The greatest fine art of the future will be the making of a comfortable living from a small piece of land. ~ Abraham Lincoln

The berm barn for the laying hens is becoming liveable, and for more than just the hens. It looks like a cozy residence. What an amazing structure. (As an aside, when Martin first arrived, I wondered if the farm would be mentally challenging enough for him. It appears that he's using his mind to make things better for all.)

The turkeys have grown a lot and are ready for pasture.

The gardens are doing well with fresh Harvest Haven produce coming into the store daily.

One of the struggles that we've faced is how to describe our products. We'd like to be able to call our products "organic," but legislative bodies and other interested parties have taken that away from us. So, we have a series of basic comparisons, outlining the differences between conventional, Certified Organic, and Harvest Haven Certified.

The following is a comparison of conventionally raised lamb, certified organic, and Harvest Haven certified.

Conventional

Lambs are very sensitive creatures and often require antibiotics and synthetic milk replacers to survive their first few weeks, particularly if the lambing facility is overcrowded or there are just too many lambs for too few farmers to keep their watchful eye on.

Vaccines filled with all kinds of toxic garbage are the norm. Anti-parasite drugs are also heavily administered so the lambs don't lose any weight-gain. These drugs are given orally for internal parasites and are also used to saturate the fleece to deal with the external grubs.

The lambs are typically raised to weaning age while being conditioned to eat grain at the earliest age possible. As soon as they can be taken from the mother, they are sold at auction to feeder operations where they live out the rest of their lives on feedlot corn rations while being treated for infections and foot rot. In a word, it's unacceptable.

Certified Organic

Certified Organic producers have much better standards. They're not permitted to administer drugs to the lambs, so much more care must be taken to make sure the lambs are warm, dry, and immediately tended to if anything goes wrong.

However, grain feeding is still the norm, especially since maintaining low parasite loads in grass-fed sheep requires knowhow and careful pasture planning. The grain is organic, but it still isn't the right way to produce the tastiest and most nutrient-dense lamb.

Since the lambs are grain-fed, they need to be separated from the mothers as soon as possible to facilitate the different feeding regimens (you can't feed the mothers large amounts of grain or they won't give birth safely the following year). Lambs that do require antibiotics are separated and sold to conventional feedlots for finishing.

Essentially, a good portion of the certified organic lamb industry is very close in philosophy to the conventional industry, but they have to hold back from pushing the biological envelope, otherwise they'll have to contaminate their product with drugs and lose the invested care and financial premium for organic grain and forage.

It's technically not a poisonous product, but it's definitely not a moral, sustainable, or nourishing farming model.

Harvest Haven Certified

We keep a very close watch on a small flock of ewes and are present at almost every birth. All the lambs are immediately escorted with their mother to the "maternity ward" where they stay out of the weather and close to mom for about a week. We make sure all lambs get a good supply of colostrum (thick nutritious milk that is produced immediately after the birth and soon ceases). We've found that lambs that receive an adequate supply of colostrum in the first 8 hours are almost indestructible.

We time our lambing so that as soon as the lambs can forage, the pastures are ready. Our lambs are raised exclusively on forage from meticulously managed pastures. The flock is moved from lush pasture to lush pasture more than once a week using temporary fencing, resulting in rapid weight gain on nothing but good old-fashioned grasses, legumes, and the occasional weed. The animals are provided excellent quality, non-synthetic minerals and salts and always have access to cold, clean, Grander water.

Because mothers and lambs get the same diet, the lambs get to live every day of their lives with their mothers, which makes for the least stress possible for everyone.

Harvest Haven Certified is not just a "chemical free" guarantee. It's way beyond that. It means grass-fed. It means humanely treated. It means that the soil isn't being depleted by unnecessary grain production, but getting deeper and richer instead. It means that every aspect of production is good and wholesome, and the taste is fantastic!

I should mention that there are going to be Certified Organic producers who opt for a more forage-based model, but typically you're going to see these growers selling direct to market like we do so that they can receive a premium for their extra efforts. It's difficult to put that much care into a product and then let it sell side by side at Safeway with feedlot "organic." I just want to make it clear that I'm outlining what is generally, but perhaps not always, the case. Exceptions may exist, although I'm not personally aware of any currently.

Organic Certification bodies require a set of minimum standards. Harvest Haven Certified requires the maximum. We are always looking for new ways to increase the health, sustainability, and quality of our products.

We'll have fresh Harvest Haven Lamb in the store Friday, August 23 and Sunday, August 25.

We're taking orders for whole or half lamb, cut and wrapped, or just the cuts you like.

Whole lamb, cut and wrapped, is about $500 depending on the size, or $250 for a half.

Please contact us as soon as possible with your order, as lamb is processed only in September. Call 403-329-9157 or email: solutions@harvesthaven.com.

Organic BC peaches, nectarines, and plums are here!
If you would like anything in cases, please let us know.

The garlic has been harvested and laid out to dry. It's beautiful!

Walla Walla onions are the perfect size for slicing onto a sandwich or hamburger.

Sweet Spanish and Red onions are in the store, too. Bring on the salads!

The baby beets aren't so baby anymore and are looking lovely. Do enjoy those delicious, nutritious beet greens while you can.

Love the new potatoes with fresh dill and cream.

Harvest Haven Lamb – Another Harvest Haven Certified product for you to enjoy. Completely grass-fed for tender, delicious, nutritious, and according to our customers, "The best!"

Fresh lamb will be in the store Friday, August 23 and Sunday, August 25. Watch for other dates during September for more fresh lamb.

Inari Organic Couscous – This durum wheat semolina pasta is an indigenous North African dish often served with lamb and a key ingredient in tabouli salad. So quick to make and so tasty.

Zucchini – Here it comes! Zucchini in every size and every recipe. It's so versatile and good so many ways.

It's great being on a farm because whatever we can't sell or eat, the chickens love.

Fresh Herbs - Smell the freshness of these wonderful herbs: cilantro, dill, chives, oregano, parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme (there's a song here).

Arla Organic Cream Cheese – This is an excellent product that can be used as a spread on Harvest Haven bread, in a zucchini side dish (see Recipe Box), for cheesecake of course, and in many other desserts. We love it!

Fresh Raspberries – These fresh tasty morsels are almost finished for this year, then you'll have to get the frozen ones. Serve fresh raspberries sprinkled on cereal, stirred into yogurt, mixed into your favorite plain muffin recipe, or as a splendid dessert.

Please note, all ingredients in our recipes are organic.

Cream Cheese Zucchini

Gigantor, the not so little lamb

Back in March we did a couple of stories about the lambs. This is an excerpt from one of them.

Our Hong Kong watchman is interesting because he's an executive with a large company there. (We have a friend in Hong Kong who watches the lambing remotely while we sleep.)

Can you imagine a distinguished businessman sitting at an important meeting, checking his phone repeatedly, and someone asks, "What are you watching?" And he replies, "Sheep in Canada."

Anyway, Tony texted Martin at 4:00 AM the other morning to say something strange was happening with one of the ewes. When Martin got to the barn, he helped her deliver the largest lamb we've ever had – almost 19 pounds! It was huge!

Jeannie wants to call it Constantine after Konstantijn because she was a huge baby, too – 11 pounds. And both the lamb and K had voracious appetites at birth.

The kids named this large lamb, "Gigantor", for obvious reasons.

Here's an update from Konstantijn about her favorite "lamb."

Gigantor is really big now!

He is still really sweet and always coming running for a head scratch.

He lives with his dad, Edward, because he got bigger than his mom and had to move! This can pose a problem when you enter the pen though.

As soon as you go to scratch Edward or Gigantor, the other ram comes to be scratched. And rams do not share anything! But instead of having a fight between themselves, they both come up to me and start rubbing really hard on my legs, sometimes knocking their heads together until they both get really mad at each other!

I have to choose one to pet and ignore the other, otherwise this will go on forever. Whichever one I don't choose walks away to the corner and ignores me until I walk over there to scratch him, and then the one I was petting does the same. It never stops.

When Gigantor was a lamb, I tried to halter train him, kind of like putting him on a leash. Usually when you put a halter on a lamb for the first time, they freak out, which is totally normal. But instead of freaking out, all thirty pounds of him would just stand there while I was trying to drag him around.

After that, Gigantor would sit down on the ground pouting, and then would drop sideways on the ground like he was dead. At first, I was concerned, but about 30 seconds after I took the halter off, he was running for his mom to suck.

This happened repeatedly for about two weeks. I tried treats. I tried simply dragging him around on the end of the rope. I tried tying his mom onto him, which she was NOT pleased with at all. I tried everything, until I decided to just stop. He was one of those sheep who refused to learn.

He does come when I call his name though, which I think is pretty cool.