We are pleased to announce that we will be participating in the South Lansing Farmers Market for this season, providing our farm fresh pork! The South Lansing Farmers Market is located at St. Casmir Catholic Church in Lansing, just a few blocks south of 496 near the Capitol Loop. Click here to see more about the market!
We will be participating on June 13 and 27, July 18, and August 1, with more possible dates in the future.
We were fortunate enough to be a part of the Eat Healthy Eat Local Festival in St. Johns this weekend! It was alot of fun meeting new customers and selling some of our fresh, never frozen bacon, and other USDA certified cuts of pork that we just got back from the processor.
We were finally able to start grazing this week! The cattle got out of the barn on Monday and went right to work as you can see. We will graze this pasture for 20 days, in daily rotations, before moving on to the next pasture.
This year, we are working on a new program which features the use of warm season and cool season annual forage crops to complement our perennial pasture. Soon we will be planting a field to a forage mix of Sorghum-Sudangrass and Pearl Millet, which will be grazed in August, when the perennial pastures are dormant because of heat. Once grazed, that same field will be planted directly into a cool season annual mix of oats and turnips. We will graze that in November and December again when our perennial pastures are dormant due to the cold. We are hoping that working with these annual forages provides longer grazing seasons, which means longer growing seasons, which means a higher quality product for you!
With Spring right around the corner, Red Timber Ranch is gearing up for grazing season. We are planning to send the cattle back out to pasture on May 3, with exciting plans for an extended grazing season through mid-December with different techniques we have learned over this winter. We are hoping to harvest our first group of Grass Finished beef by August, fresh off pasture and available by bulk or the cut. See out Grass Fed Beef section of our website for details.
Also on pasture this spring, we will be adding egg laying hens and broiler (meat) chickens. Putting the birds out on pasture makes their final product healthier for you, it helps the animals and gives them a better life outside, and it adds a new diverse species to our pasture which will help pasture production. We are accomplishing this by building shelters specially equipped for pastured birds, both layers and broilers. Pictures will be up as soon as we finish building. Chicken eggs and meat will be made available for purchase once we get going with the product.
Finally we will be once again raising some pigs over the summer – in limited quantities. Unfortunately, we are not yet able to get pigs out on pasture with our set-up, but the current goals is to begin a pig silvo-pasture by spring 2020. This silvo-pasture will be a grass based pasture with many diverse trees for the pigs to harvest the fruit and seeds of. We are planning to include apple trees, pear trees, chestnut trees, and many others.
We are looking forward to this grazing season, and we hope to produce a variety of high-quality products for your family.
We have applied to be members of the several Farmer’s Markets for the summer of 2019. We will keep you updated with dates and times that Red Timber Ranch Pork (and maybe even Chicken) will be available at the market.
We will keep updating on which market we end up joining, and when our fantastic selection of Red Timber Ranch Pork, Chicken – and maybe even Grass Fed Beef – will be available.
RED TIMBER RANCH 