This week: Animal Welfare, winds, and bye bye Billy

Another busy week has passed us by with weather a bit more consistently winter-y than we've had so far. The forecast says that the week ahead we'll be back to bouncing back and forth from freezing to near spring-like conditions. Nature's being wacky. Here's what we've been up to this week:

At the annual CFSA Sustainable Agriculture Conference in November, we had started our journey to becoming certified by the Animal Welfare Approved agency. It is always something we had intended to do, and since they had a convenient booth set up at the conference and an incredibly helpful attendant there to guide us through the initial application, the timing was perfect. Getting Animal Welfare Approved is appealing to us for a few reasons: they offer different grants and discounts for certain products to members, it helps motivate us to maintain our record-keeping and transparency as food producers, and it puts consumers' minds at ease knowing that the treatment of our animals is an inspected process held to high standards. After accepting our application, there was a phone interview, which was followed by a visit from an inspector on Tuesday this week. He was very friendly and cordial as we showed him around the farm (which is something we always enjoy doing). He took careful notes of many different aspects of our operation pertaining to their standards, from roost space and nesting boxes available to chickens to the sizes of the birthing areas for the goats. After the tour he took us through a very thorough (and tedious) audit of our practices and record-keeping. All went well and we should expect to hear about the next step of our journey in a few weeks. Once we know more, I will share a more detailed account of what the process and what similar farms should expect if seeking to become Animal Welfare Approved.

Friday brought some outrageously strong winds through these parts which unfortunately destroyed one of our winter high tunnels. This news is not as bad as it seems though. We had tried three different designs for our high tunnels, and this was our least favorite. There were many little issues, inherent in the design as well as mistakes made during assembly. Much of the preliminary work had been done before I had a chance to visit friends at In Good Heart Farm to help them set up their own tunnels and learn much in the process (thanks again Ben and Patricia!). Rebuilding will be a quick job and shouldn't even take a full afternoon.

The buck in the center, lazing around with the ladies.

Today we said goodbye to a cherished guest on the farm, the loyal billy goat which our good friends at Meadow Lane Farm had lent us. He was the same billy we used for our first round of breeding, so it's time to change up the blood-lines.  He's moving on to a herd of beautiful girls, so he should be happy.  We're very grateful to Meadow Lane as well as the billy for the beautiful kids he gave us last year as well as the kids we are expecting to arrive any day now. The mamas look like they're ready to pop and we're very excited to have lively little kids running around the pastures again. We're crossing our fingers that we'll have good news regarding that prospect by next weeks update!

Everything else is good and well on Two Bridges Farm. We're seeing a slow but steady increase in egg production, we're still in the learning process for winter veggie production, Saturday at Western Wake Farmers' Market was lively and sales were good despite the cold weather, and every day that spring creeps closer we're getting more and more excited about the new season and the future of the farm in general. 2012 here we come!