Join Us For A Reskilling Weekend At Honey Badger Farms (Oct. 3/4)

Announcements
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Originally published at: Join Us For A Reskilling Weekend At Honey Badger Farms (Oct. 3/4) – Peak Prosperity

A quick announcement from Chris & Evie.

This coming weekend (October 3 and 4), we’re going to be holding two events here at the farm in Chester MA.

First, on Saturday the 3rd, starting at 11:00 a.m. will be a chicken processing workshop. We’ve got 25 birds that are ready for the freezer, and so for anybody who wants to learn the process from start to finish and take a bird home with them, the cost is $35, with a limit of 12 people. We’ve got this down to a science. The weather looks good on Saturday.

What a meat bird looks like:

The funds offset the cost of raising the birds and provide us with much-needed farm revenue that has to reach a yearly minimum in order to file tax returns. You get an experience and the honor of eating a bird that you personally processed from start to finish (or as much of the process as you wish to engage in).

Also, for anybody wishing to simply show up and do some work, we’re renting a firewood processing machine for the weekend, the ‘work’ of which is really driving a tractor with a dump trailer, and maybe some stacking. Kevin or I will be operating the excavator used to load the processor.

This could be you!

Or you can help us pick potatoes and process garlic, or cut apples to load into the freeze dryers.

If time permits and we get through everything else, which is possible, we might even fire up the sawmill for anybody interested. It’s as close to magic as anything else on the farm:

These activities will be running both Saturday beginning at 11:00 and continuing through Sunday until 3:00 pm.

If you come, we’d love to see you; please bring food and drink. We’re going to be in work mode the whole time and not able to work up food for everyone…depending on the number of people and who’s staying over, we’ll probably go out to a local eatery for dinner Saturday night. People are welcome to camp on our property Saturday night, of course.

If you’re interested in coming, to secure your place, please email us at farm@peakprosperity.com.

 

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Not working out for me, but I hope you have a great event! Sounds great:)

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Sounds like a great way to see, feel, hear and smell and even taste resilience.

Immersion is how most people optimize learning.

Have fun everyone.

I will be tackling a mower deck rebuild this week instead. I installed hooks and loops on my tractor bucket last year. They can help me flip that beast of a deck.

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I might be able to come by on Saturday. Wont know till Friday though. Too many moving parts to say a definate yet.

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I’d love to stop by, but I have my own projects planned for Saturday already. It’s an 8hr drive, so stopping by requires a little more planning.

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building a wood shed here. Most of the wood came from my own trees.

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Ditto at our homestead-in-progress. Firewood got dragged out of the woods, cut and split this past week. About 1-1/4 to 1-1/2 cords should do it for the amount of time we’re here.

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I have enough wood for this winter already. With my new wood shed, I plan to keep 2-3 winters of wood on hand. Like having a deep pantry.

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We also are working on wood this weekend. Tis the season! I love the feeling I get when the shed is full of dry wood, same with hay in the barn, it feels like money in the bank.

Wish we could come! Too far. Maybe someday! I love the work party days! We all need to normalize this more.

That being said, open invitation to anyone near South Central Idaho to come and can, harvest, or forage stuff with me. Again, tis the season!

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Chris, Evie and Peak Team-

I am in! I emailed you all. Have been so bummed about not having the in person retreat this year. Been working a lot of OT shifts, but this weekend it would be an honor to come up and assist you all in some tasks around your farm.

As we all know the work never ends…but more hands makes it go faster and a lot more enjoyable in my opinion. Looking forward to working side by side with you all.

Regards,
Emily

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Oh man, I love this!

If I was closer or had more warning I’d offer to host a building workshop or a blacksmithing workshop, or both!

Good luck to you guys and anyone that can make it! Processing chickens is a foundational skill, I did my first bird at 8 years old; you will never regret learning a new skill!

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It sounds like there’s demand among the PP community for skill-building workshops with lots of hands-on time. That may be something for the future.

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If I could offer one piece of advice, get someone to video you doing the actual kill. No matter what new skill it is, this feedback is very valuable.

Its something I’ve learned in my past life of high level hands on activities, dog training/sport/racing etc. That and visualisation are key to effective body movements and sequencing.

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Great idea Tiana :+1:
I wish I’d be closer!!
Good luck out there​:shamrock:

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So i will be able to make it. Sent an email to the link.

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I’ve already replied.

CM

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Wish I could travel.

Surgery to repair a broken wrist (Gila Monster encounter) next Friday.

ThirdGM sighting in 50 yr, awsome!

I’ve been training our neighborhood to repair optical fiber, VPN relays, firewalls…Building Clankers… A sort of digital reskilling.

Beautiful season. Enjoy

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I would come if I were closer! We also are working on fall projects here…need to fence off the 2yr old apple trees (buck already got some of them :roll_eyes:), make guards for little trees in nursery bed, freeze beans, pick pumpkins…I also got some new laying chicks a week ago so hopefully they will do OK over the winter once they feather out…
Oh yeah and also homeschool :sweat_smile:

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Hello Chris! @cmartenson and glad you are doing well Evie @evieb-2-2 ! We hope you enjoy a successful and fun weekend at your farm!

I had held off posting until now to assess where we are and see if we could make it. We’re only about 2 hours away, so it’s a do-able trip. Like a lot of people here this time of year, though, we’ve been hunkered down processing an unexpected abundance of food (the freeze dryer and dehydrator have been running day and night for the past month) and running around like crazy trying to get all of our homestead ducks in a row before the snow flies! We still have a ton to do and it’s going to be a great weather this weekend, so we’re actually be having a work party of our own going on here :sweat_smile: and will not be coming. Hopefully you might consider doing this again sometime!

Btw, I’ve participated in a few farm work parties where there’s a group whose sole job for the weekend is to provide “chuckwagon” (aka, simple meals, keep the coffee flowing, etc.) for all the others who are doing chores throughout this time. It’s not a potluck, so no one working needs to be concerned about bringing any food. There are various ways to do it, physically and monetarily, so it’s not a burden to anyone.

We’ve set up big tables (complete with tablecloths and flowers - nothing fancy, just warms the space) and said a brief blessing before everyone gets their food to sit down. It’s always a nice break in the midst of all the work and encourages group conversation.

Anyway, just sharing. Sounds like what you’re doing this weekend is exactly what needs to happen. Maybe another time, though. Hopefully some time when we wouldn’t be as slammed and be able to make it. In the meantime…carry on and enjoy each other!

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I am sorry to only post about this now. It was just a short drive for us from Dalton. We loved meeting you and Evie and all of the participants were great. My wife, Cecylia, and I had a great time on Saturday during the chicken processing workshop. I cleaned four birds while Cecylia worked on the chicken feet. She peeled the scales from the feet and prepared them for cooking chicken broth. We took home two birds (and some feet) which are now in our freezer. Thank you for providing us this opportunity.

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