I believe it is . . .but it depends on how much you need to produce “vs” how much land you have to work with. So let me break down Past Thyme Farms dynamics.
To start with, there is only Nancy and I, so we base what we grow on the needs of two. This is a very important factor because on limited land you can’t grow excess.
Past Thyme Farm is about five acres in size but after you take out the land that our houses (3 houses plus a shop), landscape and hillsides utilize, we have about 2.75 acres left to farm. Now take out the non-rotational plantings where we have our fruit trees, berries and grapes and you’re down to about 2 acres of land that we rotate our pastures and garden thru. This is plenty of land to meet the needs of two consumers.
Rotational Land (2 acres)
This season on just two acres we tended a flock of 13 Soay sheep from which we harvested five rams (150 lbs of meat). We raised and harvested 75 pastured meat birds (chickens) and 4 turkeys. We kept our 20 laying hens in a chicken tractor on these pastures and still had plenty of room for our garden from which we grew a years supply of broccoli, cauliflower, peas, green beans, peppers, sweet corn, squash (many varieties), cucumbers (pickles), potatoes and tomatoes. We also grew leaf vegetables, cabbage, celery, radishes, green onions and artichokes.
Non-Rotational Land (.75 acres)
A lot of this production is just coming on but the plan is to have enough peaches (8 trees), sweet cherries (4 trees), tart cherries (2 trees), plums (2 trees), apples (2 trees), blueberries (50 tall bush), raspberries (25 canes), huckleberries (25 bushes), strawberries (100 plants), table grapes (25 vines) and wine grapes (100 vines) to process into various forms for our yearly needs. This year we processed a years supply of strawberries, peaches, applesauce and pears but had to purchase a lot of the product since our trees and vines are not in full production yet.
So we have our meat, chicken, fruits, veggies and eggs in place. Still to come is pork, hops and maybe a dairy cow?? Anybody know where I can find a cheap pasteurizer??
Is it sustainable? Time will tell . . .it really comes down to how you define sustainable.
Normally our meat bird season is two and a half months and then we process and freeze them. But as usual when you’re working a steep learning curve, things don’t always work out as planned.
We brought 75 Cornish-Cross meat birds onto our farm as chicks on June 11th, brooded them for 3 weeks and put them out on pasture. Fed and watered them twice a day and moved their pens once a day to fresh pasture.
This is our third year raising pastured poultry at Past Thyme and this is the way we have always done it, with one slight change this year . . . I decided that I was going to follow a County Extension bulletin that I found on the Internet pertaining to feeding them. This bulletin reviewed “Exact amount of feed that a meat bird should have per season” and yes, I followed their recommendations throughout the 2 ½ month season.
When it came time to harvest this year the majority of our chickens were NOT up to size. We had a lot of 3 to 4 lb. birds but desired 5 to 7 lb birds. (Remember we don’t use hormone additives in our feed thus 5 to 7 lbs is about as good as you’re going to get!) So we didn’t process our chickens at the end of a normal season this year we instead increased the feeding schedule to (available all the times) and continued sizing them for an additional 5 more weeks. Even with the longer season we didn’t get our 7 lb birds but we did get a lot of 5 to 6 lb birds.
The learning curve pertaining too “How to raise meat birds at Past Thyme Farm” flatten out slightly this year. Next season “hopefully” we will average 6 lb birds.
A good farmer is always looking forward to next season!!