![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dragonlady7via https://ift.tt/2Kj5vGE
for a brief shining moment we had less than 5 turkeys on this farm, all dead, but
we’re processing turkeys for four (4) different other producers tomorrow– two hobbyists, one very small-scale commercial, and one large-scale commercial (i mean, relatively). And one of the hobbyists has already come and unloaded his five heritage birds into the holding pen, and we’re waiting for the small commercial producer to do the same, and the other hobbyist. I don’t actually know how the large commercial producer is going to bring his birds over, whether it will be in the morning or tonight or what. How do you load 100 turkeys? I don’t know, we literally never have; we always Turkey Parade them on foot. [Coincidentally, he is, hang on, I gotta puzzle this out. He’s the nephew of the guy who loads our pigs to go to the processing facility, who is the uncle of my best friend from kindergarten, so I have dim childhood memories of the turkey guy being a tiny baby at family reunions I used to go to with this friend, and slightly sharper memories of the slaughterhouse load-driver guy being a young adult at these events, so it’s kind of funny because I have basically no local connections and yet, here’s one.)
Pickup went well and was ka-ching lucrative, if stressful– but almost nobody balked at the price, and a few people exclaimed that it was too cheap. An organic-certified pasture-raised turkey goes for $75-120ish, here– $5.25/lb, 14-24 pounds per bird– and honestly, yeah, that’s not that much of a profit margin. The same thing down in the NYC markets would run you $10-15/lb, and justifiably so– most of the birds sold down there are from up here, so the base costs are the same, but transportation down there is like, yikes.
Today a lady we know came by to trade ¾ of a lamb for a turkey, and she gave us some intel on one of her neighbors who is a pig farmer who’s getting out of the pig business, and we need pigs, because I don’t think I talked about it on here but our boar maybe broke his dick? anyway the sows did not get bred this fall and so we’re short their expected pigs which should have been born last month, and so we need a new boar if dear sweet idiotic PB can’t do his goddamn only job, and so maybe we’ll be getting a Berkshire/Tamworth boar, which seems pretty cool. Maybe!
Today was kind of a downtempo day. Mostly because we’re all so burned-out and dazed and generally exhausted. I stared at the wall a little bit, but not too much. Slaughter tomorrow, and it’s going to be even more intense than Saturday– not quite as many birds, but we have to keep track of whose are whose and that’s a lot of logistics.
Anyway. I fucking hope I sleep better tonight, I’m a goddamn zombie.
(Your picture was not posted)
for a brief shining moment we had less than 5 turkeys on this farm, all dead, but
we’re processing turkeys for four (4) different other producers tomorrow– two hobbyists, one very small-scale commercial, and one large-scale commercial (i mean, relatively). And one of the hobbyists has already come and unloaded his five heritage birds into the holding pen, and we’re waiting for the small commercial producer to do the same, and the other hobbyist. I don’t actually know how the large commercial producer is going to bring his birds over, whether it will be in the morning or tonight or what. How do you load 100 turkeys? I don’t know, we literally never have; we always Turkey Parade them on foot. [Coincidentally, he is, hang on, I gotta puzzle this out. He’s the nephew of the guy who loads our pigs to go to the processing facility, who is the uncle of my best friend from kindergarten, so I have dim childhood memories of the turkey guy being a tiny baby at family reunions I used to go to with this friend, and slightly sharper memories of the slaughterhouse load-driver guy being a young adult at these events, so it’s kind of funny because I have basically no local connections and yet, here’s one.)
Pickup went well and was ka-ching lucrative, if stressful– but almost nobody balked at the price, and a few people exclaimed that it was too cheap. An organic-certified pasture-raised turkey goes for $75-120ish, here– $5.25/lb, 14-24 pounds per bird– and honestly, yeah, that’s not that much of a profit margin. The same thing down in the NYC markets would run you $10-15/lb, and justifiably so– most of the birds sold down there are from up here, so the base costs are the same, but transportation down there is like, yikes.
Today a lady we know came by to trade ¾ of a lamb for a turkey, and she gave us some intel on one of her neighbors who is a pig farmer who’s getting out of the pig business, and we need pigs, because I don’t think I talked about it on here but our boar maybe broke his dick? anyway the sows did not get bred this fall and so we’re short their expected pigs which should have been born last month, and so we need a new boar if dear sweet idiotic PB can’t do his goddamn only job, and so maybe we’ll be getting a Berkshire/Tamworth boar, which seems pretty cool. Maybe!
Today was kind of a downtempo day. Mostly because we’re all so burned-out and dazed and generally exhausted. I stared at the wall a little bit, but not too much. Slaughter tomorrow, and it’s going to be even more intense than Saturday– not quite as many birds, but we have to keep track of whose are whose and that’s a lot of logistics.
Anyway. I fucking hope I sleep better tonight, I’m a goddamn zombie.
(Your picture was not posted)
