Our Farm in Review of 2025

As we say goodbye to an incredible 2025 for our farm, we're still gobsmacked by what all we achieved and what lies ahead for 2026.

When I wrote the 5 year business plan for the farm in 2022 and reviewed it again in January 2025, I didn't even recognize it because we had grown so far ahead of what we projected! Some things got scrapped entirely (meat chickens) and other things manifested faster than we expected (nationwide shipping). I will need to write a new plan this year.

We made major changes to our herds in 2025, including adding beefier female cattle and moving smaller, thin-framed girls to other homes. We found our new bull Elvis as an improver of both udders and meat tenderness (not to mention the sweetest temperament to boot!). We will welcome our first Elvis calf in April, and the rest will be in the fall. We are currently up to 17 head of Dexter cattle, 4 are steers, 2 are bulls (Elvis and a bull calf we are retaining for strategic use later), and 11 are females (3 are calves and 3 are heifers). We are eager to see our cattle herd grow this year with so many females due to calve this year.  Our grass fed and grass finished Dexter beef remains one of our best sellers and when we butcher, we sell out of all cuts in about 2-4 weeks while ground beef sticks around for much longer.

We also added 5 more sows and a back-up boar to our Kunekune pig herd. We never dreamed we would lose our big boar, Chum so early and were grateful that we added Kai early in the year. Kai has been getting a lot action lately and so we're hoping all of our girls settle and we see lots of spring litters. We are expecting 2 litters in January, one from Kai and the the last litter from Chum. All of this because we are trying very hard to be able to offer much requested half and whole hogs, roasters, and feeders.  Of all of our pasture raised Kunekune pork, we frequently sell out of bacon and high-end cuts the quickest while ground pork and sausage stick around the longest.

Our goat herd now consists of all ADGA registered Nigerian Dwarfs, primarily for milk and meat for ourselves. We sold all of our unregistered females early in the year. We kept 4 females to grow out and allow to freshen here so we can start tracking improvements in our breeding stock out of our buck, Princie.

Our turkey breeding program was a huge success and both of the turkeys we tried were tender, flavorful, and decent sized. Of course, changing feed seems to be what hurt our yield the most in 2025. Still, we sold 75 poults to other farms and butchered 60 for the holidays (and sold out before Thanksgiving!). We have 12 left that will be going to butcher this month and will all be for turkey sausage.  Pasture raised turkey remains one of our most popular offerings and will certainly stick around in the years to come.

Our pastured meat chicken program was what was the biggest flop this year in both survivability on pasture and dress weights. Drums were impossible to sell and we wound up trying to discount them to below our break even price for a few months to get them to move and we finally gave up and just started giving them away because we needed freezer space for beef and pork. We gave away over 100 lbs of drumsticks to customers and about as many chicken backs and feet. That's a lot of lost revenue. Another big flop was canned chicken broth. We only sold half of a small batch of 22 quarts we had made and wound up giving away the rest toward the end of the year. We made the decision very quickly to end the pastured meat bird program. We simply cannot hold onto half of the carcass in drums, backs, feet, and organs all year.  Our remaining stock of pastured chicken is deeply discounted currently in the store to well below our break-even price.

Lard, on the other hand, was the big shocker. Our first batch of 50ish pounds sold out. So we restocked with 100 pounds and have about 25% left in stock, with plenty more fat in the freezer. Consumers are becoming more educated about seed oils and are moving back toward cooking with animal fat, and we are so here for it!

Egg sales also started collapsing mid-year once egg prices stabilized in the grocery stores. We went from selling 80 dozen per month to giving away 80 dozen per month... that's how bad eggs sales were. As we started retiring older birds and selling them off the past couple of months, we have no plans to replace them. We had 150 layers during the middle of the year and now we're down to about 40 hens... and eggs are still not moving. We only sold 4 dozen eggs in December. So moving the older birds along earlier than planned was critical. We also have a racoon that doesn't give a rip about the electric netting protecting the birds (but it's very much working... just ask the dogs). He's gotten 9 in the last month, despite a baited trap, a livestock guardian dog, and a couple of late night stake outs with the head of ranch security in hand. I guess he's really doing us a favor.

Beef and pork sales continue to rock, phone calls asking for our next restock dates keep coming, so we keep focusing on those two programs.

Looking ahead for 2026, this will be a heavy pork year. Beef will just take several years to build up. We're hoping for a smattering of bull calves this year as we've had nothing but heifers for the last two years in a row!

As for big plans, there are none other than stay the course we set for ourselves in 2025. We are planning to make one more skinny-girl cut and replacement to our cows and are working on a replacement boar to take Chum's place. 2025 was a growing year, 2026 will be an observation year. And we are so happy that you all are here to take part in it. Happy New Year! 🥳