How the sausage gets made
Here at BOTL Farm, we are deeply committed to providing our customers with the highest-quality products, mostly because we want to eat the highest-quality products, too. You may not realize it, but we hand-make a number of the products we sell. Sure, most of the muscle cuts (chops, ribs, roasts) are cut and packaged at our slaughterhouse. But all our bone broths, lard, some of the sausages, meatballs, lip balm, dog treats, and (new!) pulled chicken are made by us. We’re happy to have access to a cooperative commercial kitchen facility nearby, CLiCK Willimantic, so that we can (legally and safely) produce and sell these products.
What does it look like to work at a commercial kitchen facility a few days a year? Welp, our most recent trip started when we noticed that, despite feeling like we had made an infinite amount of chicken bone broth last time, we were down to our last few packages. We checked our calendar, checked the kitchen’s calendar, and set a date. Then we thawed chickens in a dedicated thawing fridge (yes, we have four fridges. Maybe five. I forget. Six?). At this point, we remembered that bone broth has to boil for many hours … and that we were low on a few sausage types … and the planned work expanded to be bone broth + brats + breakfast patties. We added pork and pork fat to the thaw fridge and were on our way. The next day, we filled an order and noticed that we’re almost out of crispy pig skin treats for dogs, too. Back to the thaw fridge with pig skin.
At this point, we started to think we signed ourselves up for more work than two people can do (bone broth is actually two days at the kitchen), so we contacted our friend (thanks, Matt!) to work with us for a day. Then it was time to finalize recipe batches and make sure we had enough spices for the sausages (and realize that of course we didn’t and needed to go to the bulk section of the Willimantic Food Co-op). Did we have enough casings for the sausage? Whew, yes.
After all the planning and prep, the production days went smoothly and one small knife injury later, we’re fully stocked on a bunch of products.
ISO home for 2,000 compostable egg cartons?
As enterprising hippy farmers we always wanted to save the world. Before we got our first chickens, we had already agonized over options for environmentally-friendly egg cartons for hours and hours. Maybe days. If you’ve been a BOTL Farm fan since the very beginning, you may recall that our first egg cartons were made of some plant-based foam, imported special from the Netherlands, held 10 eggs, were at-home compostable, and almost completely unusable. They composted so fast that any humidity or moisture on the eggs would cause the carton to stick, bend, and ultimately fall apart.
We stopped using the cartons and reluctantly switched to normal (paper-pulp) egg cartons. Because one of us feels that having things-on-hand is an asset and provides limitless opportunities for new opportunities (aka is somewhat of a hoarder), we haven’t, collectively, been authorized to discard the cases and cases of unused, plant-based foam cartons. In an effort to decrease waste, we would like to see these used for something besides storing eggs in a humid climate. Maybe you know of a fig farmer wanting to cradle their soft fruit bodies in foam? Or perhaps you know of a school classroom that’s talking about what composting means and want things that melt when wet? Or you have hundreds of kids and want to make a compostable egg-carton fortress as an art project? Potentially you ship things and you want compostable insulation filler for the boxes? We’re open to ideas, let us know what you dream up to get these cartons out and into the world! We’re happy to move them on to a good home, free.
Seriously, if we don’t come up with something soon, the non-hoarder of us is going to melt them all in the front yard with a hose. Cheers.
Regenerative farming means decreasing waste
We are delightfully stubborn about finding innovative ways to use every part of our dead animals, and this directly influences the products we make and offer. For example, we recently took whole chickens to the commercial kitchen with the main intention of making bone broth. But, it’s a shame to use all that meat just to make broth. So as we prepped the chickens for bone broth, we harvested a bunch of meat and slow-cooked it to make a new-for-us product, Pulled Chicken. It’s tender, savory, and ready to throw into a weeknight dinner. If you really liked our Dragon Chicken Dip, this is the same way we cooked chicken for that.
Once the bone broth boils for hours and hours, we’re left with soft bones and soggy meat (anyone looking for a band name?). Normally this would be composted, but we noticed how much our dog loves the compost pile after chicken broth making, and we started to think that if we ground the bones and meat into a slurry, our furry friends would appreciate it. You may wonder how we grind chicken bones, and the correct answer is a deafeningly loud ¾ horsepower motor, which we affectionately call The Chicken Grinder 5000. The bone + meat slurry is called The Chicken Stuff, and it got rave reviews the last time we made it. Big woofs. We’re happy to have it back in stock and have our bone-broth making be a nearly-zero-waste process!
Other new things this month – we’ve been harvesting chestnuts from our trees as they drop. We have a limited quantity of chestnuts available starting this week. We also have finally packaged our liquid lard soap. You may be more familiar with the bar soap we make, but we are now making a liquid concentrate version. For all those soap nerds out there, we use the potassium version of lye for the liquid soap, KOH, and the sodium version for bar soap, NaOH. Fun times with lard!
Organic animal feed: shipping increases again, surprise surprise
We’ve seen a recent increase in freight shipping. This is not just limited to New Country Organics, as it’s happened at the same time with the other feed mill we work with. It’s a minor, but not negligible, increase per pallet. NCO hasn’t updated their base feed prices in almost a year, so we anticipate those changes will come soon. For now, we’re holding back on passing the increased shipping costs onto customers and trying to wait to see increased feed prices and then make one change to our pricing structure this fall/winter. At this point, we just want to give a heads up that price increases, hopefully minor, are on the horizon. We’re thankful that prices have been steady for so long!
Find us this month
On farm store: Tuesdays noon - 2pm, Saturdays 1 - 3pm. Pre-order
On farm self pickup: Everyday 8:30am - 8pm. Pre-order only
Assawaga farm market: Every Saturday from 9am to noon from now until the weekend before Thanksgiving. Schedule change this month: As our Sturbridge market comes to a close, we will ramp up to every week at Assawaga Farm. Dates we’ll be there in October: October 5, October 19, October 26. Pre-order
Sturbridge Farmers Market: Every Sunday from 9am to 1pm. Just two more markets left for this season. Dates we’ll be there in October: October 6, October 13. Pre-order
Sturbridge Monthly Winter Drop Offs: For the past few years we have teamed up with Still Life Farm for their winter CSA. We love having local veg through the dark months of winter, and we can bring pre-paid meat + eggs orders to their monthly Sturbridge pickup location. You don’t need to be a veg CSA member to order from us, but if you’re interested to sign up with them, check it out here.
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