Lau Family Farm, LLC Grassfed meats available on April 14th and 21st.
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 April 14th. 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).
On Saturday, April 21st, we will be bringing our meat to our Utah customers. Our first stop will be at Crumb Brothers Bakery (300 S, 300 W) in Logan from 9 to 10 am. The second stop will be in the parking lot behind Grounds for Coffee (Corner of 30th and Harrison) in Ogden from 12 to 12:30 pm. Our final stop will be from 2:30 to 4:30 pm in SLC at Caputo’s Market (300 W, 300 S, across from Pioneer Park).
Our next deliveries will likely be on approx May 19th or 26th. This is approximately when we’ll start attending the Idaho Falls Farmers Market and Cache Valley Gardeners Market.
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.
· April Special: Lamb Loin & Rib Chops and 15% off. We have an abundance of chops on hand so are putting them on sale this month. The early spring we are enjoying means more chances to put items on our grills. Loin chops (the t-bone steaks of the lamb) and rib chops (rib steaks of the lamb) are among the most tender parts of a lamb. They are great grilled, broiled or pan fried with just a light coating of your favorite herbs.
· 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). This is a good time to ask for Flank, Tri tip, flat iron etc because they are less popular in the winter and so we have a few on hand right now.
· We are starting to take deposits for quarter half and whole beef which will be delivered in early 2013. We are still taking deposits for whole or half lambs to be delivered in approximately May-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 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 beef 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 have 4 kinds of beef sausage and 4 kinds of lamb sausage being made. We will try to have these available for the 4/14 and 4/21 deliveries.
· 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.
Its been a tough couple of weeks here. My step-mom is now on hospice care. John was kind enough to do last week’s delivery to UT so I could hang out with her and my dad. She seems to have “rallied” since she was told she was out of medical options so we don’t know how long we will have her in our lives. Our schedule may have to change in the coming weeks as we support her and my Dad in these difficult days.
We were also gearing up for John’s dad (83 yrs old) to have a surgery to restore his kidney function-which he postponed today. To top off the chaos, my body is showing the effects of nearly 8 years of moving 60-70 lb coolers every week and it is manifesting the damage in distressing ways (but thankfully not life threatening ways). It seems that a surgery is in my future, with 6 weeks of downtime, but we are not sure if we can delay until after the FM season, or at least until after lambing. We are going to try to give me a week off from markets/deliveries every month and see if that helps me to cope. If I end up having surgery this spring/summer you will see a vast difference in our delivery schedule so please bear with us. We will do our best to keep you informed of our schedule. It maybe that we can do an extra big delivery just before the surgery so that less people are impacted by our not having two people going to market etc. for 6 weeks. We are exploring the possibility of hiring someone to do some of my duties. I also seem to be having more days when I am sick lately so please bear with me. I will try to keep up with emails as best I can.
Spring seems to have arrived in Soda Springs. I don’t know what our precipitation level was this winter, but I know that some of it came as rain on top of frozen ground and ended up going down stream. That water won’t be any use to us, unfortunately. I wouldn’t mind if rained solid until late April (well except on the 10th when we hope to be shearing our sheep). It is time to pull out our temporary fencing supplies and control where the animals are grazing. If we don’t limit their access they will eat each leaf as soon as it grows which is very hard on the plants. Once the ewes are shorn they will stay behind the temporary electric fences much better than they would now while they have 4+ inches of insulation (wool). The early snow melt also means that we’ve already begun hauling water to our grazing ewes. It is a time consuming but necessary chore. When the lambs start arriving we’ll move the ewes in closer so they can drink from our auto-fill troughs.
We should see our first calf no later than about 10 days from now. Cattle can give birth as much as 2-3 weeks earlier than their due date so John is checking the cows a couple of times each day. I suppose solid rain until the end of the month wouldn’t be beneficial to the calves but I’m worried about the pasture and hay growth if we don’t get more moisture.
I expect to see the earliest lambs around April 25th with the majority beginning around May 1. As I said earlier we hope to shear the ewes and remaining meat lambs on the 10th. The ewes must be dry and the shearer must be done with his other jobs and free to come. We can shear after lambing begins but it is less optimal. Unshorn ewes don’t look for sheltered areas to lamb in because they don’t feel the wind etc as much. Unshorn ewes have increased odds of laying on their lambs and suffocating them, our lambing pens are designed for shorn ewes so we try to give them extra elbow room if they are unshorn but it doesn’t prevent all the accidental smotherings. Unshorn ewes become fairly messy after giving birth and many times the lambs have a hard time finding the ewe’s teats for that critical first drink of colostrum. I am hopeful that our little black ram lamb managed to breed some of the ewes and perhaps we will have some pretty naturally colored ewe lambs born this year.
We will soon be harvesting the lambs for this summer’s farmers market supply. If you would like us to have the butcher make anything in addition to the cuts we normally carry please speak up or it will have to wait until Fall. This is pretty much last call for whole or half lamb orders too. If you want any particular beef items cut for the May delivery please let us know by the 21st.
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