Spring work is going on with joyful enthusiasm. – John Muir

Joyful Enthusiasm Everywhere

Spring invigorates all of us. Everything is so fresh and new. Life is happening everywhere around us.

Flowers are showing off their glorious colors. The fruit trees are blooming and filling the air with a heady sweet fragrance. Freshly mowed grass invites you to run through it barefoot.

Gardens are being planted with the anticipation of a bountiful crop of goodness for everyone. Some crops, like the carrots, get planted after the first flush of weeds have been turned under and won't compete with the tiny seedlings.

The lambs love racing around the pasture with their pals. The new beef calves, so cute and cuddly are joyfully romping with each other. At the time this was written, two more calves were born and put on pasture with their moms. Another cow that hasn't calved yet was so jealous of her companions enjoying fresh green grass that she jumped the corral fence and joined them.

At editing time, this cow has had her calf!

Having been put out on grass, the laying hens are happily scratching the dirt digging for bugs. Now, it would be nice if they would lay more eggs as a thank you for their pleasant surroundings.

The broiler chickens are enjoying their life on the range in their comfy pens. With warm sunny days, light breezes, and fresh greens everyday, they are growing vigorously.

We also have a couple of new additions. Meet Sunny and Penguin, two adorable ducklings that Marseilles is "mothering." The children of one of our customers hatched them in their home. Realizing that they wouldn't be able to keep them in the city, they gifted us.

Honeybees are fascinating! There's so little we understand about them. This video describes a bit about how honeybees communicate the locations of new food sources with other bees in the hive.

It's that time of year again! Think fresh chicken.

We raise the chicks in the barn for about 5 weeks until they've grown enough feathers to survive cooler nights. At this point they're ready for pasture. The birds are split up into 10-foot by 10-foot cages on shorter, trampled grass, which provides more suitable bedding and renders the bugs easier to catch. And the tender pasture regrowth is much easier for the birds to digest than mature grasses.

Every morning after the dew comes off, each cage is moved ahead by a full ten feet, providing the birds with a fresh salad and a side of bugs, which they take full advantage of before resorting to their grain feeders. It should go without saying that we provide exclusively organic grain and revitalizing Grander Living Water.

This system also moves the birds away from their manure, which means they are never exposed to any pathogen load. It keeps everything and everybody healthy and clean.

Our birds have full access to sunshine and fresh pasture breezes that are free of ammonia. The healthy pasture grasses make immediate use of the nitrogen in the manure to prevent any odors or runoff.

The whole system is beautiful and clean, naturally providing meat that is flavorful and nutritious.

Fresh WHOLE broiler chicken will be ready Friday, June 9th and Sunday, June 11th.

Fresh chicken PARTS will be ready Sunday, June 11th.

PLACE YOUR ORDERS NOW.

We have fresh locally-grown Mans Organics back in the store – beautiful big beefsteak tomatoes for a delicious sandwich, flavorful grape tomatoes tossed into a spring salad, long English cucumbers sliced onto a plate, and crunchy mini cukes for eating out of hand.

Comparison of Mans Greenhouse Organics and Hydroponically Grown Products

Mans Organics is soil based, with compost input. It's similar to how we grow our food, except with more heat and protection from environmental elements, like wind and snow.

Healthy soil with good structure is of prime importance to Mans Organics. Also, organic certification requires that produce be grown in soil.

Hydroponic agriculture is very artificial. It is a process of growing plants without soil by adding nutrients to the water. It might seem impressive that that much food can be grown in a small area, but that isn't the whole picture.

Just to provide the phosphorous fertilizer, there's a strip mine to harvest the ore, a smelting plant to refine it, and a fluoride waste stream. Hydroponic agriculture doesn't use less land than our gardens do. Just like feedlots don't use less land than range cattle do. The appearance is deceiving.

Also, hydroponics plants don't coexist symbiotically with microbiology. There are no fungi or nematodes or beetles. There is no ecosystem. As far as I can tell, it's about the same as lab grown hamburger. I like my veggies with dirt on them.

Harvest Haven Pastured Ground Beef – A farm favorite with so many ways to prepare it. Our ground beef has just the right amount of fat to make it tender and flavorful. And grass-fed beef fat supplies your Omega 3's!

Harvest Haven Hamburger Buns, 6 pack – Light and fluffy homemade buns made with simple organic ingredients (unbleached white flour, eggs, oil, cane sugar, and sea salt) and baked in the wood-fired oven. Unique to Harvest Haven.

Harvest Haven Frozen Oven Fries – A delicious Harvest Haven product that gives you convenience without compromise. Simply spread frozen fries on a lightly oiled baking sheet and roast in 425° F oven for 15 to 20 minutes or until done the way you like them. Or sprinkle with your favorite seasonings. Easy peasy!

L'Ancetre Organic Parmesan Cheese, 200 g – This Italian cheese, made from organic unpasteurized milk, is aged for a minimum of 12 months. Its intense flavor with the delicately fruity hint of salted butter will spice up all of your recipes.

Bioitalia Organic Sunflower Oil, 750 mL – Another great product from BioItalia. From Southern Italy, the best organic sunflower seeds have been selected to make this excellent product. Use wherever a recipe calls for a mild-flavored oil, such as in cakes, muffins, breads, and mayonnaise.

Mount Hagen Organic Instant Coffee, 100 g – A sip of this rich, smooth coffee is a taste of its pampered history in the paradise of Mount Hagen, Papua New Guinea. The Arabica beans luxuriate in Mount Hagen's perfected method, with each stage of the process coaxing maximum depth of flavor and aroma out of them.

All Mount Hagen coffees are organic, grown in small cultivations under shade trees. Which in turn is a reason why they taste so outrageously delicious.

Please note, all ingredients in our recipes are organic.

Donations – To Whom, For What

We've all had requests asking for monetary donations to one cause or another. Often, it's a struggle deciding if they are legitimate and if so, how much to give. And in the back of your mind you're wondering how much of the donation goes to the purported cause and how much goes to administration.

Harvest Haven gets many requests from various organizations. An email came from Ducks Unlimited Student Chapter, which seems to be an environmentally responsible organization. Read Martin's reply after their request. It may help you decide to whom and for what you give.

Message:
Hey!

My name is Kerri, and I am a part of the Lethbridge College Student Chapter, Ducks Unlimited. I am reaching out to you today because, on Friday, February 3rd, we are having our first banquet back since COVID and are looking for donations for our dinner. Ducks Unlimited is a non-profit organization that works to conserve, restore and manage wetlands in North America for waterfowl, people and wildlife. Would you be interested in supporting our banquet?

Thank you,

Lethbridge College Ducks Unlimited

Reply:
To: Ducks Unlimited Student Chapter Donation Request

Hello!

I believe the best way to preserve wildlife, is to support legitimate local organic farmers. Is the food served at your banquet organic to ensure that you're not endangering the wildlife with chemicals while you presume to be helping? Do you know what the use of neonics have done to wild and domesticated bee populations? How about what happens when manure pits on industrial beef, hog and chicken farms start leaching into the waterways? What about monocultured corn wiping out millions of hectares of biodiversity? Does everybody in your chapter collectively refuse to finance chemical farming in practice and not just in empty speech? What does everybody think is killing all the wildlife anyway?

I find over and over again that people will go to great efforts to prove they care about nature and yet they continue to support an agricultural paradigm bent on destroying everything.

Then on top of all that, many of the conservation committees lobby governments to restrict farmers from being able to practice agriculture close to the rivers that run through their farms. Unfortunately, this causes no end of headaches for many regenerative farmers who want to use the rivers responsibly to heal the land.

I think people need to repent of their lifestyles that hold the "ducks" in contempt, rather than gathering a few dollars from the masses to help them salve their conscience.

I'm not saying these things to make you feel bad or downplay whatever legitimately good intentions you may have. However, I can't stay silent either. These things need to be heard and considered by anyone who presumes to be concerned about the Lord's creation.

It's all about personal responsibility.

Have a good evening.

Martin

We did not receive a response.