Homestead 802 - Recent Article about Stark Hollow Farm

Check out the article about our farm in the Spring 2013 Edible Green Mountains magazine about our holistic farming approach and our healthy and delicious product offerings. Copies available locally here in Vermont.

Homestead 802 Stark Hollow Farm


Spring 2013 Issue

Tamworth Piglets For Sale

Our Tamworth breeding sows are a few weeks away from farrowing. We will have pure bred registered breed stock as wells as feeder piglets and roasters for sale. If you are interested in piglets, let us know so we can add you to our list.  We always had a hard time finding Tamworth piglets, having to reserve months in advance...which is why we decided to try breeding them ourselves! Piglets this year should be ready to go by late June/early July. Visit our farm website to see details on currently available gilts and feeder piglets: www.starkhollowfarm.com.

Vanessa with Tamworth Sows
The Tamworth is a heritage breed, considered quite distant genetically from commercial swine. With their extra long snouts, they are very frugal when raised on pasture and in forests, and produce exceptionally delicious meat. The Tamworth is known as "the bacon pig" for its ability to achieve high body mass without too much fat. They do very well here in Vermont. We have used our pigs to amend difficult patches of weeds from the pastures, such as ferns and dogbane.

Compost: Vermont Black Gold!

Vermont Black Gold!! Stark Hollow Farm compost consists of sheep poop and other organic matter from our winter paddocks. It is composted for two years and therefore is a beautiful, nutrient rich compost without a manure like smell. Easy to transport, spread, and work with. $3.00 for approximately 2 cubic feet bagged. Contact the farm if interested 434-3953, farmer@starkhollowfarm.com.

Vermont Black Gold


Approximately 2 cubic feet bagged

Bulk Purchase

Chickin' Pickin' In Here Game

Lambing is over and after an over 30-days hiatus of sleeping in 2-hrs blocks, or less, I finally get to sleep and take a little "vacation" -- well a farm vacation, which means I still get to do chores and a couple other things here and there for a few days. Today in my drive to chill and relax, while doing the chicken chores, I thought up of a new game. So here it is for all to enjoy:

If you have 2 or more chickens, which I would assume you do since I would never approve of having just 1 chicken, or just 1 sheep, or... well you get the point. So assuming so, and if you have children or want to enjoy some children like playing, which I highly recommend in today’s day and age of great responsibilities, then here's the game. 

This is a team game and each team consists of a human and certain a number of birds (a.k.a. chickens). Each team should have equal, or close to equal, number of chickens. However, in cases where certain birds are more like hogs than chickens, you might want to make the team equal on an ability level rather then a number level -- this is up to you of course. When the number of chickens is higher, an easy way to divide up the birds is by colors, breeds, etc. -- use your imagination... children by nature are very good at this, well at least before they get into TV and/or video-games. 

Next you'll need some treats for your chickens. Something like bread -- in small bites of course.... as we don't want to make the poor birds explode (I'm serious on this) -- works great.

The object of the game is to have your team get, I mean ingest, as many treats as possible. No, humans are not allowed to ingest... and no, not as quickly as possible. The other objects of the game are to increase patience -- by waiting for one's turn, to understand the value of time -- by appreciating quality of time with slowness rather than quantity with as fast as you can, and to be honest -- by playing fairly waiting your turn to throw the treat and keeping your own scoring.

Each team's human takes turn throwing a treat with the goal of having one of his/her bird ingest the treat. If the bird from the same team gets the treat, I mean gobbles the treat, then that team has a point. If a chicken from the opposing team gets and ingests the treat, or snatches the treat from another bird -- as sometime (yeah well often) chickens steal from each other -- and actually ingests it, then the point goes to the opposing team.