Why I Take Vacation

In the years before we started our farm we would take vacations - like to places. For a football or baseball game or one year we flew across the country to participate in a running event. Other times we used vacation time for church missions trip to Tijuana.

These days my vacation time is spent hanging around home and doing farm projects. Whether is starting seeds or planting the garden or getting ready to add some feathered critters my time is spent here at home.

Today, March 5th, we are heading out to pick up our Freedom Rangers at Jenks Hatchery near Albany, Oregon. I choose to pick-up because today is the actual hatch day of our chicks and I know exactly how old they are and how long to let them grow-out before they graduate to the freezer.

Last year was our first time growing Freedom Rangers and it was successful - for the most part. We ended up losing 9 chicks in the process, but there has to be loss and learning at the same time. Otherwise we would get too full of ourselves thinking that we got this down. Farm life is not like that. We learn something new everyday or every week at the very least.

Choosing to grow our own food isn't easy, but we can't always rely on commercially grown food for good quality, nutritious food. We do subscription meat via Butcher Box and we do get a few organic vegetables from Imperfect Produce. But to make up the rest of good food we have to grow it ourselves. Well, we don't have to, but we choose to.

Since we raised our first batch of meat chickens I don't think that we have purchased chicken at the store very many times since September. We make do with what we have and really...a whole chicken does go pretty far when it is roasted and eaten in a couple of different meals during the week.

So this week, while I am on vacation, I am working on farm projects and will be setting up a couple of seed trays in the Living Room. If our morning temperatures are in the 20s our seeds will never germinate outside! The pig palace will be worked on some more and garden spaces may get worked over with the broadfork.

Today though, we are going out of town to get our chicks!

25 Meaties!

Farm Life 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!

Dear Diary...

A day in the life...

I am terrible with keep track of just about anything! Even when I was growing up I tried to keep a diary/journal of sorts, but it never really lasted that long.

This year, I think I did alright for a little while. Pretty early this year I did buy a new planner to keep track of our daily activities which included feed purchases. Now that I have looked at it I see that my journaling didn't really start until March and even then it was hit and miss, but I did record a few days each week. Even have receipts for the items that we needed to build the Stress Free Chicken Tractor. It looks like my last regular entries were toward the end of July, actually the 21st and 22nd of July.

That's it. Nothing more because...

I got myself a nifty spiral notebook that has a pretty pattern on it and thought I might use it for daily updates, sort of. I made some note in it for some projects that we had done. Also used it for taking notes at the Mother Earth News Fair. Then I thought I would try out listing the things I did daily. I think I might have gotten a couple of days done.

Yeah, I am REALLY bad at keeping records. Seriously, how do I get through the day?!

So as I think about this, I think I just need to get into the habit of hopping on here in the evening and just doing a quick entry to record the happenings and photos of the day. If I want to look back on when something was planted, harvested and anything else, I need to look in one place.

Even if it's brief at least it will be recorded! 

I guess I neglect this space because as you know...

Farm Life is the Best Life!

Life and Death

The harsh reality of farm life.

Out of 25 Freedom Rangers we are now, nearly 6 weeks into this adventure, down to 17 eating machines.

Let's break this down. Of the 8 chicks that were "lost" one decided to fly the coop (for lack of a better explanation). That one was totally our bad.

To make going in and out of the chicken tractor easier on us during feeding time. I  suggested that a piece of fence be installed - kind of like when the Magpie Squad was living in the tractor.  Otherwise those tricksey little birds would get out and run around as they already had done on more than one occasion. Also, every now and then we let them get out and check out the courtyard - but only under our supervision.

Yeah, I'm a hardass.

Rightfully so, the Sunday before this last Sunday, when it was a bazillion degrees outside. We had gone out to check on the critters. I decided to open the tractor door to let them roam a little and then after a few minutes I decided I needed some AC time. Yep, the Rangers were still out.

When I remembered it must have been at least an hour later, maybe more...I immediately went out and shoo'd them back in and called it good.

Later on, while doing the evening chores, both of us at separate times tried to take a head count. Most of the time I landed on 24, but there were a couple of times that I came up with 25. When Tom gave them their food and their were somewhat stationary, he came up with 24.

DANG!

Oh well, I guess he/she wanted to live up to his/her name...Freedom Ranger.

We have been diligent since then with the time that they get to leave the safety of the tractor to the fenced courtyard right outside their door. They get to come out and forage a bit, but once the food goes in so do they.

On Thursday or Friday of last week Tom discovered that a couple of the Rangers had died.

Oh...hmmm...what happened?

Since then there were a couple more, but on Monday not only were there dead chicks there were a couple of sickly chicks. So we quickly took them away from the seemingly vibrant and healthy chicks and put them in the brooder overnight. They were no longer in the poo, but then they also were not doing well.

The next morning we were surprised to see that they made it through the night. That was short-lived as the more sickly one finally gave up in the morning and the not so sickly one late afternoon.

The remaining 17 are pretty lively though, so we have hope that they will make it to processing day let alone, 6 weeks. I knew that there would be loss, but 7 of them dying, that was surprising.

Oop...hold the press I just did a quick google search...

Evidently around the 5-6 week mark high protein feed diets start to catch up with the little stinkers. So in essence, we have overfed the birds and their little bodies couldn't keep up. I was kind of right then thinking that their little hearts could not keep up with the rate of their growth. Also, I had read in a couple of places where other folks had a problem and that they experienced loss at a time that didn't seem right.

So, I think what we'll need to do with the next round of chicks is start restricting feed around 4 weeks and only feeding during the day. With this batch we were allowing 24/7 feeding up until the deaths started happening. Now that it has been a few days of taking the feeder out, we have noticed that the stinkers are doing better.

This morning I was trying to decide if continuing to raise Freedom Rangers or even the Cornish Cross would still be the right thing to do. I even explored the heritage breeds, the slower growing chickens and decided on the Orpington. However, I think that we can still do the Freedom Rangers and still order from the hatchery that is not far from us. The Freedom Ranger has a grow out rate of 11-12 weeks, which is quite predictable. The Cornish Cross grow out in 8 weeks, but that's just too soon.

Yes, I am THAT confident that the next batch will be better.

Oh how I hate this type of learning experience. However, if we don't have a fail here and there, we'll never learn anything.

Despite the challenges that we have had the past week I am still convinced that this life is the best and I wouldn't want it any other way.

July 9, 2018

After a week away from work I have returned to my regular routine. 

A week away from work is just about the best thing for my soul - more would be better! So much about life last week felt right. Working around the house, keeping our feathered and furry creatures alive and well and working the garden. With all the extra time at home I was able to do a little cooking and even got the Ice Cream Maker out and made a couple of batches of ice cream. 

On Friday after spending extra down time at home I decided to go for some coffee and be-bop over to Freddy's to pick up items for the second batch of ice cream. While I was at Starbucks an old friend had stopped in to pick up some coffee and we ended up chatting for a couple minutes. 

He had asked how we were doing and asked what was new. It has been at least a couple of years since I last saw him so he had NO idea that we were doing this farm thing - complete with the poultry and pigs...

To say the least he was surprised. 

Then after another minute or so he had declared that we wouldn't be able to go on vacation if we are going to have a farm.

Ummmm....what? How did the conversation turn to vacations?

Anyway, I declared that it didn't have to be that hard and then he had to bring up a story that related to farming and no vacations...blah blah blah....

Here is my point - vacations don't drive me. There are people that just live for the next big trip...destination, but vacations are not the thing that I live for. Don't get me wrong, I have enjoyed the places that we have seen, the things that we have done and the memories that we came home with. However, traveling is also a giant hassle! 

So, no matter how much I try to convince another person that I'm not that interested in vacations - what I realize is that they (my old friend) just isn't listening. As I think about this conversation it occurs to me that he doesn't really know who Tom and I are, he only remembers who we were. 

Our values are different now.  I don't long for the latest this, that or the other thing. I don't have to have an exciting vacation on the calendar. I just need to be with my hubby and our animals and that brings me so much joy. It's a lot of work, but it's good work. Having our chickens, ducks, pigs and the goose to take care of keeps me happy. As well as busy, but a good busy. 

Sometime during the Great American Farm Tour one of the homesteaders (either Jill Winger or Shaye Elliott) said something that clicked with me...

When we started our farm with chickens I couldn't imagine enjoying what we are doing as much as I do. Now that we have added Rex & Fiona and more ducks life has become even more fulfilling! Not only do we have fresh eggs and veggies to enjoy during the week we are outside every single day - rain or shine. Feeding something - feathered or furry.

The other thing that has happened is we are connecting with friends and neighbors. That's the whole purpose of this farm. Whether it's a long time friend or an acquaintance from Starbucks - we are creating meaningful relationships. 

If I take a vacation I'm going to miss meeting a new friend and/or neighbor. Why would I want to take a vacation from making new friends and strengthening other relationships?

Another GAFT favorite

The Great American Farm Tour. How I ever sat myself down almost everyday to watch the daily video from Justin Rhodes is beyond me. We did it though, although, there were a couple I just couldn't sit through. Otherwise we watched them all! Some of them a few times even.

The farm feature was waaay back in May of last year. The Farmer is John Suscovich. The farm is Camps Road Farm in Connecticut. The book is Stress Free Chicken Tractor Plans.

The first video that was featured:

The moment he kneeled down to help out Mr. Brown - I knew this guy would be awesome! 

Then there was this video:

By the time we had watched these videos we already built the Justin Rhodes Chick-Shaw. The chicken tractor with a million pieces...hahaha! Actually the chick mobile is awesome! It did take some time though. When I found out that Farmer John had a book I HAD to check it out. Not only that I ORDERED it and we have been studying it and will be building one of these bad boys soon.

Everything about this guy...his experience kind of clicked with me and I understood what he was saying. The way he farms, the way he learns while doing stuff and then makes adjustments when things don't work out...boy I get that. He is for real people...a farmer, husband, father...YouTuber. He is a farmer...not a homesteader. We all know how that word has no meaning to me. It is over-used. Enough said. Also, not that I would do this, but he toured the part of the US on his bike, visiting farms along the way. What a life! There was a time that I thought I might want to do a bicycle tour, but that's an unrelated story.

We had the chickies before we saw these videos, but the video about the chicken tractors got me thinking about raising meat birds. Something I wanted to do last year, but let's face it, with the new chickies (gosling & duckling included) and trying to keep my pathetic garden from totally dying off I don't think that a batch of meat chickens would have helped. What we did end up doing is processing three of our extra cockerels at approximately 19 weeks old or so. That was quite the experience - one that I am happy to say I survived and didn't get totally freaked out about. Go HERE for that post.

Last summer he did a few videos on raising pigs and how beneficial they are to the land. Our property was once part of a much larger cattle farm operation years ago and our plan is to add a breeding pair of American Guinea Hogs that will help make our property healthy again. All we have done for nearly 20 years is mow the grass. Only last year did we actually introduce the chickens to part of the pasture. I have plans to keep the pigs moving around the property and increasing the food growing areas. Fruit trees, berry bushes or gardens, I want to add them all! 

What else about this guy...he is all about sharing information on YouTube - all free which is a bonus. He does have a "store" on his website, Farm Marketing Solutions. If you are looking for suggested reading, he's got a list of books. Apparel, yup. His published books...oh yeah. Like I mentioned before I got the chicken tractor book. There's a new book in the works that I'm planning to order to get our market going. 

In the time since watching these two videos, I have started to follow his channel - SO GOOD! I've commented on his videos and sent him an email of appreciation (and got a reply!) - he is seriously cool! 

Go on...check the videos above and check out his channel on YouTube. I'm going to start planning again...