This week will be the last farmer’s market of the season for my husband Dan and I, and it follows one of the coldest starts ever (29 degrees last Saturday morning). I anticipate having time to grill my own goods on the weekend again, sleep past 4 a.m. and maybe (god forbid) clean the house, myself. After shivering in the elements for six hours under threat of rain (and persistent wind), any indoor activity seems preferable, the wood-burning furnace puffing away in the yard my sole connection to the great outdoors.
A few weeks ago I purchased my first piece of farm equipment – a spanking new cattle trailer with fancy brakes - then my first livestock, a breeding bull, “Will”, from Willow Hill Farm in Milton, who looked much bigger in the trailer than he did once we got him home. He’s wee and cute with his fuzzy outdoor coat; Dan put him in with the girls his size for a while. I know all you dairymen are thinking this girl’s a nutter for making such a big deal out of this, but for me it’s another induction into the life – like eating the animals you raise for the first time, and taking it on the chin when the price of milk drops below your costs. I wasn’t born to this, I married in, and a lot of it is still new to me, even after twenty-odd years.
I’m thinking about getting a walk-in freezer for next market season. Leveling up, as it were, from keeping meat in 500 lb. capacity white chesties and gently pre-used uprights. It feels like a jump into the ‘big-time’, or perhaps it’s just a measure to keep up with the competition. Others never seem to run out of product due to space considerations or adhere to seasonality. Some use different practices, like buying animals in instead of raising them up – a way to get your brand into stores, but I don’t think I want to get that large –this is more about my personal convenience when searching for a bunch of beef shanks or steaks, instead of burrowing down four feet upside-down into a freezer, burning my fingertips looking for the lost last package of veal cutlets. I think we have the potential to sell four times what we currently raise in meat at Burlington Farmers’ Market now that it has expanded, despite the dip in the national economy. I still hear the disappointed voices of customers echoing in my head, telling me that I ruined their weekend by running out of Bratwurst and Italian sausages until next year.
Now that the summer season is behind us, I’m turning my attention toward holiday sales, casting among the usual suspects to assemble a crew that will process turkeys just before Thanksgiving, and planning what I am going to feed them to thank them for their effort. Pork chops this time, I think, since that’s what I have the most of, or maybe there’s a beef roast or two hiding under the hamburger in the frozen deep.
