December 10, 2024

Shareholder Update

Dear Shareholders,

Cold weather is finally here! At the farm, this means things are settling down a bit: the chickens are all back in the coop (not in the field), the cows are eating hay (giving the pastures a rest) and the garden is all cleaned up. Hopefully it'll get cold enough this winter to kill off some of the ticks...

In the meantime, a few updates:

• At Capacity: The herdshare is maxed out! There are now 21 households in the herdshare receiving a total of 42 gallons of milk per week.

• Billing Portal: I've switched on Stripe's "customer portal," so you can see your past and upcoming invoices here: https://billing.stripe.com/p/login/fZefZJ2WMfWT3VS8ww Please let me know if you have any questions about what you find there.

• Bird Flu: I continue to keep an eye on the news regarding bird flu in dairy cattle. Recently, there was a big recall of retail raw milk in California. The good news is that nobody got sick; the recall was a result of lab testing which identified viral residues in the milk. It's not yet clear whether milk from that farm contained "live" virus or not, but the fact that nobody fell ill is very comforting to me. So far, there are no cases of people contracting bird flu from drinking raw milk. (But if you're using raw milk as eye drops or a nasal mist, you might want to stop -- there is evidence of spread by those pathways !) The cows here have certainly not shown any symptoms, but it's the kind of thing that can spread (and shed) asymptomatically.

That's all for now. I hope you've been enjoying the milk and cheese and please let me know if you have questions about anything else!

Robert