Blog
Eating Our Words Has Never Felt This Good
There was a time not that long ago, where you probably heard us say that we were never, EVER, going to hire employees. It’s true, we probably wouldn't have been able to afford to hire someone at the time. But that’s really besides the point. Our mindset back then was...
My Dad’s #1 Favorite Story About Us
My Dad's favorite story to tell, especially when we’re all sitting around the dinner table together, is about the moment he met Greg for the first time. It happened one night during our senior year in college, when my Dad and brother came to campus for a visit. At the...
This Can Spell Trouble ?
Pigs, while less than half the size of cows, are rough on pastures. With those incredibly strong snouts of theirs, they’ll turn what was once rich pasture in the fall season, into barren land by the spring. This spells trouble on a farm like ours, since barren land is...
What #Farmlife Really Looks Like
Last Friday night, as we were driving home from a friend’s house, I looked over toward a neighbor’s farm and saw, through the darkness, someone driving a tractor, much larger than ours, up the field with the lights blazing. As I often do when I’m out of my depth, I...
Drum Roll, Please?
No one could tell us how to keep the farm afloat during the pandemic. There was no guide or how-to for us to reference. In a very short amount of time, everything we thought we knew about the farm and where we were headed, was tossed up in the air. And it was up to us...
Do You Know What Teat Fidelity Is?
As Greg predicted, our sow Pinto Bean had a massive litter. She gave birth to 16 piglets this week and having just 12 teats, this was 4 more than she could manage. Nature, however cruel, knows how to sort these things out. Which is why, as soon as we tallied them all...
You Get The Credit For This One
We bought another cow. Like the last one, it wasn’t destined to graze our pastures. Raised carefully on a farm an hour west of here, it was destined for our freezer. Our butcher tells us he clocked in at over 800 lbs hanging weight, which means that he was well over...
We’ve Been Waiting For This
One of our most important farm jobs from now 'til around mid-November will be to rotate the animals onto fresh pasture every few days. But, before that happens, we're charged with answering these 2 big questions: #1 Are the fields ready? We need the grasses to be...
The Scariest Thing We Do
A few years ago, we went to an organic farming conference in the ADKs. On the first night away, our 500 lb boar broke out of his paddock. With our proverbial tails between our legs, we drove home, helped the hormone frenzied boar back into his paddock, and missed the...
Wish Us Luck On This One
We have a 7 acre section of woodlands on the northwestern side of the farm that we just adore. It’s a young forest on a sloping hillside with lots of shade and interesting plant life. We don’t talk about it much. But we’ve known for some time that it would make a...
It’s Getting Better.
What was I thinking about when it happened? Was I distracted? Was I over-tired? I’m still processing that fluke hip injury I had last summer. And believe it or not, almost a year later, I’m still healing, too. I wonder how that’s even possible when our cells possess...
We Made Up Our Minds This Week
It was a big week. For the first time in Stonecrop history, we said bon voyage to a litter of piglets, as they headed off toward their new home on another farm. With time, I'm sure the term “organic pig breeder” will roll off the tongue easily - sorta like how...
Aren’t You Curious About What We Did With All Those Extra Piglets?
While I was putting dinner together this week, Greg came over to the kitchen sink to wash up and said “’I spent the entire day outside doing physical work, and boy, am I feeling it!” Suffice it to say, he’s got spring in his step, but summer on his mind. And even...
Last Week, It Hit Me
Greg and I were in the barn castrating the last batch of males born during the piglet explosion (all the sows and new piglets are doing great by the way!), when I noticed something. There’s a time of year when the barn is so jam packed with bales of straw and hay that...
Just 1% Better Every Time
There’s a great book out there called Atomic Habits, by James Clear. Have you heard of it? I loved it. So much so, that it’s been over a year since I read it, and I still find myself thinking about it often. My big takeaway from the book was that the best way to move...