FF003: The Fighting Farmer on Christmas, chicken for cooking schools, alternative fish meal sources, and peat moss


Update from the farm:

The Christmas ducks are out on pasture in the unseasonably warm fall weather and doing well.

A buyer from a cooking school visits the farm. Across the Creek Farm supplies this school already, and the buyer said they needed to source conventional chicken so that the students would have a realistic experience when they go into commercial kitchens. By exclusively training on pasture-raised chicken, the students were working with a quality that far exceeded what they would see in most kitchens.

The Christmas lights in Fayetteville, AR, have earned nemesis status. Christmas tradition in the holler has been to cut a cedar tree from the farm, except that one year when a tree blew down from the overpass.

Farmer Update

The University of Arkansas is about to run a field trial with Across the Creek on feeding alternative sources of fish meal from invasive Asian Carp. If it works, we could find a replacement for ocean harvested menhaden in the future.

How to

From Christmas lights, trees, and bridge trolls, the conversation finds its way to peat moss for brooder bedding. What’s the experience of peat moss in the brooder, anyway? Spence and Producer Mike reveal the good, the bad, and the ugly about using peat bedding.

About the Author
Host of Pastured Poultry Talk podcast.

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