Classes

Been busy.  Trying to catch up on animal duties, going to classes, and purging the house of unnecessary items.  In addition to the regular mom stuff.    I've been attending classes called "Annies Project".  Its been informative and helpful as we try to determine what direction we want to head with the farm as a business.  That has been every Tuesday, although its been more like every other, since I missed the second Tuesday for dad's funeral and the 4th Tuesday was canceled due to snow.  Pretty much if Chris was not traveling I've missed class, makes me sort of anxious about this Tuesday since Chris is not traveling.

I went to a "Pig CSA" class on Saturday. Class description is  
Starting a Pig CSA
Share our experiences in starting a pork Community Supported Agriculture program. We discuss the overall structure of our pork CSA program, how we market it and some of the questions that have come up. We also talk about communications with CSA members, how we raise our pigs and some of the challenges we had in our first season.   
I should have taken the "first season" literally as in first season of raising pigs.  Don't get me wrong, I did learn more about their CSA than I knew before I walked through the door.  

I also learned about what people will do. And how much they will pay.  I learned we are selling our pigs dirt cheap, and they are not medicated.  And prophylactically medicated animals have been linked to MRSA.  Actually I should rephrase.  MRSA has never been found on a farm where animals were NOT treated with antibiotics prophylactically (as a preventative).  MRSA has only been found on farms where animals are fed low doses of antibiotics in hopes of preventing disease.  Back to prices. These very nice people with CSA experience, but very little pig experience, charge $2.40 a lb live weight.  Plus processing.  We charge $2.25 a lb hanging weight, which means no head and gutted.  That usually  accounts for 25% decrease in weight.  So a 250lb live weight pig from their farm will be medicated and cost you $600 + processing.  That same pig at our farm would not have been medicated and cost $422 + processing.  

In addition they charged people 75% of the anticipated total cost up front.  Now I think that is actually a good idea.  They knew who had committed, no marketing or scrambling at the last minute,  they knew how many pigs they needed, they had the money up front to cover feed, that part is pretty smart, and I would like to try something similar. The issue I see is they had virtually no experience raising pigs and if their pig died people agreed they would not get their money back.  Who would give $400 to someone who had no experience raising pigs???  As it was the growers did lose a pig this year, and hadn't raised any extras. They considered the dead pig their pig, so they raised 10 pigs this year and they didn't get one.  I would have done the same thing to keep customers happy, but I started farming to feed my family quality product so I would not be happy about that. And I think that is part of our quality control, if I would not serve this food to my family, I'm not selling it.


I am thinking of  doing do something similar.  We need to find a good processor that we can count on.  Apparently a difficult feat.  I also think we will do a 4 payment sort of thing.  A deposit, another payment 2 months later, a third payment shortly before butchering time, and the last payment after processing when we know the final weight.  I think it will help people with budgeting.  There is no question that our naturally raised, on pasture/dirt, no antibiotics or hormones is a bargain at less than $4 a lb.  Yes that is expensive ground pork, but really cheap bacon and tenderloin.  And the benefit to your health.  Regardless, that is a large outlay of money to come up with all at once, spreading it out should help some people.   

Anyway, it was definitely informative on the CSA aspect, but not so much on pig raising, except to show me how much I already knew.  Oh and if you want to reserve a pig for this fall, let me know.  We still have 1/2 a pig going to butcher March 3rd.