Sunflower Savannah: Weird and Wonderful Winter

Market List

Winter Salad Mix featuring, Mache', Red Mustard, Kale, Chickweed, Pak Choi leaves & flowers, spinach, lettuce, beet and Pea Shoots.

Free Range Duck and Chicken eggs

Lamb in a limited amount

Celery Stalks

It has been an usual Winter. Unseasonably warm, only doing one market but still lots going on here at Sunflower Savannah.

For instance, this is Huey our new dog with Cortney's sisters (and our future employees at the Market). We totally love Jubilee but in finding her, it was brought to our attention how difficult it is becoming to find Livestock Guardian dogs which have not been ruined by being played with to the point that they don't want to be with the animals. Also Jubilee is only a year old and still very playful. The sheep do not appreciate this and so she was pretty lonely. She would try and try to get them to romp with

her, but they just weren't having it. She is great with all the animals, sheep are one thing but finding a young dog that is good with ducks, chickens and geese is a whole other ball of wax. from the time that she got here at 6 months old, she never once looked at the fowl. That being said, she was moping around here wanting someone to pal with. So we were inspired to get a male companion for her to both keep her company and hopefully bring us some pups that she can teach to do the same things she does so well.

So Shelley from Whetstone Farm and I did some talking and then we did some trading. That's how Huey came to live with us and keep Jubilee company. He is a big lover, hopefully on all fronts. Good with the sheep, protective at night and letting everybody do their thing...including happy Jubilee.

Now, the newest news is our newest Slow Food grant. This year Slow Food St. Louis picked out a handful of farmers that had been successful in their previous grant projects and asked them how they could make one of their projects more efficient. After much deliberation, we thought that maybe getting our St. Croix Ark of Taste lamb to you more quickly would be the a vast improvement. As you know, our sheep are almost entirely on grass and hay and after a dry fall as we had this year and 2 years ago, there is very little forage for a decent size flock. The project this year involves planting food plots that both improve our soil as well as providing more nutrients for hungry sheep. Our food plots will consist of Rye, barley, oats, Crimson clover, field peas, sunflowers, turnips and vetch. we plan on rotating the flock between pastures that will be fed by the clover, peas and vetch which will in turn help to grow the Rye, barley and turnips. In order to make this happen Slow Food St. Louis has provided us with a 10 row crop seeding drill. We're very excited about this. We'll keep you posted on how this goes.

And speaking of lambs, we have a lot on the ground already. Here is a picture of some of our St. Croix lambs including our first set of St. Croix twins.