Trying to contact us regarding our Grass-Fed Lamb?

We have officially (and hopefully temorarily) lost our cell phone.
If you are trying to contact us regarding our lamb or chevre shares, please email until further notice!

littleflowerfarmcsa@gmail.com

Come see us at the TASTE OF SPRING GREEN

Little Flower Farm

Will be at Arcadia Books on Friday May 3rd

from 5-8 pm

for the TASTE OF SPRING GREEN

(and at Panacea on Sat, 4th of May)

we will be offering samples of our grass-fed lamb!

Come pick up a flyer and take home some info about our
Driftless, delicious sustainably raised Lamb!
You may also sign up to reserve your whole or half lamb!

Spring Snapshots

 Bless the Dung Heap!

The greedy ground gobbles manure

we stab, and heave, and pitch till aching

Horses tug to the rat-a-tat-a-tata-tat

of spreader chain kachunking

and steel wheels turning

harness jangles with the sound of Spring.

First the suction of plowshare cleaving

earth and worms go belly up,

Then the churn of disc and crumbler

"Step up Spike! Get on now, Dolly!"

The green sheet of the vegetable bed

peeled back and now waiting...

Bless the Dung Heap!

Embrace Manure!

The roller-coaster ride of the year has begun

We hug tight these here clods and

hang on for dear life

to the earth

and the neighbors

reins, and weeks

as they swing us now closer, ever nearer, more dearer, to new life.

Wisconsin's Small Farms on trial in the Hershberger Case

Ask your average Wisconsin resident, let alone Sauk County resident, about the trial of Vernon Hershberger, and they will inevitably say, with a knowing glance, "Well, it is a dairy state you know."

Vernon Hershberger is on trial for "illegal sale of raw milk" to his shareholders on his Loganville WI farm. On June 2nd of 2010 officials from the Wisconsin State Department of Agriculture raided his family farm, tagged his tanks and dairy products, and dyed all the milk in his holding tank blue. He was told he must cease desist any sales of raw milk. After much prayer and thought
Vernon tore off the tags and continued to supply his herd-share members their dividends of raw milk, a dividend that they are due as members of his farm-share program, having invested both money and work on the farm in their endeavor as shareholders.

What is telling about the response you get, from your average Wisconsinite, about this "raw milk trial" is that no one is surprised that "they're going after the little guy." There is a tacit understanding, that in a state known for its big dairies and commercial cheesemaking, there are more rules and regulations...and those rules and regulations, far from being in place to protect the consumer, are in place to protect big business interests. Anyone else find this troubling?
Hershberger's laywer was able to obtain a trial delay only when she pointed out that Hershberger's 1st ammendment rights are at stake here...and that due to his religious beliefs he could not do anything else but choose not to comply with the order to desist distributing his milk. In my mind this is less a religious liberty issue, and more of a private property issue. The 2,000 lbs of milk that were destroyed in the raid were the private property of the share-holders of Hershberger's farm.
 If Vernon Hershberger is sent to prison to serve out a sentence for the crime of offering and distributing herd-shares, with raw milk being the dividend, then it will be a gross act of injustice not only towards him and his family and his shareholders, but to every small farm in Wisconsin, and to every farming family that is striving for a "small is beautiful" sustainable agriculture. There will be a precedent set that proclaims to all the nation that Wisconsin is a backwards state which criminalizes those striving to involve their supporters in the continuance of a life lived closer to the land, and responsible stewardship of it through community supported agriculture shares. What a blow to a state filled with people of resiliency and determination, to a state dotted all over, especially in this unique and inspiring driftless region, with small farms, farms nestled in hillsides that are specially suited to the  grazing of small dairy herds. If you live in Wisconsin and are reading this you can do one of  two things: you can either shrug, and say "it is a dairy state you know, and we all know what that means!" all the while privately, or not so privately, proclaiming Vernon Hershberger a religious fanatic, a nut, with too many children and not enough sense not to stick his neck out. Or you can decide to do one small act to save the dignity and freedom of this beautiful State of Wisconsin. You can tell somebody about this story.
Tweet it. Facebook about it. Email it. Write an editorial to your local paper. Talk about it in your church hall. Blog it. Chat about it at the barbers, the bank, the feed store. Give this story the light of day, and give it the gravity it demands, cuz folks, it isn't just one man on trial here.CSA shares are on trial here.
A CSA share is simply membership in a farm. Sometimes your share in a farm means seasonal and weekly dividends of veggies. Our own CSA program in Minnesota and Michigan was just that. But there are also cheese shares, and pastured meat shares, honey shares, wool shares...these programs allow a greater intimacy between farmer and consumer....indeed they go well beyond that tried and worn-thin relationship...when you sign up for a CSA share of any kind you can be sure that transparency comes with the bargain.

As a farm-member you can come and visit the field of veggies, or the herd of cattle, or the flock of chickens, or the farmer doing the milking...and you can do your own inspection, and see to it that those animals, that land, this farmer-friend of yours, are all doing what they are supposed to be doing...being nurtured as they are supposed to be nurtured. Talk about Trade and Consumer Protection agency!
You have a right to demand the freedom to participate in such farm-share programs! You have a right, as a Wisconsinite, as a citizen of this nation, to become a vital support to a local farm of your choosing, and to receive from that farm dividends in food and knowledge and farm-products. And that right is at stake with this trial of Vernon Hershberger from the town of Loganville, WI, population 300. Yep, that's right. At the time of the raid on his small farm, Hershberger's town clocked in at 300 according to the 2010 census. If that didn't get your attention I don't know what will. At best it's a rather big waste of tax-payer resource, this going after a guy with such a small farm is such a small town in such a "big dairy state". You'd think that the DATP would have better things to do, bigger fish to fry.
But here's the real story:
The Little Guys are the Big Fish. Should be a slogan on a tee-shirt. Unfortunately most of us don't believe it. Most of us are too busy trying to make ends meet, pay feed bills, plow and disc and cultivate our fields, too busy building our farms, or clocking in at our nine to fives to recognize that a paradigm shift, that a sway of public opinion means money won or lost for the big guys....and a paradigm shift is exactly what you have when it becomes common knowledge that you don't need to farm hundreds of acres to make a living farming. All you really need to make a living farming is a core group of people who are willing to become a part of the adventure of it. A group of people who will sign up to become share-holders of your small goat dairy herd, of your veggie farm. In so doing, you cut out all the middle-men, and food becomes supremely safe, because the whole process of growing it is completely transparent to the consumer, who has been made partial owner in a real sense. If you truly want food safety you need to do whatever small or large thing you can to fight for people like Vernon Hershberger. Your right to support small farms is on trial. Period.
And we can't make a go of it without you. Thank you for your support.

For more info about Vernon Hershberger's Trial go to: www.vernonhershberger.com

For the trailer of the coming documentary "Let Them Eat Grass" in which Hershberger is featured:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDAaxE-cqsy

Vernon's trial is set for the week of May 20th 2013 in Baraboo, Wisconsin.

 Little Flower Farm of Hillpoint, Wisconsin
is now offering 100% pastured lamb from our hilltop farm located in the beautiful driftless region of Southwest Wisconsin. We are a seasonal horse-powered grass-fed farm, making our annual December deliveries to
*Madison,
*Viroqua,
*Spring Green, 
 *Twin Cities of MN.
 Your support of our small farm allows us to continue our pursuit of sustainable and responsible farming in a manner that is both ecologically sound and poetically beautiful.


100% Grass-Fed. Chemical-Free Pastures all day, every day. Sustainable Small-Farming at it's loveable best. Our sheep feed on the hillsides of our pasture farm located in the Amish community of Hillpoint, WI. Much like the first settlers to farm the Driftless region, we were inspired by the rolling and, in some areas, steep terrain which makes this area so beautiful to behold. The Driftless region of Wisconsin is no corn and soybean quilt. The farms, nestled into the crooks and crannies of the valleys between the rises are nurtured in the relentless local land- inspired principle that small is indeed beatiful.
Small Farm. Big Heart.
            2013 Pastured Lamb Prices:
When you pre-order a lamb from Little Flower Farm your check reserves your whole or half. We are selling you your lamb "on the hoof". We will make arrangements to have your lamb processed at the local butcher's. You are responsible for processing fees upon pickup at the Butcher's.
Whole Lamb: $250 
Half Lamb: $130
List of Local Butchers to be posted soon.
Please make your checks out to Shane or Chiara Dowell
 at Little Flower Farm
S6586 Cty Rd. G
Hillpoint, WI 53937

phone: 608 466- 0905
Questions? Or to Schedule a visit:
littleflowerfarmcsa@gmail.com

 

Little Flower Farm is moving one last time!

We regret to announce the cancellation of our 2013 CSA season here in Marine on St. Croix.
To those of you who have been enthusiastic cheerleaders and staunch supporters of our Draft-Powered farming, we thank you, love you, and will miss you. Early Spring,
Little Flower Farm is moving to "Amish Country" Wisconsin, 1 hr west of Madison, to a 40 acre rolling hilled sheep farm. We will be enlarging our pastured lamb offerings, growing veggies for local markets, and continuing our chevre and jersey cheese shares. We will also be offering fleeces for hand-spinning, and selling our hand-spun yarns and farm sourced baked goods.

If you are ever out visiting the Dells, or the Shakespearean Festival at Spring Green, stop in and see us!

Looking for another CSA to join this season in MN? See the Land Stewardship Project's excellent list:
http://landstewardshipproject.org/stewardshipfood/csa

Christmas Wish List

Snow is a game changer. Essentials come sharply into focus, even as it blurries and softens  the landscape, like the long imagined oft waited for first kiss from a  crush, or the nail in the coffin completed hail Mary pass in the last seconds of the 4^th quarter. It tests the design of the pastures and paddocks. The plan of your fencing. It reveals the weak spots and brings to boast the bright spots of the farm. It transforms the trek to the barn into an artic expedition. You wipe your chilled and chiseled jaw with the back of your mittened hand and pretend that you have to draw on all your physical strength to make it to the barn and back…you burst in upon the cow and goats, with a breath of flurries and a small flood of snowdrift and settle yourself on the overturned milk crate for the evening’s milking…you begin to daydream about the blizzards you read about as a girl, in Laura Ingalls’s Wilder’s books and in Sarah Plain and Tall…and you grin as you admit that your knee-high wade through the powder and up the hill did not require tying a rope from the house the barn, as it did in those stories…but was still admirably glorious none the less…Soon you are uncertain as to where your allegiance lies: to the woodstove fire in your living room, with the pot of hot cocoa on the stove, or to the barn, all asnug in snow drifts on the outside and nests of hay on the inside where the animals have nosed little caves in their piles of stemmy alfalfa. With a sizeable river of snow between them it is a sincere toss-up.

The truck you borrowed from the neighbor won’t start. It is stalled down the hill, by the house, stacked 5 ft. tall with hay bales. Even if it could be started, it could not navigate the drifts between it and the barn. Snow reveals a lot of isms in life. One ism being you really don’t need to go anywhere in winter at all. Another being: there’s more in your kitchen cupboards and freezer than you think. Yet another: Automobiles are great as far as plowed roads go. Our royal dumping of 2 feet made us quite instantly grateful for Maj and Marta. It occurred to us that without them a sizeable storm like the one we had Sunday night could easily strand us, just as it has stranded the truck. We hitch up the Fjords and begin a morning of hayrides up and down the driveway, shuttling our bales to and fro for storage in the barn.

The snow is much needed moisture, and has come just after we newly seeded the hay field…it is a welcome gift, even if it does turn a 10 minute chore into a 3 hour one. It is a farmer’s relief, covering over all the unfinished tasks, and giving instead the limitless dream filled possibility of a white canvas, a fresh sheet of paper unfolded before the windowpane, and long evenings to plan the filling of it. The husbandman’s satisfaction, in seeing his earth bride roll over, and pull up her quilt of white over her shoulders after a season’s worth of sowing, and birth, and growing, and death.

But then there is that weighty quiet that comes with a good snowfall. That heavy silence which pushes you back upon yourself and presses with expectation.  It’s the Eliza Doolittle question that a snowed in day brings with it: the “But what is to become of me” question she asks Henry Higgins after his grand experiment has been tried and is over…the whole farm and fields and flocks and herds ask it…”But what is to become of me?”

The waning daylight hours make us sleep at 8 and awake before the sun, greeting the dark dawn with the Eliza Doolittle question and with a tet e tet with the Sun. “There was a time, old fellow, when I cursed your insesent cheerfulness…you were up before me, grinning down upon the work I was to be about, and refusing to go to bed at a decent hour, you kept me at it far into evening…but where are you now? See here, I’m waiting for you to show your tardy face so I may be about my chores, and my hens may be about their laying…but you stay so long abed and when you do show your mug, it is a pale one!”

Eager to show their support for our family, and for our fledging farm here in the St. Croix Valley, a few esteemed souls of the village here have asked us to write a Christmas Wish List for the farm and post it here, on the blog site…

There was a time, recently, in fact, where I would have listed up a veritable laundry list of farm needs and desires, and thrown my full weight (sizeable, these days) into a shameless public plea for said items, well aware that we have friends flung far and wide whose graciousness and support would be likely to compel them to come to our aid…

But oddly enough, the closer we get to Christmas the less inclined I am to meditate on our needs and wants. It is hard to stomach the asking when the country of the Christ child lies is so much turmoil and strife. I am finding the more my mind circles around what we need, the less I prepare to meet the needs of others, including those closest to me…becoming embroiled in that strange paradox, that the more secure you are, the more cut off from hope and faith and love…and the less secure, the more you cling to those fragmentary scraps of the immaterial, yes, but the all-important certainly, those virtues from which other goods grow…

Our struggle here, right now, is the same one that is happening in the Holy Land. It is a fight for ownership of dirt. A desire to encircle a piece of land with one’s own chalk or piece of twine, or a contract, and call it “ours”. Not simply for the wealth that such ownership may provide, but for the freedoms it harbors, and the shelter it offers for the family with small children for whom so much of the world is an Inn with no room.

We are now working out the details of our CSA Farm Shares. In order to preserve our farm’s integrity, our family’s sanity, and our CSA’s sustainability we are preparing to offer our farm shares to a more limited group of people. People who are willing to come out to the farm to pick up their shares, who understand the importance of small, local farms, and who are willing to invest in one because they understand it is an investment in the essential fabric of their community…and not a luxurious indulgence in a fad. Friendship, not consumership, is sought. This has long been the CSA movement’s challenge, to rally towards a modern day grasp of what the small family farms of the early 1900s had: true community. Corn Husking Bees, Threshing parties, Barn dances, and strawberry pie. Letters home, Letters to your sweetheart, and a neighbor’s helping hand.  Now some may accuse me of Pollyannaism. Of being overly Nostalgic before my time. Of being a Luddite. What has gone before is not better for being in the past no more than “progress” is better for plowing into the future…we must judge things based on what they are in the here and now, for their intrinsic natures, and their natural ends…and something in me begs to be excused from the adult world which finds its wisdom in insurance policies, lawyer’s fees, gasoline, and posturing. I think the CSA’s best hope is that at rock bottom people suspect that eating can and ought to be a little bit more simply come by than it is now, with the obligatory trip to the Super Market Middleman store, and that culture can and ought to mean more than skinny jeans, and I phones. What is missing is the good work to fill our days with, to take pride and delight in, and for the sake of which we bow our head in humble nod of thanks to the neighbor with his much needed and timely offer of help…

So perhaps after all I will print our Christmas Wish List…and it reads something like an Irish Limerick:

May we ever and always have good work to do,

Good Land to do it on,
And good Friends to help.
(With Cider both sweet and hard to crown it all…)
Amen.