Chicken of the Month: The LesOeufs Sisters
The LesOeufs Sisters
Lillian and Lucy LesOeufs might be connected by the tail-feathers. They are well practiced in synchronized eating, synchronized egg-laying, and synchronized clucking. They even manage a little synchronized roosting (very difficult on a crowded roost). They can both be counted on to lay a dark brown egg nearly every day, except of course when they decide to take the day off.
Farm News
Because we're committed to energy conservation and sustainable living, Pete and Gerry's is pleased to announce that we're changing to a new plastic carton design that's even more environmentally-friendly than our current plastic carton. We're switching to a new single-fold design made from recycled PETE plastic. The new carton uses 20% less plastic than our current tri-fold package.
The savings over pulp and polystyrene cartons are impressive:
- 15% smaller carbon footprint than pulp cartons
- 28% lower life-cycle energy use than polystyrene cartons
- 100% recyclable with no water required
But the most important reason is that the recycled PETE plastic is fully recyclable again and again. The recycled plastic is collected, washed, melted and reformed into more egg cartons.
There are no harsh chemicals. The process has no waste and no toxicity. Any excess plastic from the process is simply recycled again. Recycling PETE plastic also consumes less energy and uses no water or chemicals.
We urge you to recycle our cartons. They can be recycled with your soda and water bottles. If you're not able to recycle them in your community, please accumulate the cartons and mail them back to us for recycling. We'll reimburse you for the shipping costs. Thanks so much for doing your part to help our environment.
Pete and Gerry's donated all of the proceeds from our Big Organic Breakfast Bar to the Strolling of the Heifers Microloan Fund. The fund addresses the difficulty some New England farmers have in obtaining credit for projects to improve their operations and income as well as for emergency needs.Loans are currently limited to small- and mid-sized farms located in Vermont or Massachusetts with a primary focus on using sustainable or organic methods and marketing to local markets. Eligibility is limited to farms with 250 or fewer acres in active production and annual gross revenue of $250,000 or less.
Jesse presented Orly Munzing, founder of Strolling of the Heifers, with a check for $1245.00 when she visited the farm.
We had an interesting visitor at the farm in early June. John Suscovich is a 25 year-old lighting technician from New York City who plans to ride his bicycle around the world visiting organic farms, interviewing farmers and observing food production methods. John is documenting the whole trip on his blog, Organic Farming Tech.
John and his cameraman, Scott, arrived by car at the farm on Friday afternoon. (John isn't starting his global bike trip until next spring.) After Jesse showed them around the farm, they went right to work shooting photos and video. John and Scott stayed at Jesse and Sandra's house right up the road from the farm.
They started early on Saturday morning shooting more photos and video of our hens in the barns and winter gardens as well as out in the pasture areas. John was particularly impressed with the efficiency of our automated processing plant. He interviewed Jesse on Saturday afternoon.On Saturday evening, Jesse and Sandra took John and Scott to the monthly community supper in Monroe, where they had broiled chicken with potato salad and homemade pie for desert. On Sunday morning, they were on their way back to New York.
John is a terrific guy who's very serious about promoting good food and sustainable agriculture. Pete and Gerry's is proud to be sponsoring his trips this year.
If you'd like to help sponsor John's trip, visit the donations page of his website. He's funding the most of the trip out of his own pocket and needs all the help he can get.
We refrigerate our eggs at the farm immediately after they're collected, washed, sorted and packaged. We want to make sure they're as fresh and delicious as possible when they reach your local market.
Keeping our refrigerated storage building at a constant temperature year round takes a lot of energy. So we recently installed new Freeaire™ cooling equipment that cuts our energy cost and carbon emissions by more than 90% for a large part of the year.
The new system's electronic controller automatically calculates the most efficient way to maintain the exact temperature we want. It determines when refrigeration system components run and when they don't, Energy-efficient circulation fans provide the proper airflow to keep a constant temperature throughout the building.
Winter up here in the White Mountains is when the system really pays off. It shuts down the refrigeration system for most of the winter and uses fresh, cold outside air to cool the building. By doing this, it uses less than 10% of the energy required to run the refrigeration system for up to150 days per year.
More than just energy savings
In addition to keeping the price of our eggs down, the Freeaire system dramatically reduces our carbon footprint. Air pollution from electric utilities burning fossil fuels are contributing to global warming. Anything we can do to reduce our use of electric power prevents additional CO2 from being emitted to the atmosphere.
Our new green cooling system is working great. We want to thank everyone at Freeaire over in Waitsfield VT for doing a great job.
Jesse wins NH Farm Bureau Young Farmer Achievement AwardPete and Gerrys owner/manager, Jesse Laflamme received the 2009 Young Farmer Achievement Award from the New Hampshire Farm Bureau at their annual meeting in November. The award recognizes young farmers for their pursuits in production agriculture and leadership achievement.
Jesse was awarded the use of a Kubota tractor and a New Hampshire Farm Bureau Achievement Award farm sign. He also won $500 plus an expense-paid trip to represent the state at the national American Farm Bureau Federation Convention in Seattle in January.
The New Hampshire Farm Bureau is a non-profit federation consisting of approximately 3,600 farms, rural families and their supporters. For more information on the New Hampshire Farm Bureau, visit www.nhfarmbureau.org.
Foreign agricultural officials arrived by bus to tour the farm and enjoy a home-cooked lunch
Agricultural officials from 23 countries around the world recently visited Pete and Gerry's as part of a tour of New England food and agricultural businesses.
The officials visited businesses in New Hampshire and Vermont as part of an annual USDA Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS) tour. In addition to visiting Pete and Gerry's, the group visited an organic bakery, an organic dairy farm, a student-operated dairy, an organic food co-op, a maple syrup operation, a winery, an apple cider mill, an organic seed business, an organic vegetable farm, a cheese production plant, the University of New Hampshire and Stonyfield Farm Organic Yogurt.
Gerry and Jesse led tours of our packing plant.
The delegation included senior trade and agricultural officials from Mexico, Canada, Europe, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, Australia and Japan. Trade and agriculture officials from both Vermont and New Hampshire will accompany them. Hosted by the USDA, the tour was lead by USDA Deputy Secretary of Agriculture, Kathleen Merrigan. Along with a tour of the farm led by Gerry and Jesse, participants enjoyed a delicious lunch prepared by a Monroe women's group.
Three generations were on hand to greet the visitors.
Jesse Laflamme, owner and manager of Pete and Gerry's was pleased to have the visitors. "We're committed to conservation, organic foods, humane treatment and small-scale farming. We're happy to share our experience and methods with other farmers. We all share a shrinking planet."
New chicks arrive
The arrival of new chicks is always a big event here on the farm. We recently received 20,000 day-old baby chicks from a hatchery near Ithaca, New York.
The tiny yellow chicks are born explorers. They love to find every nook and cranny in the barn. As soon as they're placed on the clean shavings, they immediately run around looking for the feeders and watering lines. Their comical behavior brings a smile to even the most experienced farm employee.
The barn is kept at a cozy 90°F to replicate the first few weeks under mother hen. Within a few days, they're strong enough to jump to roosts twice their height.
See more photos of these curious little balls of energy.
Peep, peep, peep
The chicks are fascinating to watch as they explore their new home. We caught some of them in action.
Br-r-r-r-r-r
We just added 10,000 square-feet of refrigerated storage onto our packing plant to cool the eggs coming in from our family farmers. We want to be sure our eggs are as fresh as possible when you pick them up at the store.
New aviary makes happy hens
We're eggs-cited about finishing our brand new 72' x 300' aviary. Multi-platform poultry aviaries have been used in Europe for more than fifteen years. Ours has four levels on which hens can freely move about. The floor level has feed and scratching areas, the second level has nests and water, and the top two levels have enough perches for all the hens to stand or roost.
This new barn is very active. The birds jump from level to level, but they're very relaxed. And happy hens are more productive.
The aviary was specially designed and built for us by Jansen Poultry Equipment, a Dutch manufacturer of innovative poultry raising systems. It's brand new to U.S. poultry farming.
Our new aviary provides our hens with a humane and more natural environment. If it works as well as we hope, we'll convert all our barns to the aviary system.
