Lau Family Farm Meats available Sept 24th
Lori Anne Lau
Lau Family Farm, LLC
Grass-Fed and Finished * No Antibiotics * No Hormone Implants
Sept 24th Cache Valley Gardeners Market 9 to 1 in Logan
Idaho Falls Farmers Market 9 to 1 @ Key Bank Parking lot
Oct 1st Idaho Falls Farmers Market 9 to 1 @ Key Bank Parking lot
Pocatello-probably 3:30 (final plans will be announced as we get closer)
Downtown SLC Farmers Market @ Pioneer Park, 8 to 1pm
Ogden, 4 pm
Oct 8th Cache Valley Gardeners Market 9 to 1 in Logan
Downtown SLC Farmers Market @ Pioneer Park, 8 to 1pm
Oct 15th Idaho Falls Farmers Market 9 to 1 @ Key Bank Parking lot
Cache Valley Gardeners Market 9 to 1 in Logan
In celebration of our 12th year business anniversary all bundles will be 12% off thru Oct 1st. That’s the 4 beef bundles (laufamilyfarm.com/beef-bundles/), and the 3 lamb bundles (laufamilyfarm.com/lamb-bundles/).
We are also offering 12% off a variety of cuts including Beef Brisket, Top Sirloin Roasts, New York, Chuck and Ranch Steaks and Lamb Loin and Rib Chops.
· We have a quarter beef in the freezer that is “looking for a home” It is about 95 lbs of natural and grass-finished beef Cuts include tenderloin, New York, rib eye, skirt, flank, top sirloin, petite sirloin, chuck roast, brisket, sirloin tip roast, eye of round, stew, sliced shank (meaty soup bones), steak strips, short ribs and plenty of delicious ground beef. All this for $700 plus tax.
· We are taking deposits for quarters, half and whole beef to be delivered later this fall, winter and into spring. Quarter beeves are $4.75 per carcass lb (approx $775) and Half and whole are $4.50 per carcass lb (approx $1460) plus tax. Deposit is $100 per quarter. Delivered to central location in Idaho Falls, Pocatello, Logan, Ogden or SLC free of charge.
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· We are beginning to take deposits for whole and half lambs to be delivered this winter (starting in December). The price is $6 per carcass lb (approx $420 for a whole lamb). Delivered to central location in Idaho Falls, Pocatello, Logan, Ogden or SLC free of charge.
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· Its time to start thinking about ordering your standing rib roast (prime rib), rib eye roast, tenderloin roast for the winter holidays. I know it’s just early Fall but we only have two groups of animals being cut before Thanksgiving and some of those will go for larger carcass orders.
It has been several weeks since I’ve written an update on farm and family happenings, so here goes.
Our old reliable 06 Toyota Sienna, which serves as both meat delivery and family transportation, had a round of mechanical issues at the end of August. Thankfully, it decided to overheat when we were only 25 minutes from home, after a rushed trip to the kids dentist in Idaho Falls. Becca has had teeth trouble since the get-go, poor teeth seems to run in my family, so we’ve always gone to a specialist for her. Our mechanic figured out that the water pump had broken, then realized the radiator had issues too. A timing belt was involved as well. The mechanic’s crew worked until 8 or 9 on Friday night trying to get us operational for our delivery to Idaho Falls. Unfortunately, they missed something in their rush and the van wasn’t quite right on Saturday morning. Tom and decided to turn back when we got to Pocatello and not risk damaging the engine/transmission or getting stranded further from home. Coming home did mean that we got to see Becca run in the Cardinal Classic-her first HS XC race-and run Varsity. She was 5th on her team, 23rd overall and her team got 1st.
We spent much of Labor Day weekend working on Grant’s house and made some pretty good progress on thinning out all the non-treasure items to donate or possibly sell. I also spent a lot of time online seeing what certified pre-owned Toyota Sienna’s were available within a few hours’ drive. We’ve had such good luck with the 06 certified van that it seemed a logical choice to get another. We found several in northern Utah so we set off one day to go look at some of them. We were able to find one with low mileage, only a few cosmetic flaws, and the great 100 K warranty, at a fair price in Ogden so we went with that one. Outwardly it’s a clone of our 06, but as a 2015 it has much more modern audio, temperature controls etc. We can only hope that it too will go over 250 K miles with little more than standard maintenance like the 06. Maybe for it has worn out we’ll have figured out all the bells and whistles and will actually be able to control the radio.
Shortly after the van purchasing trip I started with one of my migraines and spent most of Friday in bed trying to get over it. That night we decided that I was not going to be able to make the 3 hr drive, and 6 hour market, even with Tom’s help. So we canceled that trip too. Unfortunately on Sunday the headache got quite a bit worse, and wasn’t much better on Monday. I ended up getting in with one of the local doctors who I’d never seen before. Multiple tests later, so many that we suspect we’ve fully met our very large deductible now, everyone’s best guess is that it was a more severe than usual migraine. I’ve had far fewer of these debilitating events in the last year since I started on a preventative medicine, but this one was much longer and more severe than I’ve ever had before. We now know that all of the truly scary potential causes have been ruled out and we can turn our focus to preventing the next one and getting on with everything that was neglected for 5 days or more.
It would seem that Tom did okay for his first time being on his own at a farmers market, on Saturday in Logan. One of the tests I needed was only available on Saturday, unless we postponed and traveled out of town to have it done elsewhere. I’ve long thought Tom could handle an occasional market/delivery on his own but now we have evidence that this is true.
Meanwhile John has torn out one whole side of our livestock working corral and is rebuilding it. Some of the existing posts had rotted and needed replacing, and John decided this was his opportunity to put in a low stress handling facility called a “bud box” after Bud Williams who promoted the design for the last 15 plus years. The design uses the animals inherent desire to get past humans to control where they go with very little stress for animal or human.
We have several friends, including our large animal vet, who think this is the very best design for easily working animals into a chute so they can be pregnancy checked, vaccinated or medical issues dealt with. John has spent hours studying designs online, going to neighboring ranches with this set up, pricing materials etc. He hopes this improvement will be one the kids can benefit from long after we are gone. He, and a friend, are setting the pipes in concrete and will soon be welding the metal pipes in place.
We have also decided to plant some beardless winter triticale in the coming days so that will hopefully germinate and begin growing this fall. It is expected to lay dormant under the snow, and then take off as soon as the snow is gone in the spring. This should give us more green feed earlier than we can get it with a spring planting. Also cool season grasses, like triticale, will get growing earlier in the spring than do our alfalfa fields. This should give us some nice feed when it has been somewhat lacking, allow our long term pastures to be slightly more mature when we start using them in the spring. We just need to get it all consumed before seed development begins. Anything that gets too mature will make a lovely green manure crop when we turn it under in order to replant.
John needs to get the corral put back together so we can get the cows in for their annual vaccinations and pregnancy checks. It will soon be time to go thru the sheep and decide if there are any that need to leave the flock. Lamb prices are still somewhat decent at the moment so we’ll probably sell a few that we won’t need for the meat business. Sometimes we can find someone who wants replacement ewe lambs to take our nicely fleeced white girls to be mothers in their flocks. Anybody with the Suffolk/Hampshire parentage will go for meat, either with us or in the commodity system.
Becca continues to shine in her first year of HS cross-country. She is now the 3rd fastest girl on the varsity team, which is none too shabby for a freshman. Soda is in the midst of homecoming week, and so as class officers, student body officers etc they have had plenty on their plates. Tom has been enjoying football, despite being black and blue from head to toe. He’s had one too many shoulders/helmets to the chest of late though and is out for a week while is sternum heals. Tom has asked a friend to the homecoming dance so he is learning about ordering corsages, organizing dates and seems to be planning to spend his entire commission from last Saturday on the event. It’s hard to believe that in just 2 years he’ll almost certainly be leaving home and going on to some form of continued education. Right now he’s leaning toward engineering and has applied for an internship at INL in Idaho Falls next summer. If he gets it that might put the kibosh on him taking a market for the family…or maybe it means he gets the IF market if we can get the meat up to him…
John and I were commenting recently about how relatively smooth our summer has been. The solar powered electric fences and water pumps have been working well, and not having continual issues like they do some years. The sheep have actually stayed where we wanted them which means we have finally, for now, found all the holes in the fences. Farm equipment mechanical issues have been relatively minor. The dry summer while being hard on the pastures, meant that haying and grain cutting were not delayed by rain. The creek in the northern most pasture is running, helping to keep the stock dispersed. Trying to keep the newly planted tree rows watered and now trying to find some feed of sufficient quality to keep the meat steers growing has been the major challenges.
With the recent bumps in the road we failed to really acknowledge that we’d reached the end of our 12th year in business this summer. Whether you’ve been along for this crazy ride since 2004 or you are a more recent member of our clan we thank you. We thank you for looking for something other than mainstream commodity products, and being willing to pay a bit extra for them. We thank you for believing in us, and helping us to put and keep a product on the market that is all that beef and lamb can be-tasty, healthy, well cared for, responsibly managed. A lot has changed in 12 years. We no longer have to explain why someone might want something other than feedlot fed meat. There is still confusion about exactly what grass-fed and grass-finished means but we are no longer introducing the concept to nearly every customer like we were in 2004.
Thank you for trusting us and allowing our family to feed your family for 12 years!
John, Lori Anne, Tom and Becca Lau
Lau Family Farm, LLC
Grass Fed Beef, Lamb & Wool...A Natural Choice
PO Box 337
Soda Springs, ID 83276
208-709-4981 (cell)