Fair Winds Farm is raises free range chickens, sheep, goats and turkeys. You can get our own farm-fresh poultry, lamb, chevon and eggs in our Farm Store, as well as free-range pork and other items as they are available from other farms.

Our Farm Store is open every day during daylight hours.

"Free-running" Eggs, Chicken and Turkeys
There is nothing happier than a happy chicken. And happy chickens make yummy, healthy eggs and meat. We work hard to keep our chickens happy: Our 300 laying hens range free in our chicken house (no cages) in flocks of 100. We feed them organic grain and extra garden produce, including weeds, a few tomato hornworms, and extra Japanese beetles. In the summer, the oldest flock is retired to the 'eggmobile' which is moved around the field. The chickens scratch up the horse manure piles and add lots of their own fertilizer, strengthening the soil and improving the pasture. When the hens are too old to lay eggs they are retired to the freezer as stew birds. Their flavor is fantastic but they must be cooked for 5-6 hours. Put them on the back of the wood stove or in a crock pot for wonderful chicken stew, creamed chicken, chicken pie...

Our broilers have an open-air hoop that is moved 2x/day to new grass. Broilers are bred to eat and grow and not much else, though we are pleased to have discovered *Mt Healthy Hatchery*, whose chicks are the healthiest and most vigorous that we have ever raised. They keep busy scratching the ground and grazing fresh grass and bugs in addition to the organic grain that we feed.

Turkey! Turkey! Turkey! Wow do we love turkeys! A new addition to the farm, we have all been pleasantly surprised at how much we enjoy them. 2007 Notes:In the morning they get so excited about seeing us that they fly over their fence and come running to greet us. They forage around the farm during the day, singing and calling as they go. In the evening they follow us back to their pen to let them in, and they roost up high for the night. The first couple of weeks were tricky: "they just don't seem to want to live" says one friend, but from about 3 weeks on, they have been healthy, vigorous and personable. They have good instincts and are very reasonable birds. They make us laugh and are a constant reminder of how good life really is. They are Midget White Turkeys, maturing at 12-18 lbs, so we will be cooking two for Thanksgiving. We look forward to developing a small breeding flock and having some for sale in 2008. 2009 Notes: In 2008 we had two hens who sucessfully raised 20 poults in two hatchings between the two of them. They "co-mother", working together to set and raise the poults. WOW is that the way to raise turkeys! We didn't do anything for them except daily feeding, watering and moving, and had losses of 0% (after removing an overly excited Tom who stomped on a couple right after hatching - oops). This year we again have 2 hens and hope to have a few Thanksgiving birds available. While the literature assures us that these turkeys mature at 12 - 18 lbs, they don't mention that Thanksgiving comes along before they are mature. In 2008 we harvested turkeys in the 6 - 14 lb range. However they fed more people than a grocery store bird of similar weight, because they didn't have a lot of water weight and had less fat. The flavor was out of this world. Absolutely delicious!

Eggs, chicken (broilers & stew birds) and turkey (seasonal) are available in our Farm Store. The store is open daily during daylight hours.

Grass-fed Lamb & Chevon
Our small flock of 10 Katahdin hair sheep shed their winter coats, eliminating the need for a shearer. We also don't have to dock the lambs tails. Because they don't produce lanolin in their fleece as wool sheep do, they also have a milder flavored meat, as there is a corelation between lanolin production and the flavor of the fat. We are selecting our flock to be great mothers: lambing without assistance, producing a high percentage of twin lambs and raising their own babies. We are also looking for parasite resistance and the production of tender, mild flavored meat on their all-grass diet. Katahdins are known for many of these qualities, leading us to move to 100% Katahdin blood in our flock.

The sheep are excellent grazers and browsers, thriving on the grass that horses avoid. We often pair the sheep with a group of horses, letting the horses graze where the sheep were the night before. This creates much better utilization of the grass and meets the nutritional needs of all of the animals. We have seen an increase in forage yield in pastures when sheep and horses are both grazed, as opposed to being grazed by either species exclusively.

Lamb is available in the late fall and winter in our Farm Store. We also sell whole 'freezer lambs' so you can specify chop thickness, roasts vs. chops, etc. One lamb is about 30-35 lbs of meat, or 2 milk crates full. We occasionally have older sheep to cull in the spring, so we often have ground and/or chunked meat available in the summer for BBQ season. The store is open daylight hours all year.

Goats: Our two milking does, Jade and Theona produce rich, creamy, mild milk. We make cheese and yogurt for our own consumption and are excited to offer farm fresh milk for sale in the farm store. Our does are bred to a meat goat, so we will have chevon in the fall.

Please stop by and visit us!
511 Upper Dummerston Road
Brattleboro, Vermont 05301
802-254-9067
E-mail: fairwind@sover.net