Blog

reposted from 3/13/2018What is the one bright spot when the shrieking cold wind thumps mercilessly against the farm house in mid-March? Well, at least the unwelcome snow is traveling horizontally instead of vertically and it’s having a hard time accumulating on our...

reposted from 2/7/2018      It was a bit of a shock, this past Friday, to fly out of San Salvador, in El Salvador, in the heat of the afternoon...       After a week of 90 degree temperatures, 6 hours of travel time delivered me to the Baltimore-Washington Airport at...

reposted from 1/10/2018The recent cold snap brought some difficulties, including ice everywhere; frozen water troughs; and frozen equipment, including trucks, tractors, skidloaders and milking equipment that wouldn't start; cheese caves that needed extra heaters to...

reposted from 12/27/2017     I just got finished checking out the forecast for Farm Market this Saturday. They are expecting a balmy seventeen degrees when we leave at 3 am for the market.  Ummm… Brrrr!!!  Farm market on the nicest days is just, well, nice.  Everyone...

reposted from 12/13/2017      December!  Winter has arrived at Coulter Farms with a vengeance.  The next two nights are forecast to have low temperatures in the teens… Brrrr!  Who doesn’t appreciate a warm soft bed on a cold winter’s night?  Here at the farm, nothing...

reposted from 11/28/2017     We Americans have become fairly immune to what used to be an innovative and disturbing approach to government… namely, our elected officials acting as surrogate parents to citizens whom they do not trust to make proper decisions about...

reposted from 10/29/2017Genesis 8:22...While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease.      Someone with too much time on their hands has gone to the trouble of calculating how many blades...

reposted from 10/3/2017      About 6 years ago, we were raising turkeys outdoors in a fenced enclosure that we considered to be a ‘Free Range’ environment.  To be sure, they had lots of green pasture, bugs and sunshine.  This would be a pretty good life for a chicken,...

reposted from 9/20/2017     I am often asked why Coulter Farms doesn’t produce so-called 'reduced fat' products.  Well, there’s a short answer and a long answer.  Any of you who know me very well already know that you’re going to be subjected to the dreaded  ‘long...

reposted from 9/1/2017truck trək/ (noun) - a large, heavy motor vehicle used for transporting goods, materials, or troops.      If someone told me that they were going to confiscate all but three of my earthly possessions and I was still expected to farm with only...

reposted from 8/15/2017After 17 years of adventures on the farm, we are, at long last, rejoicing in our first cool, wet July and August. Pastures and hayfields are growing explosively and our barns are full of hay, already. The dog days of summer are usually a brown,...

reposted from 7/25/2017     Sweltering, humid weather descended on our farm with a vengeance this past few weeks.  July and August are always a challenge here at Coulter Farms.  Our pastures are a diverse mix of 40-50 species of grasses and legumes but they are nearly...

Reposted from 7/11/17Yesterday the boys put the cows into a fresh pasture of Sorghum Sudangrass, which is a drought tolerant, heat loving annual grass that Jason seeded this spring.  In the morning it looked like this: This multi-purpose grass suppresses weeds and...

Before we ever started milking cows, we began work on the ice cream recipe that we use today for our farm’s 100% Grassfed Ice Cream. I have a Chemistry background and am deeply suspicious of so-called ‘food'- with processing, additives, preservatives, stabilizers,...

The boys spent a long day last week worming our flock of 100 lambs and 80 ewes. It occurred to me that many of our customers have no concept of the difference between conventional and organic lamb. Of all the products we produce on the farm, Lamb is definitely the...

Did you ever read the ‘Little House’ series of books by Laura Ingalls Wilder? ‘Farmer Boy’, documenting the early life of Almanzo Wilder, Laura’s future husband, describes a traumatic event in his childhood where he threw a stove blacking brush at his sister in his...

     Here at the farm, spring is the time for lambs and calves and baby piggies.  It seems that we need to add puppies to that list.   We have not had a dog at the farm for the last several years and my middle son, Jason, reminded me that when it was ME spending long...

    'Tax Day’… April 15th… Certainly a day of Infamy for beleaguered taxpayers.  April 15th has a different name at Coulter Farms…’Pasture Day’.    This is the date that we schedule our hay supplies to run out, confident that we can turn the ruminants, here, out onto...

Our discussion at breakfast this morning reminded me that every April is the same. The conversation was not about ‘How to get it all done’… rather, it was a more realistic topic… ‘What shall we abandon all hope of getting done?’ The rapid transition from bucolic...

    Ahhhh… April at last!  Spring has sprung at Coulter Farms and our new laying hens are swinging into major egg production mode.  The hens' innate drive to lay prolifically  in the spring fits the start of our three spring farm markets very nicely.  Most of our...