Sugar Mountain Farm Butcher Shop Progress Update

Here's an update of our project of building our own on-farm USDA/State inspected slaughterhouse, butcher shop and smokehouse at Sugar Mountain Farm:

http://SugarMtnFarm.com/blog/2011/08/butcher-shop-construction-tour.html

Last week the head of the Vermont Agency of Agriculture Meat Inspection came out to check out our progress. He's been working with us since the beginning. Very helpful.

We just did one pour of concrete, putting in the reefer plumbing slab. We're now working on the subdivisions of the six rooms in the refrigerated two thirds of our facility and then we'll simultaneously pour the walls and ceilings for those areas. While that cures we'll work on the administration and abattoir.

This spring we got together all the money we need to finish so that hurdle is out of the way. Banks and the government were no help there but CSA Pre-Buys, small loans from individuals and our bootstrapping made it happen. Now we're cranking full speed on closing in this fall and then hopefully we'll be cutting our own meat in the winter.

Cheers,

-Walter
Sugar Mountain Farm
in Vermont

Lookin' good!  Hope it is finished before the first Saturday following first frost (typical slaughter day...JK, as I know you slaughter all year long).  It may cost you a bit, but will give YOU control from birth to kitchen.  In the long run, it will pay for itself.

When's dinner?  OINK,  OINK!

*grin* Ironically, today it was *cluck* *cluck* for din-din. Admittedly though, it is often *oink* *oink* in one of its many forms.

Looking good. Great web site too.

Truly excellent write up and great website.  You mention on the site that your farm is a 70 acre section of your land.  How much land do you have in total?  And when did you get it?  And just one other question - Did you start out as farmers by profession or were you from farming families?

Many thanks again for a great website.

We own about 1,000 acres. It is a ring of mountains with a central valley which used to be a town long ago before it was abandoned. Our old farm house was one of the first houses in the area and the only one left of the village. We now live uphill from it in our cottage which we built about four years ago. See:

http://SugarMtnFarm.com/cottage

for that saga. Building the cottage was sort of a dry run for the construction techniques we're using in building the butcher shop.

Neither my wife or I come from farming families. We learned from scratch and bought our land back in the 1980's when land was a lot cheaper. I wouldn't be able to afford it now. Don't want to sell either. We love homesteading, farming and doing sustainable forestry. Gradually we're expanding the fields, clearing many back to the old stone walls, putting in orchards, berries, etc. It's a process and very much a fun one.

I knew I wanted to do what we're doing back when I was a teenager. From there it was a matter of figuring out the path and then following it step-by-step. Each year we make progress. Much more to go. I'm not bored yet.

pubwvj wrote:
We own about 1,000 acres. It is a ring of mountains with a central valley which used to be a town long ago before it was abandoned. Our old farm house was one of the first houses in the area and the only one left of the village. We now live uphill from it in our cottage which we built about four years ago. See:

http://SugarMtnFarm.com/cottage

for that saga. Building the cottage was sort of a dry run for the construction techniques we're using in building the butcher shop.

Neither my wife or I come from farming families. We learned from scratch and bought our land back in the 1980's when land was a lot cheaper. I wouldn't be able to afford it now. Don't want to sell either. We love homesteading, farming and doing sustainable forestry. Gradually we're expanding the fields, clearing many back to the old stone walls, putting in orchards, berries, etc. It's a process and very much a fun one.

I knew I wanted to do what we're doing back when I was a teenager. From there it was a matter of figuring out the path and then following it step-by-step. Each year we make progress. Much more to go. I'm not bored yet.

  Excellent ... IMHO the hardest part in life is finding the road to take ... I think you found yours.  Well done. 





Before you had Sugar Mountain Farm ... what did you do?

Icewalker wrote:Before you had Sugar Mountain Farm ... what did you do?

I went from baby sitting and yard work to save up money for a computer so I could do data analysis, programming and computer consulting (1970's, 1980's). Later I added drawing maps and clipart (1980's, 1990's), inventing several things in electronics, mechanical engineering and chemical engineering including iron-on heat Transfer Toner for laser printers in the 1980's, published a magazine (Flash Magazine) about desktop publishing for over a decade along with many books, setup a manufacturing and marketing company for some of my inventions, did sustainable forestry, tried raising pastured poultry (failure) for meat, tried sheep (not able to pay the mortgage because processing ate all the income) and got to pastured pigs where we actually can make a a living on something farmed. We've been doing the pigs for about a decade. Lots of overlapping things in all of that. During that time I rennovated many houses and finally got to build our cottage here on Sugar Mountain.

pubwvj wrote:
I went from baby sitting and yard work to save up money for a computer so I could do data analysis, programming and computer consulting (1970's, 1980's). Later I added drawing maps and clipart (1980's, 1990's), inventing several things in electronics, mechanical engineering and chemical engineering including iron-on heat Transfer Toner for laser printers in the 1980's, published a magazine (Flash Magazine) about desktop publishing for over a decade along with many books, setup a manufacturing and marketing company for some of my inventions, did sustainable forestry, tried raising pastured poultry (failure) for meat, tried sheep (not able to pay the mortgage because processing ate all the income) and got to pastured pigs where we actually can make a a living on something farmed. We've been doing the pigs for about a decade. Lots of overlapping things in all of that. During that time I rennovated many houses and finally got to build our cottage here on Sugar Mountain.

Wow - That is impressive to say the least.  I'm hoping to make the transition from tech to farm at some point in the future.  Best of luck with your venture.

Bumping this. Walter gave us a brief biography. I'm always interested in how our highly successful members got to where they are. Seems like there was lots of hard work and some good planning involved.