She is a terrific mother and they are already on pasture. Check out the pictures in the photo gallery. They are so cute, I am using one of the pictures for some new business cards!
August is the month we are waiting. Waiting for the harvest. We will harvest the lambs, pigs, and 2 beeves (for ground beef) in September. I still do not have dates yet as to when I will return to the market. We are looking at the middle of September, tentatively.
Thanks to those of you who sent recipes. They are in the recipes section awaiting your trials! If any of you have a favored recipe you would like to share, send it on! Also check out the new site we really enjoy, Grassfed Recipes. It is on our Links We Like page.
Blessings to you and yours, Tracy
Greetings!
In September, we will return to the farmer's markets with fresh, 100% grass-fed and finished lamb. We raise Katahdin lambs. They are a hair sheep and do not have wool. This produces a milder flavor as well as many positive traits such as mothering ability, parasite resistence and overall independence from the farmer! (not much hoof trimming or worming)
Growing up in Southwestern, rural Arkansas, we didn't have many opportunities to eat lamb. It just wasn't one of the meal options we opted for. Therefore, I do not have an extensive recipe pool from which to prepare our soon to be bountiful harvest. This was also the dilemna for many of you.
That is why I am troubling you this afternoon. I have met many of you that were plum tickled to find grassfed lamb and shared with me you had many wonderful recipes. Would you please share your delectable, succulent lamb recipes with me and I will pass them on.
I predict we will have a revival of this very traditional food. If you are interested in purchasing a whole lamb instead of individual retail cuts, please let me know. We are scheduling everything with the processor now.
My family, friends and stomach thank you in advance for contributing!!!!! Be Blessed, Tracy
"Where'd you GO?" A recently asked question from a loyal customer.
We actually haven't gone anywhere, but it would seem so since I have not informed you about anything happening on the farm. We have had some of the roughest and sweetest weeks the last month.
One day as I was out working, I began adding up the hours we work each week. It was such an astounding number that I recalculated, since I am not a math wizard! I informed Andy and he looked at me like I just figured out what color grass is (he already knew). Well, it was a revelation to me. My body knew, just not my mind. Other things knew as well, like my laundry room, our car that doesn't run properly, our garden (what you can see of it), our friends that we fellowship with, and our family was beginning to tell the truth, too. We had far too little time for each other anymore.
We have done some deep soul searching and farm revisiting in the last weeks. We have decided to put the cow share program on hold at this time. I feel like I have lost a friend of sorts. But this is just what we feel we have to do to get our house in order. When and if things work differently, this will be utmost on our list of things to do and reform.
The other thing we did was go on vacation. We have been planning this with my family since January. Some of the craziness before our week off was preparation and training of some help to be able to go away. It was a truly blessed week. We had fun, peace, relaxation, and some new experiences, sleeping in!!!
But due to all of this whirlwind of activity, I haven't been writing much to let you know what's going on!! I will be a more dedicated web student from now on, I promise. Thank you for your support and dedication to real food. Stay tuned for our farm updates. Be blessed, Tracy
Hello to All!!
I want to bring you the latest news from our farm. We will not be at the Polk County (Mena) market or the Gateway Farmer's Market for a while! We have sold out of our current supply of fresh beef and pork. Do not despair or think we have gone anywhere! We will be back in September with fresh lamb and pork. We will have a limited supply of beef in November.
You have become more than customers to us, we truly appreciate your patronage, kindness and encouragement. We look forward to seeing you in the fall.
Keep in touch in the few weeks we have until then!!!
Tracy
Dear Real Food Lovers,
What an incredible month this has been! I have been selling at the Polk County and Gateway Farmer's Markets since June 10. I have met all of you wonderful local, real food lovers. You have been quite an inspiration to us as we begin this endeavor. Believe me, we need that at 4:00 a.m. and 10:00p.m. when we are still working! Whew! But, I do know this will only last a season. There is a time for everything, ours is the time for labor now. And you precious folks have made it worthwhile!! Thank you for your encouraging words, precious smiles and feedback of our products.
I will not be able to be in Texarkana this week, July 10 and 12. I will be in Mena on the 8th. We will be back on schedule for Texarkana, July 17th.
I still have the grassfed ground beef. So many of you are interested in the pork, lamb, goat and beef. The pork, lamb and a small amount of goat will be available in September. Next month's newsletter will have more specific dates. Limited cuts of grassfed and finished beef should be ready in October.
Many people wonder why we do not have readily available beef, pork or lamb. I would like to explain a little. We are a closed farm. We do not buy off farm animals. We raise and graze all of them ourselves. This isn't a large industrial farm where production is the bottom line. We are small and local and determined to put quality before anything else. So this may mean a limited supply of beef or pork at a given time. Please be patient with us as we grow and learn better to serve you.
It is likely I will not be at the markets in August at all due to selling out of the ground beef, (if things continue at the pace they have been) so I will look forward, as you do, to September. AHHH, I do love Fall!!!!!!
Thank you for blessing our summer thus far!!! Enjoy!!
The Youngblood's, Andy, Tracy, Ben and Matti
For all intensive purposes, we have only just begun. We started transitioning our farm in 2006. This is our first year of having a finished product to sell. We have had a great beginning. It makes us so very anxious and ready for more. We have many visions and goals for the future. We wanted to share some of our goals with you so you can see that you are a very intricate part of them.
1. We will have a life, farm, family, finances and freedoms that center Christ.
2. We will have an on-farm retail store to market grass-finished meats, poultry, eggs, and dairy to progressive thinking individuals ready to redeem real food. We will also have buyer clubs in various locations and deliver our goods to them, meet them where they are.
3. We want to give our kids the opportunity to become their own bosses, joining our efforts, becoming financially stable and fulfilled.
4. We want to live and promote a healthy life in our farm, family and community.
5. We want to help build a stronger economic community by providing markets for interested friends, family and community by either them buying or joining our farming venture.
6. We will cultivate, improve a sustainable oasis for livestock, grass, wildlife that our children will be able to inherit and sustain.
7. We will leave a legacy of the greatest commandment of Christ-LOVE. Our legacy will include nuturing relationships to ultimately improve/develop/teach our customers (friends) that a growing, vibrant, relationship with Christ is more important than any health benefit of a healthy lifestyle.
Andy and I have been blessed to have both been raised in farming families. This has lent itself to much experience as well as love of the land and animals. Our farm is a group of places that are well spread out. We travel a little to check on the animals at two different places as well as what we have here at our house place. It is the smallest of the three.
We had the opportunity in January to buy a large piece of land that is about 1/4 of a mile south of our home. It was family land, a great aunt's, at one time. It connects with my uncle's place also. We feel truly blessed to be able to have bought this place. It is 155 acres. It had a huge plantation of pine and hardwood. This was cut by the timber company we bought it from. For the most part, it is devoid of rock and has great soil. It has rolling hills and a couple of deep draughs. We will leave them in trees. We are unable at this time to have it cleared and fenced. We have chosen to take this as a blessing. Andy has never had the opportunity to start a place from the soil up! He is already researching and making plans on how to best plant areas to supply all of our farm's needs. As you can guess, the kids and I are OVERJOYED at getting a chance to fence 155 acres with our dear Fence Fiend: Andy.
Current products available:
Cow shares in dairy herd
All meats (beef, lamb, and goat) will be ready for harvesting in the fall '08. Pork will be ready after the new year. We grass finish seasonally. Call or email if you are interested.
