Hi Y’all.
A few weeks ago I offered a reduced reservation fee that included a discount for reservees off the price of our Certified Organic No-Soy Pasture Raised Chickens to be harvested this coming year throughout the summer and fall.

As if that wasn’t good enough I am additionally offering freebie heritage breed chickens with your reserved purchase of our meat chickens.

You probably have heard about the destruction of male chicks of egg laying breeds, which are essentially all of the heritage breed chickens.

I routinely “rescue” day old chicks from the hatchery that would be thrown out otherwise and use them to follow our cows on pasture for fly control. These are not big meaty chickens but they are delicious. Young ones would be marginally tender, or chewy, but little meat and okay for grilling or frying. Older ones are tough, but awesome for stock and soup making and other such cooking methods that lend themselves handily to such birds, the same as stewing hens. Either way, tasty and nutritious.

So here’s the deal. There is still a couple of weeks before April Fool’s day, which is the cut-off to get in on the lower reservation fee with a 10% discount for your purchased chickens. For every 3 meat chickens you reserve I will give you, free of charge, a heritage breed chicken for your stock pot. I will make no guarantee as to size or weight or anything else, except that it will be prepared and packaged the same way we do our meat birds. They could be fresh or frozen/ I will give you your chicken the same time you pick up (or take delivery) of your meat birds, unless very early in the season and they are not ready yet in which case I will give them to you later in the season.

I know this will be a bit of a paperwork nightmare for me, at least until I get the system down, but I believe it will be worth it. I’m a little excited about it actually. I just love chickens!

Those of you who have already reserved chickens are automatically included in this.

Price of meat chickens this summer is expected to be $3.95 a pound. Reservations before April Fool’s Day are locked in at that price, plus get a 10% discount on their birds when they pick them up (or take delivery). It is possible that the price will go up before it’s over this year depending on what happens with feed costs, etc. Reservation price is normally $5 per bird, but is reduced to just $3 per bird until April Fool’s Day.

Need I say more?

And yes, we are still taking reservations from repeat beef customers for beef right now, newbies can reserve beef if there is any left beginning May 1st. Pork is still up in the air, I will know more in May how much of that I will have. Venison again this fall. Veal later this year only if we have a broken leg or repeat escapee or some other unexpected such thing. And of course lots of Turkeys this fall, although I recently lost 4 of my breeder turkeys to a domestic dog attack. I don’t understand why people let their dogs run loose. So not so many heritage breed turkeys, but still plenty of cross bred turkeys will be available.

And keep your fingers crossed with me that my help will work out this summer and get the vegetable enterprise under way.

Della Jastrzab
@ Happy Hooves Organic Farm
13054 Ira Station Rd
Martville, NY 13111

All our animals are raised naturally on pasture.
http://www.betterbeef4u.com

Happy Cows Make Better Beef.
Our Cows Smile All The Time.
Certified Organic by Global Organic Alliance
Be kinder than necessary, for everyone you meet is fighting some kind of battle.

We’d never been in one, not until this morning. I mean, with great coffee in both countries, why? Because we got bored. Having decided that 2012 is the year of trying new things (dancing tango, growing cilantro, eating paleo – sometimes), we finally gave in to the urge and went over to the Tim Hortons on Thompson Road.

It’s all in the marketing, folks. You can sell anything with good marketing. The interior is a pleasant combination of Starbucks colors and Dunkin Donut fast-food display. The worker bees were bored but did their job well. We each ordered a small coffee, Dave ordered an apple fritter and I ordered a cruller.

The coffee had a decent enough aroma in that it smelled like coffee (some diner coffee does not). It was rather dark and rather strong. But without cream it tasted bitter and flat – really quite two-dimensional. With cream it completely lost its connection to anything tasting of coffee. I couldn’t drink more than a few sips.

I tried the cruller. It had that lightness one expects, but it was lacking texture, was actually on the mushy side, and worst of all, it left a strange fatty coating on the inside of my mouth. I couldn’t find the apple in Dave’s apple fritter and it had none of the crunch or dark flavor that one looks for in a fritter. I mean, if you’re going to eat fried food, for goodness’ sake, let it taste like it was fried instead of steamed!

So we did something we haven’t done since the time we ate at El Canelo (we went directly to the Dinosaur to order a second meal, the first was so bad). We dumped what we’d ordered and went to the right place to get exactly what we hoped to find. Cafe Kubal in Eastwood was happy to serve us delicious coffee and the most amazing, melt-in-your-mouth, bursting-with-flavor little macaroons we’ve ever had. These are not the coconut-laden cookies you may be thinking of, but rather the French macaron, a meringue-based sweet that comes in a variety of flavors. We had one lemon and one salted caramel and were more than satisfied.

Next time I want something Canadian, it’s going to be a new friend or a Moosehead beer. Or perhaps a trip to Montreal. It was grand, trying something so wacky. But I learned my lesson. When you know where the best is, why settle for the worst?

• Consulted with Chris Kresser, L.Ac., and followed his instructions:
• Stopped eating all grains
• Stopped eating all refined foods
• Ate basically all the fats I wanted from these three sources: olive oil, coconut oil, and organic heavy cream
• Ate lots of fresh vegetables, berries, some nuts and coconut
• Ate lots of grass-fed beef and organ meats, as well as quality fish
• Took the supplements that he determined were right for me based on his expert reading of blood tests he ordered

That’s the simple version but it pretty well covers it. Carbs are fresh foods and are complex. And yes, dairy fat is good for you. It has been found that a “compound in dairy may substantially reduce the risk of type 2 diabetes.”  Read more about it in the Harvard Gazette.