Nitty Gritty Dirt

Don't Forget Your Bags

It’s been another great week at Nitty Gritty Dirt Farm!   So much field work accomplished, livestock moved, supers added to the bee hives, and still time for a little swimming and printing t-shirts!   We really have a great crew that can work through whatever comes along – hot weather, escapee chickens, woodticks, colds….

On Monday, we sent another group of lambs to market, cutting down substantially on the number of baaing mouths to feed.  It is always a little sad to see them go and a little relief to cut down on the chores.  All the adult sheep are on the back corner of the farm grazing on a mixed legume and grass pasture secure in their new electronet pasture.  The goats and lambs stay closer up to the buildings for safety.   We enlarged the pig pen for the not-so-little pigs to get them some new ground to dig.  It took them about ½ hour to dig up the 16 foot square addition.  We will keep adding on and begin gradually moving them farther away from the barn.  

All of our interns are getting quite proficient at milking the three Saanen does.  Stormy is the biggest challenge as she both gives the most milk and she gets impatient if it takes a new milker too long according to her.   Holly and Liz and Emily are all doing very well and we have had no new milk buckets kicked over. 

We have been using our new cream separator (that we ordered on E-bay from the Ukraine) to separate the cream from the milk.  We made one batch of ice cream that tastes great but lets us know that we probably need a new ice cream freezer.  Our biggest success is making butter.  We’ve made two batches – and it tastes wonderful!  The separator has a special attachment for making butter that works great – you just need to have at least ½ gallon of cream to use it.  This takes us two to three days – depending on how much milk we drink – to get enough milk for that much cream.  We are all pretty excited.

One of our interns, Liz, who incidentally has an art degree created a design for t-shirts for our farm.   Just tonight after we finished prepping the bok choi for tomorrow’s shares, we printed the first run of t-shirts for our crew.  Last week everyone went thrift store shopping to purchase shirts to print.  When you pick up your share tomorrow, and in the weeks ahead, you will be greeted by a farmer or intern wearing one of these original art print t-shirts.  We are hoping that Liz will set up a little business printing them – because we know that many of you will want one for yourself. 

 What's In Your Share

In your share you will get the last of the Mei Qing Choi, a few more green onions, and a bag of Sugar Ann Snap Peas.  You will also get a container of fresh picked strawberries from the TLC Berry Patch in Pine City.  TLC is owned and operated by Robin’s son Lucas.  The T is grandson Trent and C is Carey, soon to be Lucas’s spouse.



We hope you enjoy the strawberries and if you want more, you can stop by if you are on your way north to Wisconsin via Highway 70.   We have plans for strawberry jam and strawberry smoothies.

Until next week.