Wild Turkey Farms News (week August 28)

Lee sends out a newsletter to our farm customers once or twice a month so I thought I would include it so everyone knows what is going on with us.

Good evening everyone. I just wanted to give you all a quick shot of what's happening and where this week.

This weekend is the National Slow Food meeting in San Francisco CA and in case you haven't heard, Wild Turkey Farms pork is on the menu!!! Chef Andrea Reusing, owner of The Lantern in Chapel Hill has prepared some of our pork and taken it with her to this national event. We are really excited & honored to have some of our pork featured at this event.

We have recently received our certification by the Animal Welfare Institute's Animal Welfare Approved program for our pork and beef- our poultry certification should be coming soon. This program certifies that we use production practices that meet their high standards for how our animals are raised and harvested. The AWA program requires outdoor access for all animals in the program and prohibits practices such as tail docking pigs and beak triming in chickens. We feel that this program helps certify our commitment to providing you with the highest quality meats around. We encourage you to veiw the AWA program guidelines at www.animalwelfareapproved.org


Thanks to all of you that come support us at the farmers markets, we have had a busy and successful summer. The demand for our local meats has grown exponentially in the past 4 months and we hope that it continues. We strive to provide you with the best quality, locally raised products that you can find and intend to continue providing for many years to come. I would like to thank you all for your patience with us as we have experienced a few growing pains this year as we have worked to steady our supply of products. We expect to expand our pork and beef this fall to provide a more steady supply for next year.

As most of you may know, Domisty and I both work fulltime jobs off the farm and the farming is our second job that we are really passionate about. This summer we have been able to grow due to my brother Robbie helping us on the farm and at the market and we couldn't have done it without the support from him the rest of our family which makes this a true family farm. We are truely blessed to have such support. Thanks Rob.

With Labor Day Weekend just over the horizon we hope that you will come see us to stock up for all of your grilling needs. This week we will have plenty of our delicious bratwurst and hamburger available. We also have a few new items like our smoked bone in pork chops and delicous Italian sausage.

Don't forget that we have plenty of items that can add the perfect flavor to those fresh green beans or peas from the market too.

Unfortunately we will not have chickens available this week. We should however have plenty of them available in 2 weeks. They still need a little more time to grow.

Also this week we will be leaving the markets at 11am due to an after lunch commitment so please come by & see us early.

This week -
Domisty & Robbie will be at The Davidson Farmers Market 8am-11am
Lee will be at The Salisbury Farmers Market from 8am- 11am


September Schedule
Sept 6- Davidson Mrket
Sept 13- Salisbury & Davidson- with Chickens!!!
Sept 20- Davidson
Sept- 27- Salisbury & Davidson


Thanks

Lee & Domisty Menius
Wild Turkey Farms
China Grove, NC

Rain, Rain & More Rain

We have wanted rain all summer long and we finally got it yesterday- 10 inches in total. We personally did not suffer any damage (unlike the wind storm in July) but our basement at work flooded. I have files up and down the hallway trying to dry them out. There was also a lot of flooding throughout the county.

Summer 2008 Pictures

Tweetsie

Thomas the Tank Engine

Popa Donald, Rosty & Grandma Sherry on the chairlift

Charlie & Rosty on the boat

Charlie & Rosty on the airplane

Charlie in jail

Popa Donald & Charlie on the Ferris wheel

Rosty & Grandma Sherry on the Ferris wheel

After a fun-filled day at Tweetsie

Dreaming about Thomas & Tweetsie

We took a quick trip to the beach in June



Charlie on the slip n slide

Rosty on the slip n slide



Rosty & Charlie on a train ride at the

NC Transportation Museum


HAPPY BIRTHDAY
CHARLIE!!

It's Charlie's birthday!

We went to celebrate at our favorite Mexican Restaurant

He was unsure about the whip cream on his nose

A few days before Charlie's birthday party we had a bad storm come through.

It destroyed the boy's swing set so we had to have something for the kids to do. So we told everyone to bring their bathing suits. Charlie put his swimming trunks on later but he was so excited!! Believe it or not we had about 7 kids in the pool at one time.

Presents!!



What little boy doesn't love a fire truck?


As you can tell they have had a very busy summer.

We have been really busy at the farm this year too. We are working two Farmer's Markets this year- one in Salisbury and one in Davidson. Our speciality is pasture-raised beef, pork and chicken. We use no antibiotics, no hormones and everything is pastured raised. We sell farm, fresh eggs- free range, of course. We were certified by the AWI (Animal Welfare Institute) this year, this means we have happy animals. We had a good sized garden this year but with the lack of rain and the heat wave that went through we lost a lot of our vegetables.

I am going to be working on a website for the farm. So I'll let you know when it is up and going.
Lee said if I could figure out how to set this blog up I should be able to figure out our
website.

I have some pictures of the farm to post but I'll do it later. You've probably had enough pictures for one day. I need to get some updated pictures anyway. We have some turkeys now, they're
really cool.

Summer 2008

I'm new to this "blogging" thing but I'm going to give it a try. I really enjoy my friends blogs, seeing their pictures and being a little part of their everyday life.



This year has been very busy for us as a family and at the farm.



We went on our third annual trip to Tweetsie Railroad this year. The kids have gone to Lazy 5, various birthday parties, field trips with preschool , and Santa Land with my parents. Rosty even went and stayed at my parent's house for a week. He missed us but did not want to come home.



Charlie also turned 2 years old this summer.



Our family beach vacation is coming up over Labor Day so I'm sure I'll have lots more to blog about after vacation. This is our favorite time to go to the beach but since Rosty starts kindergarten next year this will probably be the last year we can go over Labor Day.



I'll post some pictures of our summer adventures as soon as I figure out how to do that & I'll make a post about the farm and all that we have going on with that.