saying farewell…

val/ July 5, 2018

Well, we’re doing it… selling the farm. We have about a week left here, and we’re busy packing up our belongings. This is the longest Rich and I have lived somewhere. In the past, as college students and post college, we moved about every 2 years. We lived at our first farm in Cornelius, OR for about 3 years. That

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If you lived here, you’d be home now!

val/ March 6, 2018

So we did it. We put the farm up for sale. We are sad about leaving this beautiful place, but we’ve mostly made peace with the idea, and we are looking forward what the future holds. We’d love to sell soon so that we can move on to the next stage of our lives (hopefully in Carlton, OR!). Our farm is

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Saying Goodbye…

val/ January 22, 2018

Mossback Farm News January 2018 It’s with a heavy heart that we are sharing our news with you, our customers, friends, and family who have supported our farm since 1999. We have come to the decision to sell our beautiful farm and move to a nearby town. Some of you may know that Rich was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis (M.S.)

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Website update – in progress!

val/ May 4, 2016

At long last, we’re updating our website.  It’s a work in progress, and we’re hoping to have most of the edits done this week, so check back in a few days! In the meantime, we should say that we do have one shared quarter (1/8) left to reserve of our Premium Summer beef.  It’s $4.95/lb plus butcher charges.  Contact us

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Farm updates – Music, New shop, Lupine, Drones, and oh yeah, Cattle

rich/ June 2, 2014

  Well, we certainly don’t seem to be updating the blog very often.  Not to say we haven’t been busy, just a lot of it doesn’t make it here.  I’m thinking it’s time to start posting more often…so readers, make sure you remind us!  Music The item that is in the forefront of our minds these days is Val’s Kickstarter

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Hanging weight and final weight… some information

val/ June 13, 2013

A customer recently emailed me after picking up her order… she was curious as to why the “take-home” weight was different from the “hanging” weight. When it comes to beef weights, there are 3 different ones of which customers should be aware.  The first is “live” weight. This is what the animal weighed on the hoof, or when it was

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Beef shares – availability update

val/ June 13, 2013

We are currently sold out for our Premium Summer beef shares.  We actually sold out in record time this year… which was great for us, but not as great for customers who missed the ordering window. The good news is that we are currently taking orders for Neighborly beef shares, available ~October to December.  Please contact us for information about

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2013 Newsletter, and Summer beef

rich/ February 15, 2013

Hello! We’re proud to say that we got our 2013 Farm Newsletter out much faster than last year (as in, at all 🙂 ). Click on the link to see what we’re up to on the farm. Orders for our Premium Summer beef for June have been trickling in, so we also put together a new flier with the current

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“Neighborly” beef shares available October-November!

val/ October 3, 2012

“Neighborly” shares are from heifers raised on grass and hay by our next door neighbors, and available in fall. We have quarter (or half) shares available October – November. $3.25/lb (hanging weights have been ~145-180 in past years), plus butchering charges which usually average about $120 per quarter. Final cost will be about $600-700 for a quarter. Email us now

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Taking reservations for Premium Summer beef shares

val/ April 25, 2012

Alright, orders have been rolling in, and it turns out that we have just a few quarter shares still available. The price is $3.75/lb (hanging weight), plus butcher charges (which will probably come out to ~$110-130/quarter). We’re estimating these quarters to be between 165-215 lbs (hanging weight). (You can request a smaller or larger quarter.) 4/29/12: edit/clarification: At $3.75/lb, a

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What Makes Mossback Farm Beef Special, Part 3

val/ January 12, 2012

Continuing our discussion about how our beef and our farm practices differ from some of the other farms out there. In this 3rd and final installment, we’ll talk about the seasonal nature of our beef harvest, and about following the rules relating to butchering. 4) Seasonal harvest I’ve seen some farms offering beef nearly year round. I can appreciate being

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What Makes Mossback Farm Beef Special? Part 2

val/ January 8, 2012

We wanted to expound a bit about how our beef and our farm practices differ from some of the other farms out there. In this 2nd installment, we’ll talk about the benefits of grass/hay-only beef, and also about the scale of our operation. 2) grass fed and grass finished No grain, repeat, no grain! Not a handful right before butchering,

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What Makes Mossback Farm Beef Special?

val/ January 8, 2012

or, Why Our Beef Rocks (Part One) ________________________________________ A customer recently asked us a very good question. She pointed out that she had found information about a farm selling “grass-fed” beef for a significantly lower price than us, and inquired about why there was such a difference in price. Her questions prompted me to do a couple of things. One

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Spring Newsletter

val/ March 27, 2011

I had hoped to get this out a month ago, but life and other stuff got in the way. So here it is: our Winter/Spring Newsletter. It includes info about ordering for this year (we’re sold out for Summer, but are taking reservations for fall “Neighborly” beef shares).

Limited quarter shares available soon!!

val/ September 23, 2010

Well, we were sold out, but our neighbor informed us earlier this week that he has one additional heifer available! We have 1 or 2 quarter shares left at $3.25/lb plus butcher charges (around $100 per quarter). We estimate the heifer to have a hanging weight of around 150-180 lbs. The butcher date will either be in early October, if

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Sold out for this year!

val/ July 26, 2010

Thanks to all the customers who placed orders this year! Our Premium summer beef is sold and tucked away in freezers around the Portland area. And we have maxed out on orders for Neighborly Autumn heifers. We may be able to fill up to 4 quarter orders for fall/winter ground beef shares, but won’t know for a few weeks. If

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Processing

rich/ April 20, 2010

The NY Times has an article on the lack of processing facilities that is impacting small farms. We’re lucky here to have a few options for mobile (“Custom”) harvest facilities, but we still fret about the threat of our primary one (Frontier Custom Cutting) deciding to quit. Still, at least we’re not obligated to drive our cattle for miles to

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Cattle drama

rich/ August 12, 2009

The lack of posts recently can be somewhat attributed to the vagaries and long lists of summer, and somewhat attributed to a bit of farm excitement that happened early in July. I didn’t want to post until I had a complete story, and the story dragged on somewhat. Now, however, things are back to normal, whatever that is. And here’s

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Cowpooling

rich/ June 13, 2009

Wow, it’s been a long time since we posted. Spring will do that. Fortunately, Time magazine comes through with something, so we don’t have to. Their new issue has an article on buying beef by the quarter, conveniently, the same way we sell it. A surprisingly well done piece.

Mossback Farmer at InFARMation talk Tues. May 12th

val/ May 7, 2009

I was invited to speak at the InFARMation (and Beer!) gathering next Tuesday evening. Friends of Family Farmers has been hosting these events since the start of the year. I’ll be talking about our nearly 10 years of experience raising animals, options for consumers who choose to opt out of purchasing factory-farmed meat, and challenges facing meat producers in our

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2009 Farm newsletter

rich/ March 10, 2009

Here’s a link to our 2009 newsletter, with recipes, musings, and our plans for the year. Enjoy! (note that we’ve heard of some problems opening the PDF with old versions of Adobe Reader. If you have problems, update your software for free here)

Recent

rich/ February 24, 2009

The weather has been pretty fascinating these days…last week, we got our annual February banana belt, with sun and highs around 60.  This week, it’s still warm-ish, but there’s a lot of rain showers to be dodged. Some farm views these days…click for bigger fence in progress 3 year old planting is looking like a forest Our trees are looking

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Grassfed beef study followup

rich/ February 17, 2009

Following up on my post a month or so ago on Oregon State’s flawed farm to school study, the Oregonian today has an article that basically reiterates all of my points.  Nice to see that that the media can come through for us on these things.

Flawed grassfed beef study

rich/ January 23, 2009

Recently a study was done by Oregon State University to evaluate the appeal and cost effectiveness of bringing grassfed beef into the local school system. This is a great step, and I was excited to see that the effort was being made. Unfortunately, once I dug into the details of the study, I was disappointed to see that they didn’t

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