Lau Family Farm, LLC Grassfed meats available on February 18th
Lori Anne Lau
LAU FAMILY FARM, LLC
Grass-Fed * No Antibiotics * No Hormone
We will be delivering to our Idaho Falls and Pocatello customers on February 18th. We will be at the Old Town Pocatello Office (420 N Main in Pocatello) from 10:30 to 11am. We will then be at DC Natural Foods (159 S Corner Ave in Idaho Falls 1 block South of the YMCA) from 1:00 to 2:00. Here is a link to a Google map (http://bit.ly/dWLWr3).
We are delivering to our Utah customers on February 25th. Our next deliveries will likely be on March 24th and 31st.
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.
· February Special: Lamb Whole Shanks 15% off. Both whole and sliced shanks are available but since we have an abundance of whole shanks we are putting them on sale this month. Shanks are wonderful when braised until the meat melts off the bone as in this recipe (http://www.laufamilyfarm.com/recipes-journal/braised-lamb-shanks-with-caramelized-onions-and-shallots.html) for braised shanks with caramelized onions. This recipe is a family favorite.
· We are starting to take deposits for quarter half and whole beef which will be delivered in very late 2012 or 2013. We are still taking deposits for whole or half lambs to be delivered in approximately April-June. See http://www.laufamilyfarm.com/whole-half-lamb/ for more information.
· We have gift certificates available for our products. They can be made out for any amount and will be good for 6 months from the date of purchase.
· We always offer discounts on 10, 20, 50 and 100 lbs/packages of ground beef- see the details at: http://www.laufamilyfarm.com/ground-beef/. As many of you know, we also 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 and lamb dog and marrow 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 still have a few packages of beef sausages available: Beef Andouille, Beef Bratwurst, Beef Frankfurter and Beef Sweet Italian. We are hoping to get some additional beef and lamb sausages made sometime soon…just got to find the time to run up to Mackay to drop off the meat. Let us know what types of sausages you would like us to have made.
· 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 new 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.
It seems like health concerns have dominated the last several months-mostly those of my step-mom but my Dad and John’s Dad are getting into the groove too. My stepmom continues to valiantly fight her cancer and the side effects of all the chemo treatments. We thought we were going to lose her early last week but she has significantly rallied and it looks like we will enjoy her presence in our lives for, hopefully, quite a bit longer.
In addition to supporting our parents when they need our help, we’ve been staying busy keeping all the stock fed and cared for, taking the kids to their various events, and lots of other projects. John is in the midst of a major farm shop reorganization and thinning. I’ve been trying to do more to advertize our yarns and wool on the web as well as dealing with yearend accounting and tax prep. It is also time to start to return some attention to my job as county Farm Bureau president. I’ve lost a few productive days recently to a horrible head cold and now it seems to have become a sinus infection. Hopefully the antibiotics I’m on for 2 weeks will help get things back under control.
I was thankfully feeling well enough to go to Boise early this week to get more details about the Washington, DC trip John and I won. We will be going to Washington DC in early March as Idaho Farm Bureau Ag Ambassadors. I am really looking forward to getting to meet with American Farm Bureau, USDA, and our congressional delegation. John has never been to DC, and I haven’t been since I was 15-16 years old, so it will be great to tour all the various monuments and sights. Farm Bureau is trying to arrange tours of the capital and the White House, as well. We have arranged for friends to care for our livestock while we are gone and other friends will take the kids. Hopefully, the older generation’s health issues will not become crises while we are out of town. My sister-in-law and I are trying to get John’s Dad to have the surgery he needs very soon, or after we get back so that we will be able to provide the support he needs. He is so sure he won’t need help after his 4 day stay that he will likely schedule the surgery whenever he darn well pleases.
I serve on the Idaho Farm Bureau sheep and goat committee and during our meeting I got an update on newly implemented regulations dealing with restrictions on how we can use antibiotics and other medicines to treat our sick or injured animals. We use very little of these medicines ourselves, but I was really surprised by the level of record keeping, and conferring with our vet, we will have to keep/do to comply. We will no longer be able to assess our animals health and treat the animal without confirming our assessment with our vet. I wonder how happy he will be when I call him at 3 am during lambing when I believe that I have a sick animal that needs treatment now…not after he gets to work. Certain illnesses are very fast moving and must be treated as soon as identified. There is a certain amount of stockmanship/animal husbandry that a person develops over multiple years of being around their animals and now we can no longer just act on our knowledge/experience. We have long called to confer with our vet when we were unsure what treatment would work best, but now we will have to have that conversation most every time. I guess the USDA doesn’t think we can be trusted to treat our animals intelligently anymore.
Apparently, one of the rams we got this summer took advantage of getting lose in August as we had a set of lambs born in January. The ewe was unable to save both lambs, it was around 10 degrees that night and we were not expecting anything to happen, but the little survivor is doing pretty well. We brought the rest of the flock in to try to assess if other ewes were developing udders (sign of upcoming delivery) but thankfully there were only one or two other ewes who might be getting close to lambing. The rest should lamb in late April..when the weather should be much more cooperative. We’ll keep a closer eye on the handful of potential early lambers and hopefully we’ll be able to save all the lambs that the naughty fellow sired.
I’m trying to not fret too much about the lack of snow this winter but it is very worrisome. We got some rain a while back and that is actually not at all helpful. When it rains on frozen ground a lot of that moisture makes its way into the waterways and heads downstream. That moisture in the creek will do us very little good this coming spring and summer. John’s Dad says that 1960 was a winter like this, and that there were heavy rains in the spring that kept him from planting his crop until mid-June. Hopefully we will get adequate moisture in the form of snow, or as rain after the ground has defrosted and can absorb the moisture. We decided to not sell anymore hay, just in case we are unable to produce much of a crop next year. It is sure hard to profitably produce grass-fed beef and lamb when mother nature doesn’t send us the moisture we need to grow our summer grass, and hay for the winter.
We thank all of you that have supported us over the last 7 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, Tommy & Becca Lau
Lau Family Farm, LLC
Grass-Fed Beef & Lamb...A Natural Choice
PO Box 337
Soda Springs, Idaho 83276
A crochet rug (in the works) made with some our new rug yarn.
Some of the wool yarn from our naturally colored ladies. See more on Ravelry or at Meadow Made Fibers on Facebook.