Meat, Produce, Eggs and Crafts

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

The 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 conventional grain that we feed.

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

Grass-fed Lamb
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.