News from the Farm: 10 year anniversary Farm Visiting Day Announcement

Good morning friends and local food eaters,

It’s been a couple of months since we sent out a newsletter! We hope you are all doing well and enjoying summer to the fullest. Here’s what’s been going on at North Mountain Pastures.

As we mentioned in the spring, this year is full of change for us. We are not raising chickens, which has given Brooks time to work from home for his brother’s clean supplement company: Earth Fed Muscle.

Not raising chickens has been eye opening for us, we have to admit. This was a large portion of the farm operations, accounting for a lot of labor and energy resources. Cutting this out was a big decision, but we can already see that it was a wise one, at least for us personally. This has preserved our sanity as well as allowed us to see the energy use that was really involved in terms of people, time, equipment, maintenance, and utilities.

We are still working long hours, both on and off the farm, but we are stepping back to review. It is kind of a reset for us, both personally and professionally on the farm. What do we really want to excel at? What can we manage successfully? What do we enjoy?

One thing that is clear is we really love caring for this land and these animals together, and providing healthy food for our community. At the moment, this involves a lot of babywearing:

And generally doing the farming with kids thing:

Brooks is focusing on pig care, and just bought in a load of feeder pigs. Since the farrowing house fire, we have tried to regroup, get back to basics, and decide whether we will continue keeping sows and raising pigs from birth here, or buying in weaned piggies. Both ways have pros and cons, and so we’ll just do what we do best - keep trying things and seeing what works for us.

In more personal news, our almost 14 year old dog Kesey died this summer. Having adopted her as a puppy in Mexico, this was a sad day for the Santini-Miller family.

Announcing: Farm Visiting Day - September 28

It is our ten year anniversary! We started The Meat CSA in fall 2009,

so we have much to celebrate this year.

We want to welcome all meat CSA members as well as any friends of North Mountain Pastures to join us on Saturday, September 28 from 3-7.

We won’t be doing a butchering class this year, but we will have a pig roast as usual, along with beverages available. Please bring a dish to share for the pig roast potluck feast. There will be live music, a farm tour, and our popular all ages, all levels highland games competition with meat prizes for the winners!

We hope you can join us to come out and talk, see what’s new and what’s up, and generally enjoy the early fall on the farm.