Want to get up close and personal with your food? Our friends at Pawnee Pride are offering a Kids Tour on September 10th, starting at 10:30am. It's a family-friendly walking tour of the Rohrbaugh ranch, ending in a picnic at Burchard Lake.

The Rohrbaughs are good friends of ours, and we purchase our beef from them. The beef is 100% grass finished, and the cattle are never subjected to unnecessary medications or hormones. Pawnee Pride is very similar to Joel Salatin's Polyface Farms, and the Rohrbaughs have hosted Joel in their home.

Pawnee Pride is located in Pawnee County, about 2 hours south of Metro Omaha. If you'd like to make reservations and get directions, contact Paul at pawneepridemeats@windstream.net.

Over the last week, I have been surrounded by the love of my community. In retrospect, it's been waiting for me to be open to it, so maybe it's more accurate to say that I've noticed. It's never been easy for me to ask for help or accept offers from friends. I've kept people at arm's length or tried to do things myself, which is, of course, the most difficult path. It's safe to say that my concept of interdependence was not balanced.

Last night, we lost a big limb from one of our maple trees in a storm. Today, our friends Barbi, Tom, Sarah and Ray offered to bring their chainsaws and help clean it up. Since I have a full-time job, I wouldn't be able to start on it until Saturday. The gift of their effort has given me the equivalent of a full day's labor.

This comes on the heels of several other events. On Saturday, we held a CSA work day, and several of our members transplanted 200 tomato plants, lots of eggplants, peppers and more. On Sunday, Ray, Brad and Marc spent a combined 19 hours disassembling a walk-in cooler from a fast food joint slated for demolition. Why? So we could use it in the future on the farm. Ray even brought his friends, Becca and Luis, who helped even though they had never met me. Several times during the day, I would have given up on the project if it hadn't been for their perseverance.

All of these people have been incredibly generous with their time. I feel awash in gratitude for my friends and their actions. Often, when people ask, "Do you need any help?", my first reaction is to say no. But by saying yes and letting people care for me, I feel like I'm part of a community. It's a community that I have helped create, not only by sharing things in common, but by participating in the give-and-take.

Part of our farm's mission is to create good community. I thought it would be a result of the things I did for others. Thanks to all the people in my community who have shown me the full scope of what community really means.

-Brian

By the end of the month, we will receive a new batch of birds, chickens and turkeys. As we've done before, we're getting a mixture of heritage chickens, but we decided to buy Slate Blue turkeys.

The Blue Slate is listed as "Watch" on The American Livestock Breeds Conservancy's watch list. The turkeys we had last year were White Hollands, which are "Threatened." We still have three hens but decided to try a new breed to see how we like them and to add a little color to our flock.

This weekend, our friend, Jennie, came to help on the farm. She commented on the calls of the turkey hens, and it reminded me how much the toms' calls defined the sounds of summer and fall. In January, when we lost our last tom, it changed the landscape of the poultry house. The girls miss him and still seem a little lost without their protector and leader. I can't wait to see this new batch grow and take over the farm with their characteristic strut, wing display and chorus of calls.

-Brian