Greetings from the farm's livestock and bioenergy department. It's been a busy few months since I last checked in. We've had a great season in the pastures - mostly because of our amazingly dedicated livestock apprentice Danielle, who handles the daily duties of sheep, cattle and chicken care. We're all very impressed with Danielle's skills as a cow handler. Recently we had a few calves with foot injuries that required daily check ups. Getting an unruly 400lb calf into a handling pen and safely lifting up its food to give therapeutic care is a challenge for anyone, but Danielle has become quite skilled at doing this job alone. She also has a great sense of when to move the animals to fresh grass - between her care and the pleasant weather we've had lately our pastures are looking great! Our sheep are now back at the solar farm in Carlisle - if you are jogging or biking the trails near Dickinson Park please give them a "Baaaah"! After selling out of beef this summer for the first time ever, we are now well stocked up on amazing grass-fed steaks, roasts, burgers and more - if you need any animal protein for your fall table please drop me a line or check out http://blogs.dickinson.edu/farm/meatsales. We will also have a limited number of fall lambs for sale coming up soon - if you would like to reserve some lamb please get in touch (steimanm@dickinson.edu).
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Place your order here! The Dickinson College Farm is proud to provide grass-fed, humanely-raised meat for the campus community. We hope that our efforts to care for, respect and love these animals is reflected in the quality of our animal products.
blogs.dickinson.edu
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On the bioenergy front we've been hard at work doing research and preparing for a big expansion. This summer and fall student Tony West '21 (Biology) and I have been working on laboratory trials to generate cooking fuel from cow manure and spent brewer's grain from the Molly Pitcher Brewing Company. So far the results look positive and we will continue to fine tune the project as we collect more data. Our big news is we've been awarded two substantial federal grants to expand the farm's biogas system into a larger commercial project. The vision we're developing is to combine the campus food waste resource (750-1000lbs per day in normal times) with manure from the neighbors' 150 dairy cows to generate electricity through the anaerobic digestion/ biogas pathway. There is plenty of energy in these waste materials - with the help of some specialized microbes and equipment we'll be able to generate enough electricity to power two farms and still have some to sell back to the utility. This will negate the farm's carbon footprint and help improve the sustainability picture of the College as a whole. Sarah St. Angelo will help with Chemistry research to support the project, and Ken Shultes has been a big help with all of the administrative aspects of project development. For more on biogas please check out http://blogs.dickinson.edu/farm/biogas.
It's an exciting time at the farm in so many ways. We're grateful to have an open air property where we can work to produce food, energy innovations and educational content. Thanks for being a part of it! Enjoy these beautiful fall days while they last.
Cheers
MS
