Lau Family Farm, LLC Grassfed meats available on May 19th
Lori Anne Lau
LAU FAMILY FARM, LLC
Grass-Fed * No Antibiotics * No Hormone
John will be attending the Idaho Falls Farmers Market (Key Bank parking lot) on May 19th from 9 to 1 pm. He will make an additional stop at the Old Town Pocatello Office (420 N Main in Pocatello) from 3 to 3:30 pm.
While we encourage pre-requesting/ordering we want to remind our customers that we are always willing to adjust an order up until the time it leaves our possession. We don’t want our customers to feel that they must buy something just because they included it in their pre-request.
· We asked our butcher to make a couple of tenderloin roasts (roughly 2 lbs each) and boneless rib eye roasts (roughly 2 lbs each). We also have a few bone-in chuck roasts (7 bone style) in our inventory. We also have some rack of lamb roasts with a bit longer rib bones (for that frenched look). We also have extra thick loin and rib chops, some smaller bone-in shoulder roasts, some large shoulder roasts (4 ish lbs) and some bone-in half leg roasts (4 ish lbs).
· We are starting to take deposits for quarter half and whole beef which will be delivered in early 2013. See http://www.laufamilyfarm.com/whole-half-lamb/ for more information.
· We have 3 beef bundles that save you 10% off buying the same items individually. You can see the details on our bundles website page (http://www.laufamilyfarm.com/beef-bundles/ )
· We have beef dog and marrow bones and lamb dog bones available. We also have lamb heart and a variety of beef organs. Let us know if you would be interested in purchasing some for yourself or your animal friends.
· We currently have 4 kinds of beef sausage and 4 kinds of lamb sausage in stock-Beef Andouille, Bratwurst, Sweet Italian and salami and Lamb n Apple, Garlic and Rosemary Lamb, Lamb Merguez and Italian Lamb w/ sundried tomatoes.
· We have several yarns that are from our naturally colored ewes-Shooter, Jenna, Amber blended with a white, and Darky blended with a white. In addition, we have made a fingering weight yarn from our Targhee ram’s fleece-it is so soft and is a lovely natural white. We also have some rug yarn and extra bulky yarn available. The yarns are now posted on Ravelry and I’m building a Facebook page for all our wooly postings: http://on.fb.me/xAkd2k. You can meet some of these ladies on their webpages: http://www.laufamilyfarm.com/our-wool/.
· We have a Facebook page for Lau Family Farm, LLC. I hope you will find it interesting and useful. http://bit.ly/laufamilyfarm.
For those of you following the saga by step-mom has rallied significantly since getting into the hospice program in late March. She is back to being able to transfer into her wheelchair and car and is enjoying life quite a bit more. Her battle with cancer is not over but it seems she is being given a respite and a period when she can get some quality time in, for which we are very thankful.
My health issues seem to be firmly in the non-life threatening realm but they are definitely impacting my ability to function and my quality of life. I have surgery scheduled for a month from now, and I hope that after the 6 week recovery period I will feel very much more like my old self again! My ability to lift heavy items seems likely to be impacted for the foreseeable future so I guess we’ll be investigating ways to minimize that. As you can imagine our farmers market attendance schedule is totally in flux while we wait for the surgery and recovery period. We do know that the bills will keep arriving, and animals will continue maturing, so we will continue to be highly motivated to move meat from our freezers to yours! One way or another we will find a way to be in each of the 5 towns we deliver to at least once a month or so. We will give you as much notice of our trips as possible, especially since they are not yet predictable.
John reports that more than half of the cows have calved, the vast majority successfully and the cattle are all enjoying the early spring and early grass. We have begun the process of moving the 1 and 2 yr old meat cattle onto our “Meadow Farm” pastures. The cows are no longer interested in eating hay they are out finding nice green grass to eat. John is also busy getting the pasture fences going, and planting our small acreages of grain (grown to be sold on the commodity market). He is once again custom farming for a local widow lady (we get paid so much an acre and use all our equipment, and she will keep whatever is produced).
We are also at roughly the half way point of lambing season (at least numbers wise if not time wise). We seem to have somehow grown the flock to nearly 120 ewes, not quite all of which will lamb this year. We are very close to having 60 ewes lambed. Our lamb crop must be close to 200% since we’ve had 9 sets of triplets already, and not 9 single births. We’ve only lost a handful of lambs, in part because the weather has been so cooperative. Since I’m only functioning at 70% or so I’ve had to give away nearly all of the lambs I would normally have supplemented with formula, or made into full time bottle babies. I expect the 11 head I’ve given away to thrive since they will have now have nanny goats for mamas (a mom is always better than a bottle)!
The two Suffolk ram lambs we put out with the ewes appear to have been very effective, and more effective than the little black ram lamb we put out as well. All but one of the lambs born so far show evidence of being Suffolk influenced…we have some cool appaloosa looking lambs, some with black heads and socks and white bodies and some are black or grey all over. As they mature we will try to discern if any of the ewe lambs have fine enough wool to stay in the flock as future mothers. Suffolk influenced sheep, besides having far coarser wool are, far more “breachy” than white faced sheep. They have less of the flocking instincts that keep white faced sheep (wool breeds) close together, and are FAR more likely to find any weakness in a fence, and to breach it than wool breed ewes. John has forbidden me from keeping any ewes we suspect have Suffolk heritage! The lack of wool breed ewe lambs might mean that I get to buy a handful of fine wooled ewe lambs from somebody this fall…or trade for our nice meat lambs.
Ten year old daughter, Becca, is determined to care for some of the lambs that need bottle feeding. I’ve kept one set of triplets “intact” for her to supplement with bottle feeding. The mother is only 2 yrs old, and I think this may have been her first mothering experience. She lambed in the late afternoon this week. I noticed she was laying down with two babies squirming, one on either side of her body. As I got closer I realized she had a third baby not fully out of the birth canal. The third baby was still alive despite having the amniotic sac over its head (could see it inflating as it breathed). Perhaps the umbilical cord was still delivering oxygenated blood to supplement what it was breathing itself. That poor third baby was quite cold (the parts that were outside at least). After initially acting like she was not the mother of a single baby, never mind triplets, she did follow the babies into the barn. We got out the propane heater and began warming the coldest two and rubbing them with towels and straw since they hadn’t been licked clean, and mom was a bit too freaked out to help much. While Becca kept the heat on the babies I was able to milk some colostrum from one of our colored ewes, Spot, since she only had a single live lamb. The mother ewe didn’t seem to have much milk in her udder, so giving the babies her colostrum didn’t seem to be an option. Spot has never been so well behaved-I simply put a halter on her, and tied her to her pen and she stood there while I milked out over a cup and a half of colostrums, she even let me milk her a second time. #3 was too cold to suckle the bottle so I gave it 4 oz via a stomach tube and then fed the other two lambs via a bottle. Fairly quickly the first two lambs were making serious attempts at standing, and locating their mother’s udder. She wasn’t too sure about letting them suckle but at some point instinct or hormones kicked in and she let them feed. #3 also finally got warm enough to stand and I got to have dinner at long last. Several days later all three lambs take some milk from the bottle, with #3 being nearly totally dependent on formula. Becca rocks and dances with the babies between feeding them and #3 is becoming quite a pest, always escaping their pen and looking for a human with a bottle. His sister #1 is almost as bad! Now that we just have the one set of triplets to feed, which can also use mom for midnight snacks, it feels far more doable that when we had 10 or more lambs to track down and offer various amounts of formula, 4 times a day!. Bottle lambs are so adorable as they try to suck on your chin, fingers anything else that remotely resembles their red latex nipples. This way we still get at least some “lambie kisses” every day without the overwhelming work load.
With the help of family and friends we also managed to get the ewes and remaining meat lambs shorn just before lambing season began in earnest. The shearer brought his shearing trailer and 6 shearers, and 2 wool handlers. The rest of us were kept very busy keeping the sheep flowing into the trailer so they always had another sheep to shear. Having 6 shearers meant that the whole job was accomplished SOOO much faster-only a few hours instead of what has sometimes taken days. And since the crew included two just to handle the fleeces John didn’t have to tromp any of the wool manually-it was all squeezed into square bales hydraulically . We ended up with quite a few of our Lau cousins, and the kids friends helping, few of which had any livestock experience. I’d try to direct from my camp chair but find I couldn’t sit there and watch them all struggle so I’d go show them how to do it for a bit and then go sit back down. The shearers helped us to locate a dozen fine and clean white fleeces, which we saved for spinning. We also saved all the colored fleeces. I don’t think we were able to track which fleece came from which ewe very well since both John and I were in the “back” trying to keep the sheep flowing into the trailer.
Before long it will be time to vaccinate the calves and give the cows their annual booster shot. They are vaccinated against a variety of locally common diseases including those that cause abortion and pneumonia.
We thank all of you that have supported us over the last nearly 8 years!
Please don’t hesitate to let us know how we can improve our products or services.
Thank you for your continued business!
John, Lori Anne, Tom & Becca Lau
Lau Family Farm, LLC
Grass-Fed Beef & Lamb...A Natural Choice
PO Box 337
Soda Springs, Idaho 83276