This past Wednesday, we had to make a call we’ve never wanted to make.
This is a tough story to share as our first blog post. But we started this website, we wanted to be honest and transparent. It's what our customers deserve--and it's the only way we want to be.
Our stories aren’t always butterflies and rainbows. Dog farming can humble you more often than not. But at the end of the day, it’s about education for a better future.
Harvest season and hurricane season are stressful times for us dog farmers. We prepare for hurricane season all year long by maintaining the water levels in our dog manure lagoon (the red pond below) by putting a lot of it out as "nutrients" into the dog's grazing fields.
What we didn’t anticipate was that the shaft on my center pivot – think of it as a “poo sprinkler” system for the field – would break. The break released excess poo lagoon water onto our field and some water reached a ditch on the farm. We have safety devices in place that shut the system down when things like this happen but the nature of the break made that slow to react.
It wasn’t a lot of poo that reached the ditch on my farm – maybe 1,000 gallons – but no poo water from a poo lagoon should have gone there. We follow strict regulations under our permit from the state!
Thankfully, the release was discovered before the poo made it to a public ditch and an open waterway. Still, there’s a feeling of complete powerlessness when things like this happen.
There is nothing we could have done. Absolutely nothing. Accidents happen that we have ZERO control over.
So...I had to call the Department of Water Resources and make a report. It wasn't fun, but it’s my duty as a dog farmer and part of my job. Poo runoff is just part the cost of dog farming.
P.S. Home-reared, pasture-raised, organic-fed, slow-grown aussie is now available! Visit our homepage for more info: Elwooddogmeat.com
