Ultimate Harvest of 2018

July 5, 2018

September 22, 2018

Okay, so we are four days past the ultimate harvest of the year. I have had a chance to think about the importance of growing and processing our own birds and to do a little research of the method that we have seen over and over again on YouTube from other homesteaders (which I still do not claim to be).

When first mentioning that we are growing meat chickens the first thing that people ask after we say that this is a DIY project is, " Are you going to cut their heads off?"

Now I understand that's how many people see home chicken processing. I know that my mom did that, but I think...I'm not positive, but I am almost sure that she cut the head and then placed the chicken in a big metal drum while it was slowly dying it's awful and inhumane death.

The method that we went with is called Halal or can also be considered Kosher. Which in the simplest terms means that the kill is done quickly with a slit of the jugular and left to bleed out. From my research this is the Muslim tradition. If done correctly, there shouldn't be need for a second cut, but sometimes that happens. Like when I decide it's time for me to get one kill in and there are only three chickens left. All afternoon I was thinking how I should probably do at least one kill...and I kept meaning to, but was distracted with other tasks to hopefully make clean-up a little easier. In the end, clean up was the hardest...but I digress...I tried and Tom had to make another cut. While I did do one last year - sort of. This was easier, but still not enough for the bleed out to happen very quickly. I should have known better as they chicken was looking at me as if to ask what he or she had done to me to deserve a not so swift bleed out. Oh well, I'll have other opportunities at future processing times.

Three of the Rangers in Restraining Cones

After lots of google searches we decided that the birds would benefit from resting in the fridge overnight. This was to allow the rigor to leave the body. We let the birds sit overnight in the refrigerator and then placed them in a tub to brine the following day. Several people online had said that the brine would help make the chicken tender. Tom thought we should try half brined and half not, but in the end it was just easier to brine all of them.

On Monday it was time to drain and rinse and let the chicken dry...

Before bagging the birds we had to take the Poultry kit back to the Clark Conservation District and get our deposit money back :) The gentleman who helped us pointed out the "ring" around the top of the scalder and surmised that maybe we were not informed to be on the look out for that and to make sure that it was totally cleaned. Notes for next time - clean, clean and then clean some more. To be honest, the plucker was the most difficult to clean as the feathers got stuck underneath the rubber fingers. They did NOT want to come out very easily. There really is no way to avoid that unless we want to hand pluck. I will gladly spend the time getting the feathers out of the bazillion plucker fingers.

Once we returned we went ahead and started the process to bag the chickens. Oh My Goodness...I think that the shrink wrap bags is like the best thing EVER! Slide a chicken in the bag, place the tube in the cavity and get a zip tie on. Then a very short dip in boiling water and there is your perfectly bagged chicken!

This is just an overview of the weekend process. Would we do anything different? Sure...there is always room for improvement.

First, knives...a variety of sharp knives would have been better. Processing day came up pretty fast and we knew that the knife selection would be limited. In the end it worked out, but I suggested a trip to Good Will yesterday to see if we could find anything that would work. Luckily we found a set of kitchen knives (forged knives) that included a small clever and some shears for $6.99 (plus tax). That was an excellent find! Those will be easy to hone using the steel  or a bench grinder (if needed).

The other thing that we would do is place the scalder in the garage to protect it from the wind. At some point the pilot light went out because of the wind and the water temp dropped about 15 degrees cooler than it should have been. Tom figured out that the pilot light is not easy to see. Nothing a blow torch can't fix.

We will need to rethink the chill chest for after the birds have been eviscerated and ready to go into the refrigerator. Maybe an old refrigerator or a giant cooler. There is time, BUT now I'll be checking out craigslist for all sorts of stuff in the months to come.

The whole operation could be moved onto the lawn or maybe even directly in front of the garage. That way, when we are spraying stuff down or even emptying water out of things it will go into the lawn. That is something that we will explore next year.

Also, we might let the birds go one more week before processing them. That means more food for them, but that would also mean that the 3 pound birds that we had might weigh a little more.

While we are on the subject of weight - we ended up with 56 pounds of chicken from 15 birds - that averages out to 3.7 pounds per bird. I think that's a pretty awesome harvest at 11 weeks old.

Yep, I'm pretty excited about this chicken processing experience. I am ready to do this again...

Next Spring.

Farm Life Baby!

Fifty Percent

The Magnificent 7 resting in the shade

I have noticed over the last week or so that the ducks are starting to form their own little groupings.

The first grouping would be of Lenny & Shelly and Shelly's little girlfriend Phyllis. They are almost always together. Although there are times when Phyllis decides that she wants to hang with the other Magpies, but she tends to get bullied a little - so then she usually makes her way back to the hooligans.

Grouping #2 would be an unnamed duo who is usually off by themselves (except at meal time). They do not have names because I haven't had any inspiration where they are concerned.

Group #3 - well, this is an interesting group. This group includes the remaining ducks. At first I only noticed the ONE drake. He doesn't sport a cap like most of the others, but a smaller spot toward the back of his head. Anyway, I thought "Wow, this one has three girls..." Oh, and I named this one. Tom was reading about Tropical Storm Gordon and I thought - YES...for some reason the name Gordon fits. It's an old name and we do have Leonard, Sheldon and Phyllis, so not really out of place. So, I thought he was the only other Drake. 

Until....

We were out taking care of the critters before dinner last night and I saw Group #3 and then I spied the telltale sign...

This curved feathers means something

A curved tail feather. This is the identifier for a male duck.

And one of the three that I thought were all girls ended up being another Drake.

Oh fine. 

So, of the Eight Magpie Ducks that we have, which includes the patriarch Shelly, four are drakes.

Sigh.

OH well, Farm Life with waterfowl is the Best Life!

Labor Day 2018

Is it really September...how on earth is that possible?

Just looking at the calendar this month is already going to be fairly busy with all sorts of appointments and vacation time later this month. I will be taking a few hours of sick time for various appointments one of them being my MRI that was messed up last week.

Anyway, what has been happening on the farm so far? It's that time of year when it's time to start harvesting and preserving food. We are slowly getting some of what we planted just a couple two, three months ago.

Last weekend I dug up a couple of potato plants to see what we had so far. The potatoes were on the smaller side which is fine, I just wanted to see where they were as far as size. So when I went back out on Sunday and dug up some more I was surprised to see how much bigger they were. Once I got started it was hard to stop. When I had a bucket full I needed to do something with them - oooh...hash browns!

A couple of years ago I had seen a pin on Pinterest (good ol' pinterest) for freezing potatoes for hash browns. We didn't have enough potatoes from last year to do that, but this year I made sure there would be a GOOD supply! Two big rows in the big garden and a couple more in Tom's garden in front of the house.

Sunday afternoon was my hash browns day - it's hard to tell from this photo, but there are 5 quart size bags with enough potatoes for either one serving or two. It's good to have options. Also, for every couple of servings of green beans I'll be blanching/freezing a package of beans.

So my plan from now until there is nothing left to pick in the garden - process a certain amount of potatoes and beans for the freezer and then eat the rest throughout the week. If I can figure out how to process the kale we have in abundance I'll do it. Since I haven't even looked anywhere I'm not sure that I'll actually do it.

ANYWAY...

My hope was to have paste tomatoes to at least make into sauce and throw in the freezer as well. That's a big fat no go right now. The tomatoes were the last thing to go in and the spot where they are has not been that great. This year I'll have even less than last year.

Oh well, gardening is a constant learning experience right? I have mentioned to Tom that I need a second hoop house just for tomatoes. The first year we had the hoop house we had all sorts of tomatoes coming out of there. That on top of all of the cherry tomatoes in the garden.

Oh well, there is always next year.

On Labor Day which was yesterday I did a few of projects just for the fun of it. The first was a big ol' pot of chicken soup with some the sweet potatoes from a couple of my Imperfect Produce boxes. What an easy soup too, chicken, sweet potatoes, fennel bulb and onions. Season with salt and pepper. That's it! This way we won't have to think about what to do for dinner for the next night or two.

Project #2 - Fermenting Cabbage & Beets

A couple of years ago I discovered fermenting cabbage (sauerkraut). Super easy and so good! That firstyear I only had enough cabbage from the garden to do one jar. So I've been thinking about sauerkraut since then. As I said before last year's garden was terrible and I got almost nothing come harvest time.

Earlier this season I got a good size head of cabbage from Imperfect Produce so more sauerkraut happened. Last week I got another cabbage and some beets too. So I found another recipe to ferment cabbage and beets together! We'll see how that turns out, should be good though so I'm looking forward to that!

My plan is to plant beets in the fall garden and ferment some beets when those are ready to go. Also, the filderkraut that I planted in June is starting to look like it's doing something, so some of that might make it into the pantry as well. These might be a good projects for sometime in November.

Project #3 - Herbed salt

Why did I even think about that? Well, thanks to Pinterest I had another fun thing to do with the Rosemary that has been growing like crazy.

Seriously, this couldn't be easier...snipped enough sprigs of rosemary to make up about a cup and a half. Washed, dried and then whizzed them up in the food processor. Added about a half cup of kosher salt and ta-da - herby salt. Tom used it to season our smash burgers last night. SO GOOD!

Project #4 - Snack Bars

A few weeks ago a friend of mine had a virtual Pampered Chef party on Facebook. After checking out the goods I decided on a snackbar maker. All I would have to do is keep the ingredients in the pantry and ready to go. I have had that thing for several weeks and didn't do anything with it until a couple of weeks ago when I found a Larabar hack on...yep, Pinterest.

This recipe is great! No funky stuff and makes just enough mixture for a dozen bars. This is only the second batch I've made, but since they are so easy, I can see myself experimenting with other flavors. Maybe even give them away as a gift at Christmas.

As much as I love planning and getting my garden going, I think that harvest time is also pretty fun. So many options to preserve for future meals.

Our next big project will be coming up in a couple of weeks when we process the Freedom Rangers. We might be harvesting them a little early, but they are growing like crazy so it might not be so bad. As this is our first batch and we had no idea what we were doing, we are going to get to processing day with 16 birds. Out of those 16 we plan to keep one. Just because she is unique and that was the plan from the beginning. We have the equipment reserved, we have at least one other person on board...possibly two. I'm looking forward to our first batch of home grown chicken.

I evidently cannot count because these chickies are 8 almost 9 weeks old!

Here's to the harvest!

As always...Farm Life is the Best Life!