Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

Everyone at the Hiday Family Farm would like to wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Dan

Yogurt Demo

I wanted to let people in the Ann Arbor area know that Holly and I will be at the Busch's in Dexter this Saturday (Nov. 12th) to sample out our yogurt. We would love to meet and thank all of our new customers. This will also be a great time for any of you that would like to ask questions you may have about our farm and farming practices. We are scheduled from around 11 am to 3 pm.. Swing by and say hello if you get a chance.

The other thing I want to let you know is that Station 66 in Battle Creek now has some of our cheese in stock for sale.  Sprout Farm Stand in Battle Creek also has our cheese.

Hope all is well with you and yours.

Dan

Cheese

Hello Hiday Farm followers. I wanted to let you know that we now have two flavors of cheese that is made from our milk. The two flavors are Colby and Pepper Jack. This is a raw milk cheese and is aged for 60 days. Currently Green Gardens Community Farm has it for sale at their farm on on H Drive North. The farm store is open on Wed. and Sun.. Check their website for hours. They also take it with them on Saturday to the downtown Kalamazoo farmers market. As we add more places to get our cheese we will post it on the blog and on facebook.

Dan

Busch's

Wanted to let our friends on the East side of the state know that I delivered a limited number of quarts of Hiday Family Farm Yogurt to four of  Busch's stores. We are part of their Local program and appreciate that a store of Busch's quality has a desire to carry our product. I delivered to both Ann Arbor stores along with the stores in Plymouth and Dexter. Thanks to everyone at Busch's that helped us today. Stop in and give us try.

Thanks

Dan

Hiday Family Farm Yogurt

This has been one crazy and fast paced year so far. Let me bring you up to date on things on the farm.
In the last post we were trying to get a bunch of cow milk shares sold. That did not go as well as we had hoped, but we continued to push on with the dairy project. In June we started milking cows in the renovated milk-house. Our creamery is not done at this time so we have farmed out some of our milk to friends with creameries and they are making product for us until we can get up and running on our own. On Monday we had our first batch of yogurt run and I realize I am prejudice towards our product, but it came out great. It is a plain Mediterranean yogurt with No additives. If you would like to give it a try it can be purchased at the following places.

Green Gardens Community Farm, located on H drive north, between Battle Creek and Marshall. They have a farm store open on Wed. and Sundays.

Station 66, located on M-66 just south of Battle Creek.

I will post more locations as more places come on board.

Thanks

Dan

Need Your Help

Hello,
This message is intended for everyone in the Marshall, Battle Creek, Kalamazoo, and Coldwater area.
As I mentioned in earlier posts, we are starting a small dairy on the farm. We are also starting a creamery so we can pasteurize and bottle our own milk. Our intent is to sell the milk directly to you the consumer. We are offering shares for $400 and a Share is a gallon of whole cream-line milk for 52 weeks. More information is available on hidayfarm.blogspot.com

We are working with Trent and Ruthie Thompson of Green Gardens Community Farm located at 14201 H  Drive North, Battle Creek Mi. to be a distribution point. They have agreed to distribute milk on Wednesday and Sunday during their market hours. You will also be able to pick up from us at the Hiday Farm Creamery. We are working on a drop off/pick-up in the Kalamazoo area.

You can sign up by contacting me at 517-765-2268 or email me at hoopshiday@aol.com   you can also sign up through the Green Gardens web site. greengardensfarm.com 

We need to get the word out to everyone we can, so please pass this along to anyone you think may have interest.

Hope all is well with you and yours.

Dan Hiday

Happy New Year

Happy New Year to all of our friends and followers. Hope you had a Merry Christmas, we did here at the Hiday Farm. As usual 2015 was very busy, the year flew by and with the addition of a dairy in 2016 things will get even busier.

Speaking of the dairy, I want to answer a couple of questions being asked. Is it going to be organic?
The Hiday Farm is Certified Organic through a certified organization called Ecocert. Our hay fields and pastures are certified organic and this alone costs me over $1000 a year and requires lots of paperwork. In order to certify farm animals they have to have been born on your organic farm and also costs another fee. To begin with we will have to purchase cows and heifers to start our herd, so until we have dairy stock born on our farm we will not have organic cows. However keep in mind these cows will be eating certified organic pasture and forage crops. So the milk may not be able to be certified on paper, but in reality it is organic.

Another question has to do with the type of milk we plan on providing. This is going to be what we call "Udder Direct Milk".  In other words this milk is going to come from the cow, go to the pasteurizer, be minimally processed, bottled and then to you. This will be a whole milk and the fat content will vary from season to season. As a cow moves through a lactation her milk will change some. It changes as her food supply moves from spring grass to fall grass and then to winter forages. As your milk sits in your frig over night the cream will rise to the top of the bottle. Our intentions are to use plastic jugs and not glass bottles.

Please feel free to give me a call at 517-765-2268 with any questions you may have.

Thanks and hope all is well with you and yours.

Dan