September 24th, 2013
Nature's Farm
Steinbach, MB
This is where the different sized eggs are sorted
Egg washing
Egg washing, continued
Thank-you so much Herman! We had a great time!
Hello! Today we visited the Nature's Pasta farm. They have chickens that lay there eggs they put into there pasta. They have around 17,000 chickens and get 15,000 eggs everyday. The eggs get washed and packaged with there name. They pasta smelled really good. Today they were making Pumpkin Pie Spice flavored. They smelled amazing much better than a dairy barn. I thought the pasta dough was a blanket running through a machine. It was soft looking. They pasta then gets cut and put onto pans which later get dried. From the drying they get packaged. We all got to take home a bag of Lemon Garlic Pepper pasta. They smelled and tasted amazing by the way. Too bad we didn't have more time there. ~Heather Penner
ReplyDeleteHello! Today we went to Nature's Pasta Farm in Steinbach. We got to see their chickens that lay eggs that they use in their paste, their chickens are all free run its amazing. They also have organic eggs and non organic. Nature's Pate farm has about 17,000 chickens and they get about 15,000 eggs out of their chickens everyday. They wash and brush and dry all their eggs and the temperature for drying their eggs always is well it is all over in Canada is from between 105-120 degrees F, after that they get packed. At Nature's Paste Farm they pack all of their eggs and put their name on the packages. After having a tour in their barn we went to their store and we got to go in the back and see how they make their paste and how they dry it and what they all put in their different kinds of pasta, for me it was fascinating to see it. We even got to go into a walk in dry machine that they use to dry their pasta :) really cool, and it smelled amazing in the store. After the store tour we got a pack of Lemon Garlic Pepper pasta, it smells really good. I had an awesome blessed day. :)
ReplyDeleteToday we visited Nature's farm. We got to see where they keep the chickens. They let all there chickens run free that's why their called free run chickens. They have about 17,000 chickens. The chickens lay about 15,000 eggs a day. There are brown eggs and white eggs. They catigorize them and grade them. Later he took us to the pasta factory and showed us what all the kinds of pasta he makes , while we were there he was making a ginger and pumpkin pasta but as a gift let us take home lemon garlic pasta! My mom was very excited when she saw it.
ReplyDeleteI was absent for this trip :(
ReplyDeleteThe farm we went to here, Nature's Farm, was really neat and tidy. We had to step in sanitizer before we went to see the chickens, and we got to see the whole conveyor-belt system for transporting eggs from place to place. they also make their own pasta and ship it all over, like B.C. and Alberta. They were making a pumpkin spice flavored pasta when we were there and it smelled really, really good!
ReplyDeleteNature's Farm owned and operated by Herman Grauer began with his great love for eggs. In 1987 this family immigrated to Steinbach from Germany with great determination to start a "designer-egg" farm to make all natural pasta products. With lots of trial and error and many years of research, Nature's Farm was founded in 1993. An upscale, gourmet pasta store with a new line of specialty eggs called "smart-eggs" available in free-run and organic varieties, opened in 1998. By 2003 they were approved as a certified organic farm with free-run white and brown chickens that is HACCP,(Hazardous, Analysis, Critical, Control, Point), approved. This ensures all data is recorded to control disease and cross contamination and allows them to trace the source and potentially stop a dangerous epidemic from spreading. They have 14,000 free-run chickens, which means they are able to move freely in the barn from the floor, to roosting areas and perches. Unlike the free-range chickens we've seen at other farms, free-run chickens do not eat outdoor vegetation. This allows the farmer to control their diets and ensure only healthy feed is consumed. The chickens have the freedom to move about and lays eggs in their nests, thereby creating a natural environment to maximize their well being. Each barn has 3,500 hens with layered shelves for them to roost on and below each shelf a conveyer belt removes the manure 2 times a week. Staff check 2 times a day for eggs and they place them onto a rubberized conveyer belt that gently moves the eggs thru and elaborate maze all the way to the washing area and then to the sorting room. As they travel to the wash area they are gently brushed periodically to clean them a bit and then they get washed in a machine that looks like a dishwasher with a sodium hydroxide water mix at a temperature of 105-120 C for only one minute. This is so they do not change the internal temperature of the eggs. They then get rinsed for one minute and air dried quickly with air pressure. The eggs then pass thru a "candle light" (like a camera), that shines onto the egg to find any defects, cracks, or abnormalities. They are weighed and separated according to size by a computer and directed to their correct lanes ready to be hand picked, boxed, stored, and shipped. This is the area called the sorting room. At this point it is the only second time the eggs have been touched by hand. These eggs are not stamped with a date like you get in the grocery store because the ink is not organically approved. Once packaged they are stored in a cooler at 3 C and there shelf life starts from the day they are laid up to 90 days. It takes 4 people every day to operate the farms and this whole packaging plant. This was a very different way of observing chickens than at the previous farms which were free-range. Here they were never outside in their natural environment but they looked very clean and healthy, and so did the eggs.
ReplyDeleteAfter the farm we went to the pasta store. When you first walk in it's very tiny but it is a well stocked store front with many flavours of organic pasta, organic granola, and fresh organic and free-run eggs. We put on our lovely hairnets and walked into the back of the store. I was surprized to see how small the pasta factory was, but also very impressed how well the space was organized and how efficient the machines were. They use only organic flours with their eggs. The dough passed thru a sheeter that rolls out the dough to the proper thickness and then cuts dough into the desired noodle shape, swirls it into small sections onto a tray ready to dry. They are placed onto a drying rack into a machine that dries the noodles at high speed with the proper humidity level. Once dry they are put thru a machine that packages them and they are labeled, and shipped. Each label contains a traceable code where the HACCP is recorded. It will indicate who worked that day, what ingredients were used, and where the eggs came from. This pasta is shipped mainly in MB, but also in some select stores in Quebec, Ontario, Vancouver, and Alberta. They export pasta currently to only one U.S. state and that is in Minnesota. At the end of our tour Herman gave us each a bag of pasta to take home. I love pasta,... and when I got home I made lemon pepper crusted chicken with steamed carrots and garlic and lemon peppered pasta with alfredo sauce. Yummy! Thank you Herman for the tour and the wonderful pasta!!
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