Annual Update: Production

In the past, we’ve made jarred goods at the cannery operated by Virginia Food Works in Prince Edward County. Now we will be able to make them right here on the farm, in our own inspected kitchen. We’ll be producing our classic jarred goods plus some new refrigerated and frozen goods.

Here is Part 2 of our 2024 Annual Update! You can read Part 1: Business and Admin here.

Introducing the Bellair Kitchen!

Perhaps the most exciting news for 2024 is the grand opening of our newest division: the Bellair Kitchen! One of our newest crew members, MacKenzie, will be managing this project. You may remember from last year's Annual Update that we gained access to a new building recently, the former home to Twenty Paces, the sheep dairy that operated on Bellair for 8 years from 2013 to 2021. As with most of our large projects, this has been a slow rollout and a long time coming. We don't have much physical or mental capacity to move forward on things like this until the off-season.

Last year, we focused on moving a lot of our livestock operation up to the barn: we have had our winter chicken housing, chick brooder, and hog loading area up there since last winter. This season, we moved "Tool World" and "Tool Land," both areas of our main Barn, up into one consolidated workshop in the new building and began using some of the cold storage up there for overflow veg and egg storage.

Now we're moving on to the kitchen space! MacKenzie has been sourcing used equipment and deep cleaning the space. We are stoked to have found an affordable, used steam-jacketed kettle which will be the workhorse of this kitchen.

We have so many ideas with this project and its future potential! To start, we will focus on a few categories:

Jarred goods like pepper jelly, salsa, and pizza sauce that we already produce. We currently use an off-site kitchen but will make these items on the farm now.
Refrigerated goods like quick pickles and more!
Frozen goods like stocks, broths, and soups.

We intend to capture "seconds" and overflow veggies and turn them into delicious, nutritious, and easy foods for our customers! We also intend to have a Bellair Kitchen Add-on Share where members will get one Bellair Kitchen item per week throughout the summer!

We aren't yet sure of our timeline; we have lots of cleaning, inspections, and credentials to get through. We will keep you updated on our progress as we go!

Mushrooms: Take 2

Last year, we said in the Annual Update that we were going to inoculate shiitake logs. Well, we ended up cutting our trees and ordering our spawn but when it came down to it, we ran out of time before the beginning of the season to get it done. This year, we are prepped and ready to make it happen and we're looking forward to a crop of mushrooms as early as the fall.

Expanded Grazing

In last year's Annual Update for livestock, we mentioned that we were getting miles of new fence and water lines installed on the west side of the farm. This fencing project doubled the amount of easily-grazed areas on the farm. Around this time last year, we had about 35 cattle out there grazing. At that number, we were really understocked, meaning that the cattle can't really keep up with the growth rate of the grass. This means we have to do more mowing to manage the pastures properly for re-grazing. We have been wanting to expand the herd to have a better impact on the pastures and also expand our capacity to do bulk sales.

This year, we partnered with two other farmers to achieve our goal in a way that doesn't require a huge up-front bill. One, we purchased cattle from a grazier that allowed us to pay in delayed installments. This has been super helpful to buy a bigger group than we could afford at that moment and pay it off later. The second thing is we developed a relationship with another farmer to "custom graze" part of his herd. This involved him dropping off cattle for a set period of time (in this case, November-April). Our farm currently has more grass than his farm. We are able to grow out his cattle (for the most part on grass, not hay) and that keeps him from buying a lot of hay or tearing up his pastures. In exchange, we will get paid per pound gained while in our care. This is another great method to get mouths munching and manure deposited. At this point, we have 60 cattle in the fields, which is a great number for us for winter. We're excited to have these other growers trusting us with these partnerships and we look to continue to work with them for years to come!

Stay tuned for Part 3: Conservation next week!