PayPal Button

Last night I added a PayPal button to the left hand side of the blog post. Here is a rundown of how purchasing a bird from us works.

1. Deposit
We cannot guarantee that we won't run out of birds. Last year we ran out of turkeys, we could have sold a lot more than we raised. With that in mind if you want a bird, your best chance to ensure that you get one is to put a deposit down, today.

2. Shipping
We don't ship. If you live local and are willing to come fetch your bird, then go ahead and put your deposit down.

3. Poultry Types
We sell two types of birds: Turkeys and Broiler Chickens. Broiler Chickens are fat balls of feathers and muscle. We are Free Ranging them for half their life so the leg meat will be a little larger this year than last year. The turkeys we raise are Mammoth Bronze and because we Free Range/Pasture them for the bulk of their life they will have equal amounts of dark and white meat.

4. Ready Dates
The Broiler Chickens will be ready mid to late June. It all depends on when my husband has time to process them. We will be doing a second batch of Broiler Chickens to be ready closer to fall so if you miss out this first time you will have a second chance. The turkeys will be ready before Thanksgiving. We will call you when we know an exact day and when you can pick them up.

5. Pricing

• Broiler Chickens (before deposit) are a flat rate of $15, unless it is larger than 6lbs and then it is $3/per pound
• Turkeys (before deposit) are $3/per pound. Last year the turkeys ranged from 14-22lbs (maybe some were  a little heavier too). When you come pick up your turkey, you also may choose which one you take home.
• The deposit amount is credited to you when you pick up your bird. So for a Broiler Chicken on pick up day your bird will cost you $5 (or more if your bird is huge) if you have put down a $10 deposit.

6. Taste

We did a taste test during our open house in March. I was nervous about it, what if our chicken didn't taste better? I will have a whole blog post dedicated to that experiment by the end of May 2014.

6AM

These are the images I wanted to have accompany my last blog post, but the day I wrote the post it was cloudy and yucky. The next day, the day of these images the sun was perfect. When I getup and do chores, it is my favorite part of the morning. The sun is so warm, the air so clean, and all the poultry so happy to greet the morning. 

If you are wondering how our flocks are doing, they are growing. We have twelve new chicks in the kitchen. The library hatched chicks for the second year and I told the librarian that we were interested in taking a few. She called me and asked if I'd take all twelve. They camp from a farm, laid naturally, and kept in an incubator. My Dad read that we have a 50/50 chance of them being roosters. If they are roosters then they will probably end up in the crock pot. I'm hoping that at least half are layers, they are going to be so pretty. 

The ducklings are growing so fast! They are huge! The broilers are nearing the end of their growth. It looks like we won't get a chance to get this batch outside. Hopefully the next batch will go out. We have fences to move and poles to place. And turkeys are coming next month! The chickens in the photo are the "Sixers" they are so fast! We are looking forward to putting all of our chickens together in a month. Our flock will be huge then!

What We've Been Doing

Things are a little hectic on the farm these days. Winter would not let go when we wanted it to and the chicks arrived before the snow was gone. Half of the birds are not where we want them to be. The ducks are in a tote in the kitchen and the new layers are in the broilers "new" coop.

We started the spring the six new layers in a box in the kitchen. We purchased six new ones because we lost a few chickens over the winter; one due to illness and another due to what we think was a birth defect, plus the original Rhode Island Reds are not laying as well. Recently we put the six new chicks where the broilers will be. 

The Broilers also arrived (and spent a brief two weeks in the kitchen) but have since been moved out the brood box in the barn. They will be ready for processing in less than two months.

The Coop Plan for this year: last years turkey coop will become this years layer coop. There are a few modifications that need to be made to the coop. Dad will make a man door and devise a way to add boxes for the chickens to lay eggs in. The fencing will be re-organized to make the turkey yard and most of the current chicken yard into one large yard. Moving the fencing will make the old chicken yard smaller so that the broilers can have a small outdoor space, but not so large that they won't gain the muscle weight required for a meat bird. We are hoping that with an outdoor space to run in the broilers will have larger drumsticks and thighs.

We have ducklings in the kitchen that will hopefully be moved to the blueberry bushes (so they are fenced in) before they are moved to the brood pen in preparation for taking over the pond. And what will happen to the current ducks? We are replacing them. We want friendly ducks, and the two in the pond are not friendly. We've been handling the ducklings a lot and it seems to be working. 

Thankfully we are waiting to get turkeys until summer, because some fencing still needs to repaired, purchased, and put up. 

In addition to all that going on. Dad bred two rabbits and a bunny (for those who don't know around here rabbits are food and bunnies are pets) so in a few short weeks we should have cute fuzzy things!

Not to mention that the garden is finally free of snow!

I have been knitting like a woman possessed. I decided that I would knit Stomper and Our Sweetie matching vests for Easter. The Saturday night before Easter found me weaving in ends. I cannot believe I finished them! In between knitting the two vests I've been working on a test knit. They are this really beautiful pair of fingerless gloves The gloves feature a cable that starts on the forearm and winds around to the top of the wrist. It's really neat. I was able to knit one before I had to set them aside to finish the vests. I will post pictures as soon as I can find a model.

For April vacation we have the teenagers. It was great to have them around for Mimi's annual Easter Egg Hunt. This year she prepared, and Jason and his brother-in-law hid, 300 eggs. The kids had a blast finding them.

Hope your spring is going well too!

Hamberg Family Farm Open House

March 15 11am-4pm

Hamberg Family Farm Open House

* Bonfire * 

* Sap Boiling * 

* Coop Tours *

Bring the whole Family

Come and learn how we feed and handle our poultry. Tour our coop and discover why small scale flocks produce better tasting meat and eggs. 

Taste test the difference! We will be making soup out of a store chicken and one from our farm.

We have a big back yard to play in, so bring your snow gear kids!

Reserve Whole Chickens (ready early summer) and Fall Turkeys with deposit. For more information contact us through facebook: Hambergfamilyfarm

Before the Storm

When it is warm enough we have afternoon snack outside. We see no sense in being in when it is nice out!

The season may be over, but football training never ends.

I took a few "before" shots, before the next series of snow rolls through.

No, we don't cage the cat. My Mom opened the bunny's cage door (she's wintering in the barn) to give the cats someplace snow free to hang out. Apparently the cat (Hinata) likes pretending to be a bunny.

On Eggs

I've been doing a little research here and there on chickens and the benefits of farm fresh eggs and I thought I would share them with you. First though a quote from my brother-in-law "I don't really like store bought eggs, but I can't get enough of yours!"

From Williams Sonoma:

"What should you look for when buying farm fresh eggs?

You should look for pasture-raised, if possible.  The grass diet helps give the yolk a deep, beautiful orange color. They should be free of cracks and fresh (eggs can be sold as “Fresh” for up to 30 days from the time they are placed in cartons–or 45 days if a “use by” date is applied).   If you can get them within a few days of being laid, they are even better – another reason to develop a trusted relationship with a farmer or farm. Interestingly, it’s actually better to have eggs that are a week old or so for hard boiling.  The pH changes, allowing the egg to peel much more easily.  Hard boiled eggs with a dash of salt are a perfect snack food!  "

An interesting video on store-bought organic chicken eggs

From simple bites:

"You may be thinking, “I buy organic, free-range eggs from the grocery store”.  This is a great start, however, with the demand of “organic” and “naturally” raised products, more companies are jumping on board to sell you what you want.

This is great.  Our demand of good nourishing food is being met.  However,many standards are truly not what you may expect.

In order for eggs to be labeled “free-range” a chicken needs to have access to the outdoors.  This usually means hundreds of chicken confined to an industrial chicken house with a small slab of concrete to walk outdoors if they’d like.

Your “free-range egg” chickens are really spending their lives indoors in a ventilated area and will not have the nutrient levels as described above.  If you’re buying “vegetarian-fed eggs”, this is a sure sign that they do not have access to pasture as real chickens are not vegetarians.

Chickens live and thrive on a variety of worms and bugs outdoors which only a pasture can provide. "

 Some notes on our chickens and their eggs.

1) In the winter our chickens are kept inside and grain fed.  However, in the spring-fall our chickens live outside in a large fenced in area where they have access to grass, worms, bugs, and dirt to scratch in.

2) Our chickens have lots of space and light. If you would like to see where they live in the winter, please ask! We don't mind giving a tour! In the spring-fall in addition to their yard; they also have a coop large enough to sleep and lay in.

3) Due to cost our eggs are not organic or non-gmo. If we were to raise chickens on organic feed the price increase of buying organic feed would be passed on to you, our customer. If this is something you'd be interested in us doing, let us know.

4) During the winter we do expect our chickens to lay (some farmers don't) and provide them with adequate light to "trick" their normal rhythms into laying an egg daily. [For some additional reading check out this article by backyard chickens] Our reasons for doing this (as outlined in the article) is because our chickens are not pets.

5) When you purchase a dozen of our eggs you will find some are "funny" colors. That is because we have "Easter Eggers" in our flock and the shells of their eggs are blue!

6) Our chickens are laying about a dozen eggs a day, so if you need some eggs let us know!

White Blanket

When we went to bed last night it was snowing. When we woke up this morning we were greeted with a small layer of snow on the ground. It's just enough snow to make things messy while driving, delay school, make snowballs for the dog to chase, and build a few snowmen. Its pretty much the best way to start the morning. 

Today Jason took the day off to process the broilers and the layers. The broilers have reached their full size and so today he will process all twenty-two of them. It has been a short nine weeks with these chickens. At times it's been a little rough raising them in the cold of the fall. A few times when we've gone down to tend them they've been a little chilly and we've needed to add more warming lights for them. 

We are culling over half our laying flock today too. They aren't keeping up their end of the bargain, by laying enough eggs to pay for their grain. We will keep the seven hens we bought this year in addition to Charcoal the Rooster, and Twig the Broody Hen. In the spring we will purchase more laying hens. 

We are keeping Twig in hopes that she will raise the new chicks for us. We have a neighbor who let their hen sit on a bunch of eggs for the appropriate amount of weeks, and then slipped day old chicks under her. She then raised the chicks herself. If that works than we can do the same thing with her and broilers too and raise meat birds any time of the year.

The ducks don't mind the snow. This is their second year with snow. They waddle around the barnyard looking for scraps and morsels. There isn't much for them to eat under the snow, but they persist. It's quite entertaining to watch them dig in the snow with their bills.

In addition to all the chicken processing Jason's Dad hit a small deer with his truck on Friday. The deer is hanging in our garage waiting to be made into ground venison. Looks like the freezer is going to be full this winter. God certainly provides!

Turkey Day

The turkeys have reached maturity. If you have been following along on Facebook, then you already know that the biggest so far was 22lbs and the smallest 14lbs. We had lots of help on "the day", the kids were looking forward to helping and watching. They did a great job helping out. We are very proud of them.

We have only processed four turkeys, the other five are waiting to be taken to the local slaughter house. Hunting Season is upon us and understandably the hunter doesn't want to spend his free time elbow deep in turkey. Mom and I are taking them in November while Dad is at work and Jason is hunting. Dad asked if there would be someone there to help us ladies unload. The man on the other end responded: "Are there attachment issues? Sometimes people have a hard time letting their turkeys go." Not to worry, we are looking forward to eating one of these beauties!

The pear trees are done, found someone strong enough to climb up and shake them down. Sent the cat up recently to get the last pear down, but she didn't understand. Thought I sent her up there to cut some teeth!

This is the look of deep concentration: "Don't drop it, don't drop it, don't drop it."

Around Here

We've been keeping busy around the farm. Between picking up pears, peeling pears, canning pears, and eating pears we've been making salsa, playing with our turkeys, and receiving a new batch of broilers in the mail. Nothing like a little work to make your day go faster!

Stomper loves pears. He eats four a day when he's outside. It's a treat for me to watch him pick one up from the ground and just take a big bite. The pears have really cut down on the grocery bill! The turkeys really like the pears too. If we throw just one in they will chase each other to get it! It's pretty funny. I feel certain that one of the reasons God gave us animals was for entertainment purposes. We love to watch our turkeys run. Mom thinks they look prehistoric and I agree!

We bought a second batch of broilers. Our freezer has one chicken left in it, we are saving it for our Harvest Party in November. Mom has a chicken soup recipe she wants to try and it will be perfect for our harvest celebration!

This week-end marked the first day in preparing for a new adventure. Dad would like to try and raise sheep. The first step is to clear the field. We rented a bush hog and set aside two days to cut, trim, and clear the field. The men managed to clear about half the field. The rest they will work on as they have time. Maybe, just maybe, in a year we will have sheep!

Turkey Race

Post by Hamberg Family Farm.

Open House

Harvest Swap

Bring 6 Harvested Items all the same Like 

(Plus 1 to Taste Test):

Jelly

Pickles

Salsa

Apple sauce

Muffins (1 dozen)

Squash

Cookies (1 dozen)

Then Swap them for 6 different items

Prizes for Best tasting 
and Most Unique

November 9 from 2-6pm 
Hamberg Family Farm

2-4 Farm Open House  *  4pm Taste Testing & Voting  *  5pm Potluck Supper

Turkeys and Apples

A local farmer allowed us to pick up some dropped apples from under his trees. The turkeys thought they had died and gone to heave.