Our Farm in Review 2024

What an amazing 2024 for us and our farm!  

In 2024, we were invited by Argyle Tx Farmers Market and Downtown Sanger Farmers Market to participate in their markets to sell our meats! We went from 0 online sales in 2023 and early 2024 from only Facebook ads (and $500 spent on those ads over 4 months) to lots of support from local communities!  The online sales began to pick up from repeat farmers market customers who loved our meat and our purpose! 

We sold:

• 200 dozen chicken eggs approximately, from our 80 laying hens
• 6 dozen duck eggs from 4 laying hens
• 500lbs of pastured chicken approximately, from 240 birds
• 250lbs of pastured Kunekune pork from 3 hogs
• 150lbs of grass finished Dexter beef approximately, from 2 steers
• 300lbs of Artisan Black turkeys for Thanksgiving from 20 birds
• 15 live ducks for ethnic customers on Craigslist
• Donated $250 of meat to the silent auction at the 2024 Spring Gala of Springtown Area Chamber of Commerce
• Donated 5 dozen eggs to the Tarrant Area Food Bank 

Altogether we fed over 1000 lbs of meat to local families! That's amazing!

We also had an awesome year of baby animals born or hatched on our farm!

• 3 Dexter calves
• 15 Nigerian Dwarf goat kids
• 6 Kunekune piglets (1 runt went to a pet home at Perki Farm)
• 36 ducklings hatched
• 20 Yokohama chicks hatched
• 10 experimental easter egger chicks hatched
• 20 rainbow egger chicks from other farms hatched
• 10 royal palm turkey poults hatched

Items we have worked to improve in our animal genetics and/or ecosystem this year include:

• Genetically testing our cattle herd for Leptin/Tenderness genes
• Moving our goat herd entirely towards registered Nigerian Dwarf goats
• Added one more Kunekune gilt from K5 Farm Kunekunes for 2026 piglets
• Adding minnows, bluegill, brim, catfish, and crappie to our stock tank
• Contracting Big Little Farm to organically fertilize our pastures with fish emulsion, sea kelp, and molasses for the next 2 years
• Burning a lot of extra tree trimmings we had to make our own biochar for our garden, animals, and pastures
• 80 cubic yards of wood chips from Chip Drop for composting delivered to our property
• Added 2 Australian Shepherd pups from working lines to help move livestock more efficiently from Boyd Ranch, LLC 
  

Infrastructure, sustainability, continuing education, and efficiency improvements included:

• Building 5 breeding and grow-out pens for pigs, piglets, Billy goats, and kid goats
• Seeded our entire property for cover crops
• Rotational grazed our cattle from March-June
• Attended 3 ranching workshops put on by our butcher at Buck N' Bull Meatworx
• Attended the 2024 American Dexter Cattle Association conference in Oklahoma
• Purchaed 2 single ton feed buggies to enable the purchase of Corn and soy-free, non-GMO feed for our laying hens and pigs at a very reasonable rate per pound
• Eliminated the use of regular chemical deworming (except in new animal additions from other farms) via apple cider vinegar, biochar, volcanic ash, sodium bicarbonate, and ancient bed sea salt as a free choice supplement to our cows, pigs, and goats (and as a result, saw a plethora of dung beetles set up shop on the entire farm!)
• Joined the GO TEXAN program with the Texas Department of Agriculture 

Looking ahead for 2025, we have lots of plans!

• Offering our meats for nation-wide shipping!
• Offering extended local delivery zones to more local counties with courier services
• Collaboration with HappyHeartHaus for some future value-added products from our chicken
• Continuing attendance at our 2 farmers markets
• Scaling up our pork operation to stay in stock for more than 6 weeks for the whole year
• Including our grow-out hogs and laying hens into our rotational grazing plan behind the cows
• Attending the 2025 APPPA conference
• Attending the 2025 ADCA conference 

We also made lots of new friends this year with other farmers and have purchased from each other or offered valuable consulting to one another including Rockin P Farms, KD KIDS, Elderberry Ranch Dexter Cattle, Chapman 3C Cattle Company, Windview Chicken Ranch, Roman Heritage Farms, and JW Naturals!

Last, but certainly not least, we did enough sales this year to break even on 7 months of our monthly operational and feed costs for the farm, and made enough to purchase some of the infrastructure upgrades as well as the new Kunekune gilt for future litters of pork! Miss Domino is featured in the photo.

All of these things were of course made possible by all of the new customers we made this year as well as many of them turning into repeat customers! Nothing speaks more volume than that! We are proud to share our hard work and amazing products with y'all! We wish you all a very happy, healthy, and prosperous 2025! Rock on, foodie rebels!

#farmtofork #farmtotable #farmtoplate #pasturetoplate #pasturedpork #regenerativeagriculture #pasturedpoultry #pasturedeggs #pasturedturkey #grassfedbeef #grassfinished #grassfinishedbeef #ancestralbeef #primalbeef #dexterbeef #kunekunepork #Hello2025