Is there ever NOT a busy time on the farm? If there is, it's definitely not during April! We've had an uptick in visitors, our second wave of baby goats are being born, and the goat dairy is officially bustling. Which brings us to our first announcement:
Chevre is Back!!
It's out with the Tomme, and in with the Chevre! We have our first batch of plain and herbed chevre in the farmstand, ready and waiting! Feta is coming soon. Revving up milk production adds another big task to our day, but it is always a hoot and a little one on one time with each goat. Eric has been working hard in the barn, attaching and re-attaching gates (see our social media feed for the Hazel/Alfalfa adventure) and creating systems that make the morning goat shuffle go more smoothly.
Loretta wants all the cheese all the time!
Farm Stand Updates:
Hours: Thurs - Sat, 2pm-5:30pm
Eggs: we seem to have reached an equilibrium! We have a reliable number of eggs available at the farm stand for self serve Thursdays through Sundays, and then enough for subscriptions and orders during the week. We also are packaging up our "Double Yolkers" for sale ($5/4 super-sized eggs). Mandy's new favorite way to spend Friday nights is in a closet with a headlamp and a basket of giant eggs, candling for double yolks. Don't laugh.... it's a perfectly appropriate pandemic pastime.
Produce: We have 1/2 lb. bags of kale as our first green offering of the season.
Lamb and Goat: We are managing to stay well-stocked!
Beef: Lots of ground beef, but not much of anything else...
Pork: Doing well in this category too, including gorgeous butt roasts and spare ribs.
Fish: Eric read our newsletter last month, saw the last call for salmon, and got back in touch with Matt's Fresh Fish. Consequently, we now have sockeye fillets and lingcod portions in stock.
The Gift Shop: We've unveiled some new items in the shop as more visitors are appearing, such as Lum Farm canvas totes with our egg and cajeta labels printed on them, and some gorgeous photo cards featuring scenes from this spring.
Have you heard that since the pandemic, reported UFO sightings are on the rise? It's true, and we have our very own Unidentified-Farm-Object to prove it. After dark, if you look towards Coffelts Preserve and see a brilliant glowing orb, it's just the duckling hutch lit from inside with a heat lamp.
Our first batch of broiler chickens and ducks will be available in May. Our list of interested customers is long, and we may have to limit quantities. If you are on the list, expect an email from Mandy in the next couple of weeks.
Ginger Creme and Benny are the stars of the Crow Valley Rd. Circuit.
Here's another new Lum Farm adventure, stemming from the influx of visitors hoping for a little farm critter fix. Of course, we'd like to share as much of the farm as we safely can, so we've come up with a little farm-walk! Located at the north end of the farm (you see it to the right as you drive in), park at the farm stand and then walk along the northern pasture to visit some farm celebrities: chicks, ducklings, lambs (the bottle-fed ones we lovingly refer to as "The Menaces"), Ginger and Benny (the beauties in the photo above), a quartet of very friendly goats, and, as the grand finale, Annabelle the pig. For a more descriptive introduction, visit our latest blog post.
Also being offered are more in-depth farm tours. We've led a few of them now, and they've been very well received. This summer as travel bans are (hopefully) lifted, consider a farm tour as a very lively way to spend an hour or so with visiting friends and family. Find more information about farm tours on our website.
Finally, we want to wish a very Happy Birthday to our springtime birthday worker bees (and queen bee): Eric, Benson, Crystal and Sidney (a gal who doesn't like her photo taken). Goodness, are we glad these four were born, because life on the farm just wouldn't be the same without them! (That said, we bid Benson adieu for the spring and summer as he transitions to boat-captaining. Aw, come ON Benson... there may be whales, but are there baby goats????).