Blog Archives

Summer Market Announcement

4/27/2015

It's nealy market season and after the disappointment of losing our regular vending location (downtown Davison) I finally made a few decisions.

Genesee Family Fun Festival: Memorial Day (Monday, May 25th). At the end of Green Arbor in Genesee, MI inthe Lions Club Pavillion and grounds. Starts at 11, following the parade in town. Runs until 4 pm. It's the 7th year for the festival and I'm been a vendor every year. It's always a fun (and hot) day for the family. Games, vendors, car show, music, cookie eating contest, petting zoo and more.

Otisville Farmers Market: Wednesdays from 10am to 3 pm (I think). Start date TBA. It's a small town and a small market with good people.

Montrose Farmers Market: Thursdays from 4 pm to 8 pm, weekly, from June 4th to end of August.
Montrose Township Barber’s Park, 11410 Seymour Rd., Montrose, MI 48457

From the sound of it, I'll be the only soapmaker at all of these events. Hope you can come out and see me and do some shopping and support local markets, farmers, and crafters. And, as always, you can place an order on the website.

Thank you thank you thank you for for supporting Hilltop Soaps and the Barnett family.

~Jill

0 Comments

Raising Meat Chickens - Freezer Chickens available.

4/21/2015

1 Comment

Greetings!

The Barnett’s are branching out and doing some new things that may interest you.

Our family will be raising meat chickens for sale this summer. We’ve kept a flock of laying hens since the spring of 2009. Last summer (2014) we raised meat and butchered chickens for our own use. (and they’ve been delicious!)

The standard American ‘meat chicken’ is the Cornish Cross. And, while tasty, they have a lot of health problems since they are bred to reach butchering size quickly. (about 8 weeks) They have a tendency to remain stationary and camp out at the feed bowls. If the feed is not taken away, they’ll eat themselves to death. Since they are bred for an abnormal abundance of breast meat, the Cornish X’s also are prone to leg problems, sometimes resulting in broken legs or weak muscles unable to hold them up. Instead, we will be raising Freedom Rangers. They are a 4 way cross of American and European heritage breeds. They are much more like ‘normal’ farm chickens. (and will even lay eggs if you let them reach maturity) They range and forage well, are very docile and gentle natured, but take longer to reach butchering size. (they dress

out at approximately 5-6 lbs, hens being smaller than roos, and are comparable to cornish x’s in size)

Our goal is to put the Rangers on pasture by 3 weeks (once they have their feathers in and temps are a bit warmer). We will over them what grass and sprouts we can while in the brooder. Hopefully we’ll be able to move their chicken tractor 1-2 times a day to give them fresh grass and bugs to avoid supplemental commercial feed. (I have read about good results with sprouted grains. We’ll give that a try.)

As a result, the meat will cost more than what you pay in the store for factory farmed meat and more than what you may typically pay for a farm raised commercially fed cornish x.

Currently, we’re thinking $3.50/lb (we’ve seen prices for similar birds run from $4.00-6.25 per pound). You can estimate that it’ll be near $20 per whole chicken. They’ll come double bagged and frozen.

You can pre-order now with a paypal deposit of $5 per bird. When they’re almost ready, we’ll send you a paypal invoice with the amount remaining.

paypal $ to jillcbarnett (at) gmail dot com

The first batch should be ready mid July.

Our second batch should be ready late August.

FOR SALE! We will have honey available from our bees this fall. Stay tuned for prices and info.

If you are interested in renting a hive for your property to help bee populations, help your garden flourish and get a share of the honey - please contact Bruce.

1 Comment

Author

Hello, there! I'm Jill. Just Jill. Plain and simple. I'm a follower of Jesus, a wife, mother, daughter, sister, friend, home school teacher, business owner. We have numerous food allergies in our house so I often experiment in the kitchen. I also enjoy getting my hands dirty in the garden. Herbalist, plant lover, medicine maker, student of nature.

Summer Market Announcement

Raising Meat Chickens - Freezer Chickens available.

Author

Archives

Categories