He Is Risen!
For those that celebrate the Christian tradition He is Risen, He is Risen indeed! For those that don't, we hope you have a lovely time with family, friends, and loved ones. It is a bit strange trying to celebrate Easter this year. Normally our family hosts everyone for a big dinner. This year, instead, we are doing lots of smaller events over Facetime, Skype, and such. An amazing time we live in where we can be self isolated and still connect to each other with digital technology.
We hope you are all safe, healthy, and well fed this Easter 2020.
Farm Stand Sales
The farm stand is once again open, and stocked with eggs. They are available until Monday night, at 11:55 pm for purchase. Once they are sold, we are sold out for the week. If you want to make sure you get eggs each week we still have space in our weekly or every-other weekly egg CSA program.
This week our farm stand has eggs, duck eggs, and honey.
www.harvie.farm/farm-stand/happiness-by-the-acre
Speaking of Ducks
The ducks have come home to the farm! On Wednesday this week our farm hand Lachlan and his Dad helped move the ducks from Calico farms to their new home at our Carstairs farm. They are settling in, and seem to be enjoying their new space. We have a steady supply of duck eggs at this time, so if you are unable to get chicken eggs we suggest giving duck eggs a try. They are larger than a chicken egg, so you won't need to eat as many. They are also good for some folks who have food allergies, so if you've had trouble with eggs before duck eggs might work for you.
Baby Chicks!
The baby chicks have arrived! The 2020 flock of new layers is here as of Wednesday last week. Follow us on Instagram for loads of cute chick pictures.
We raise a variation of the ISA Brown called a Sex-Sal Brown from Rochester Hatchery here in Alberta. They are a beautiful looking bird, do really well foraging in pastures, lay like you wouldn't believe, and have a pretty nice disposition. We went with them because they are a really solid layer, and they keep enough flightiness to run from flying predators but not so much that they are hard to work with. They are also pretty good with people.
We get ours treated for Mereks disease and Coccidiosis at hatching to keep them healthy and prevent entire flocks catching nasty contagions. We keep their beaks intact for better foraging, though it does mean we have to give them much more space during the winter in the barn. The sharp beaks also require us giving a wider range of enrichment in diet and barn habitat so they don't get as bored. Bored chickens turn into nasty chickens.
As a side note, you may see that our hens from Calico have rounded beaks. They were doing free run, but not pasture based, and made the choice to tip the beaks. The beaks grow back but are blunted, and this helps prevent injury and violence in the flock. They still forage just fine, but do have a harder time catching mice and small rodents.
Delivery Continues
All orders will be dropped off via contactless delivery, with text or phone notification, until the end of April. At that time we will reassess based on the Alberta Health Services guidelines around the Covid-19 pandemic. If you were a customer from HSCA or the Cochrane farmers markets we recommend you sign up to our farm stand and make purchases through there, and we will deliver them free of charge until the end of April.
Locally Yours,
Marcus, Sarah, Samuel, Boaz
