News from Lewis Waite Farm

Catching Up and New Meat

In this, the busiest time of year for us, we at Lewis Waite Farm have gotten a bit behind. With all we have to do and with the holiday which was the Lake Placid Farmers Market day, we’ve had no chance to play catch up! We’re on the brink of the next order deadline and I apologize for this. I apologize even more to those who may have been looking for items to grill. Our supplies have been a bit a short in the meat area.

However, in the last few days we’ve received a new batch of pork chops, etc., beef steaks of all kinds and chicken breasts and legs which we now have inventoried and are shown on the website. We are also picking up the new sausage today (hopefully) and will add that to the website as soon as we know what we can get. Use the menu choice for “See my Existing Orders” to make any changes to the order you may have already placed. We’ve had a wonderful spring and first week of summer – many mornings waking up around 5 to the sun shining in our east windows.

In The Works

We have all these things in the works these days:

Calves, calves, calves, about 25 some are frolicking and some generally hide in the bushes. They are mostly a beautiful brown with white faces, feet and chests. I had a dream about a pasture full of cute little calves – way more than we have ever had!

We are finally beginning our haying activities and have finished two fields of 16 parcels to do. We’ve gathered the big bales and put them all in the barn just before the rain yesterday. Yeah! We’re keeping up with tractor, mower, hay rake and baler maintenance and repair. We also bought 100 big round bales from our neighbor and stored them safely in the barn shed. Each day in the winter we feed 4-6 bales depending on the temperature so we need lots of hay!!

We have been attending 2 farmers markets each week – one in Lake Placid and one in Dorset VT. Luckily it has not rained on us, much!

We have beloved friends and family visiting this week and next, for the holiday and for the VT antique shows coming up next weekend.

Our gardens are bursting with greens, lettuce, broccoli raab, spinach, arugula and swiss chard and just starting broccoli, squash and onions. So luckily it’s easy to feed all our visitors and our helpers.

Our new barn construction project has a completed slab and concrete back wall since there are no flat spaces here only slopes. There are boards from our trees drying in the shed for the siding and framing lumber waiting under the tarps on the slab. Hay first, building later!

We are mowing all the pastures after the cows eat their way through to get rid of the weeds and their seeds that the cows don’t like to eat. This encourages the grasses just like mowing a lawn often improves it. Herbie is our master weed whacker in the areas where the tractor cannot go- under fence lines and on steep slopes – attacking raspberry bushes, wild multi-flora roses, milkweed and mullein. We never use herbicide under the fences!

Our new baby weanling piglets are having a lot of fun exploring the barn and meeting the big pigs through the hole in the stall door. Jayme from Hellgate is visiting the farm and is training the new arrivals to trust us and to be touched and petted and she’s having fun watching their antics.

We have four kittens in the barn ready to find a new home and we are seriously contemplating bringing them to the farmers market in a dog crate and seeing who may be enticed to take them home (we have 5 already working on mouse patrol in the barns!)

We cleared some trees from hedgerows and along the fences and cut some poor dead elm trees (they are still dying from Dutch Elm disease) and are cutting, gathering and delivering firewood to neighbors and friends. Luckily Herbie has a dump truck he let’s us use and he loves to cut wood.

Nancy and Alan