I'm So Tired

 I really tried to keep up with this blog. The closer I get to retirement the more hopeful I get that I will be able to update here more often than I have this past year. So much has happened in the past few weeks!

We are officially done raising meat chickens for the year. We thought that the chickens would be ready the week before Halloween, but as it turns out, they were still too small and just not great going through the process of processing them. After processing 8 of them, we called off the rest of the day and had our helpers go home. We were disappointed that we had to do that, but honestly, how long would we have to grow these guys out? Nearly a month later and so many days of listening to the meaties crowing at all times of the day - we finally went through the whole flock and graduated them to Freezer Camp. As it turns out, the extra month really didn't make that huge of a difference. They were still on the smallish side and they did not do well tumbling in the plucker. Smallest chicken was 3 lbs and the biggest just over 4 lbs. I guess we got spoiled with the Freedom Rangers as we had many 4 pounders and an occasional 5 pound bird. Definitely going back to them next year!

These terrible birds all bagged up and nestled into the freezer.

The last bird that we processed this past weekend was one of our turkeys that we acquired in June. At 5 months old he was still a little on the smaller side, but since it's just Tom and I it's actually perfect. Not much difference processing our big ol' turkey (big compared to the chickens). We were ready and not ready to take care of the deed. The plucker seemed to be an inadequate size when we thought about it, but turns out it would have worked just fine. Anyway, We don't have restraining cones big enough to accommodate a turkey so we had to hang him by his feet. HOWEVER, we didn't have any kind of rope or twine to wrap around his legs. So zip ties would have to do, BUT we didn't have any large sized zip ties so Tom connected to small ones together and we tried to make that work out. THEN how would we hang him? We didn't have a hook so after some thinking Tom came up with a tie down strap that has a hook. SCORE! After he got that situated and got Carlos on the hook he slit his neck. As soon as he started flailing a little he fell down. UGH. So Tom ended up holding him while he bled out. 

The rest of the process went okay. We ended up hand plucking him since we weren't sure we could run him in the Yard Bird. He is now aging in the fridge after swimming around in a salt brine for a couple of days. We'll see how he roasts up for Thanksgiving dinner! 

The other day I got a couple of photos from Tom while I was at work - 

The only girl from Fiona's litter in March farrowed late on Monday. Sneaky little Bridgette getting knocked up at four and a half-ish months old! Little Missy is doing great! The piglets are doing great!

 The funny thing about this - I had the thought that she might be pregnant since she didn't have a heat cycle since the end of July. Tom hadn't mentioned anything since the summer and I wasn't going to say "You know, I think Bridgette is preggo." He was kind of dismissing my concern over her and her litter mate "gettin' busy." Last week as I was observing Bridgette's body, it seemed to have changed a bit. For starters, her teats were looking a little more pronounced and I'm sure that Fiona wasn't like that at all. So, I decided to keep all of the information to myself. Then, late last week I arrived home from work and Tom was getting dinner prepped and he looked at me and said "You know, I think Bridgette is pregnant." My response, "I know." 

HAHAHAHAHA....I had a moment. 

So now that we were on the same page we were looking at her over the weekend and her lady part was looking rather swollen. I thought maybe another week. Tom concurred. NOPE let's say Monday evening. Then Tom figuring it out Tuesday morning after all of the piggies were set free from their house. Even Bridgette went sauntering out as if nothing happened. 

We are very excited that she has a healthy litter of 3 girls and 2 boys. They seem small, but then I think Fiona's March litter were just as little, I just don't remember. They grow so fast! 

This weekend I'll be spending a lot of time with the piglets and lil momma. I just love those wrinkly little bodies!

On top of going to work and doing the farm thing, last week was National Collection Week. So, each day I left work an hour early to go home and eat dinner and then go and sit at the church waiting for people to come and drop off their filled shoeboxes for Operation Christmas Child. My role each year is being a host and interacting with the donors whether they are groups or individuals. This year was different due to COVID and everything had to be done outside. No non-volunteer people were allowed into the building. We were running a curbside drop-off. for the rare occasion that there was more than one donor there was another host who would take care of the ones that I couldn't get to. Numbers were definitely down, but that just made each box received even more special. In the end we received over 15,000 filled shoeboxes. It has been said that each box reaches 3-5 people with the gospel message. You do the math! That's a lot of God's love working through the hands of the people who packed each and every box this year. 

So I might be tired, but I have so much to be thankful for this Thanksgiving season. Our farm, my upcoming retirement, and my friends and family.

Be blessed during this holiday season!

Saturday

Well, I missed posting yesterday. Mainly due to the fact that I was exhausted from not sleeping well for several nights and it finally caught up with me yesterday.

Today we are processing the Jenk's Hatchery FryPan Special meaties. I'll tell you what, I'm very ready to get this done and over with. These dudes take a very long time to grow out and my attention span is just over 3 months - the time it takes for the Freedom Rangers to reach harvestable size.

A lot of these dudes have started crowing and I'm not cool with that. Yes, I knew that it would happen, but still they started crowing weeks ago. Most of the time it's entertaining because they aren't good at it yet. There are a couple who I would say were over-achievers and were quite good and loud!

What we have learned about these meaties:

1. They are not especially smart. I suppose that's true for most birds, but it took these dudes to figure out the routine in the evening. The Freedom Rangers caught on fast and would generally be ready to be locked in. All without having to chase a few around the paddock to get them into the Chicken Tractor. 

2.  There are three different breeds in this FryPan special and they are all different. The light colored boys were mostly friendly and allowed us to pick them up and set them on our laps at time. There was one dark gray meatie who was just a bully. He would run around and pick fights with the other ones. And the speckled ones were very skittish. They didn't necessarily care if we were near them, they just didn't want to be grabbed. For any reason.

3. As I mentioned before - they are very slow growing. Today we are at 15 1/2 weeks. We could have done nearly two batches of Cornish Cross in the same time-frame. The Freedom Rangers were not nearly as long, but also were a much nicer meat bird which made it more enjoyable to grow them. 

4. Personality - these birds weren't mean, but they were super curious and would not hesitate to start pecking on your leg or arm or whatever after they saw something interesting. As they grew up with the turkeys, we would spend most evenings trying to console the turkeys because the meaties could be so spirited. The turkeys got over the meaties pretty quickly so it wasn't all that bad. 

We may be processing these guys a little early, but I didn't want to be out at the end of the month doing the job in what would most likely be the typical weather for the Pacific NW fall season - RAIN. It can be done, but nobody wants to be in the rain if they don't need to. So, really, we lucked out today - mostly cloudy with a small chance for rain or showers or misting. 

Today was also going to be the day that we promoted some of the laying hens to Freezer Camp. However, that changed when I took one of the ladies that had spent the evening out (bad girl!) and locked her in with the meaties. They immediately started to attack her. Okay, so I guess they get to stay with us a little longer, not much longer though - they are just hanging around and eating food and not laying anymore eggs! Just a bunch of freeloaders. They are sweet hens though, but have outlived their purpose on the farm.

Just for the sake of curiosity we are planning to grow a batch of Cornish Cross. We want to see how different they are compared to the Freedom Rangers and if it will make a difference letting them out on grass instead of confining them to a small space like those big commercial poultry barns that house thousands and thousands of chickens. 

Okay...I'm not going to get started because this is not the time for this subject. What it is time for is some more prep work for our day today!

Friday Fun Day

Actually, Friday's at work haven't been fun for a long time. In fact, most Friday's find my work mate, myself and the PIO just trying to get through the day. Honestly, this week has been really long and I've been looking forward to today more than usual because next week I'm on VACATION!

So, what has happened in the last week?

Last Saturday I did a load of potatoes and then spent the rest of the day and weekend resting.

Sick Day - for some reason I wasn't feeling 100% on Monday morning when I woke up, but then that was partially from spending most of the night coughing and not sleeping. Around breakfast time I wasn't still wasn't feeling great so I decided to take some sick time. With 1040 hours in the bank, I think I can take a sick day. Monday was basically a down day and watching A LOT of stuff on TV. I rented The Biggest Little Farm on Amazon and watch so much Star Trek Voyager. I napped too. 

The rest of the week was rather unremarkable really. My cough was getting to be a bit much the past couple of days, but I'm actually doing much better now. With the days getting shorter there aren't many things to do around the farm. It's getting cooler in the evenings also.

I am looking forward to having a week off though. There are project that I need to do that I would rather do during the daylight hours and not after dinner. Because after dinner is reserved for the turkeys!

Carl is getting so handsome

My plans for the next week - the start pulling up stuff in the garden. I'll probably get the small squash out and let the pigs feast on them. It would be nice to clean things up enough to get the tarp down and help kill off the weeds that have taken over. This will be a fun experiment to see how long it take to smother those weeds! 

The hoop house is ready for planting. There are several things I want to sow, but I'm not sure which greens I want to grow yet. I'll need to remember to water in there otherwise my efforts will be wasted and we won't have any greens this winter.

It's time to process the meaties. My hope is that we'll get that done next Friday or Saturday. It will have to be Saturday no matter what. The decision to get these birds may not have been the best one. Tom picked them up on July 7th and quite honestly I've been getting tired of them. Several of the little roos have started to crow. Most of the time it's entertaining, because they are not good at it and sound like they may have smoked one too many cigarettes - LOL...

Once I get through vacation there will be jsut one more week left in October. Then November will go pretty quick and then December...

THEN RETIREMENT!

Throw Back Thursday

 As we look forward to our next Meatie Harvest in a few weeks I was looking back at the post of our first REAL meat chicken harvest. The actual first harvest was a terrible event. Trying to reduce the number of cockerels from our first flock of chickens. Yet, we still decided to move forward and do a real batch of meaties. Go HERE to see that post.

In a few weeks we'll be getting ready to set up our equipment and process 26 meaties. I'm hoping that we'll have decent weather, but it will be late October and anything can happen. Heck it's 2020 and a hurricane might decide to blow through...hehe...

I'm excited for this next batch of chickens though because we are trying something new. The Fry Pan Special from Jenks Hatchery in Tangent, OR. My favorite place to get brand fresh newly hatched chicks! So easy to place an order and choose the hatch date and have them shipped. Unless you live within driving distance and make the trek to pick them up in person. Which is what we have done with each batch.

There are two reasons why I suggested to my hubs that we try them. The first is that they are different, not Freedom Rangers (which I love) and NOT Cornish Cross. Second, they are all cockerels and very inexpensive. I think they are even less than CC at Wilco - they ended up being $1.40 each and the minimum order is 25, but we got lucky and got 26 :)

The breeds escape me right now, but I think one of the breeds is Blue Sapphire Plymouth Rock. I think the one pictured above would be that breed. Maybe. Our batch is a mix of three breeds and we have probably a dozen of the Blue Sapphire's and a dozen of the lighter colored chickens and ONE all dark roo. 

Anyway, kinda cool to see where we are two years later. That first batch was only 15 and our current batch is 26. Who knew that we would be all in with this food growing attitude?! I really do love it! 

Farm Life Best Life

Spring 2020 Freedom Ranger project

13 of the 15 chickens bagged up and ready for the freezer

On June 19th, we started the process of graduting the meaties to Freezer Camp. Since there were only 15 we weren't expecting this to last a terribly long time. Especially since we have a neighbor/friend who has joined us for each of our butchering days.

This year's batch went from 30 to 15 due to a brooder fire. Then we figured out that we didn't count correctly and there was one more. However one of the meaties didn't grow nearly as much and actually appeared to be about half the size of all the other monsters. She may weigh two pounds where as the others all dressed out at anywhere from three to almost five pounds. 

As I posted a couple of weeks ago we got ourselves a Yardbird Chicken Plucker - this is a game changer!

This plucker easily accommodates two chickens

Short story - we were not able to reserve the Poultry Processing kit for this particular weekend. Which is kinda funny, because the original date was the previous week and there would be NO ONE to help check the kit out. I think since then COVID might have changed things anyway. 

In addition to the plucker we would need a vessel large enough to dunk a couple of chickens into. Using the big pot that came with the turkey fryer set up would work, but we wouldn't be able to dunk two at once. I know, minor detail - Whatever. To solve that problem I did some research and then found this behemoth:

This stockpot is 80 quarts! Everything else looks miniature

Thank you very much Amazon. This thing worked great AND the water was up to temperature in about an hour and twenty minutes. This is actually a pot for crab boils and comes with a basket that you put all the crab and other goodies into and lower into the pot. We used that for cooking the entrails (which we let the pigs have later). 

There was only one Restraining Cone, so Tom picked up one more at Wilco a couple of days before processing day.

We set up the saw horses and a piece of plywood covered with thick plastic for our evisceration station. 

Adding the plucker and the giant pot to our processing kit gives us so much flexibility. We don't have to calculate the weeks from picking up the chicks to processing day - which I mess up anyway. In the future we can just plan to pick the chicks up and then go from there. We can do two batches of chickens a year if we want and invite others to join us in the harvest. The minimum order at Jenks is 25 so there would be plenty of chickens to go around if we even had a couple of extra people coming to learn and get their hands dirty. 

There will be a second batch this year and that batch will begin on July 7th. This next batch of birds will be what is called the FryPan special. These are a heavy breed cockerel and will take 16-18 weeks to get to 6 or 7 pounds. I would be happy with a 5 pound chicken as I am having a hard time finding bags big enough for a five pound bird. We'll see how this goes. It will be a fun next project!

This little girl was just too little and it made more sense to keep her as a layer just like Cleo from the first batch a couple of years ago. I wanted to give her a name that kind of went along with her breed with is Freedom Ranger - so I said Liberty! Which was okay, but Libby is much better. After spending most of the day by herself yesterday she got introduced to the main flock earlier today. No one thought twice about her presence, she just blends right in.

Farm Life is the Best Life when you add meat to the freezer!

Daily Note for April 9, 2020

Okay, so we'll see how long this lasts - my track record here hasn't been very good. However, since I am stuck at home during this COVID-19 crisis, I may as well record some daily happenings.

Probably the cutest thing from the day had to be one of our itty-bitty American Guinea Hog piglets was getting a full-body massage.

From our experience with his big daddy, Rex, it didn't surprise us that this little dude enjoyed a good belly rub. With Rex sometimes all we would do is barely touch his side and he would totally plop down for a full-body massage like his off-spring.

Yep - the CUTEST!

Yesterday, the meaties finally were transferred out of the livestock tank that we used for a brooder and into the new and improved Stress Free Chicken Tractor.

This is definitely a deluxe living space for the meaties! The first build was almost to the specifications in the Stress Free Chicken Tractor book. Almost because the bending of the metal conduit was not going well and Tom ended up using miscellaneous copper joints to make the frame that would be the roof. This one features plastic electrical conduit and instead of a tarp, wavy plastic panels. The other plus about this is that I can stand upright in this one and there is a lot of head space to boot. The meaties were very hesitant at first, but were convinced after I brought them an extra portion of food for the day.

The work that I did today was mind-numbing, but at least I have the piglets and the chickens and ducks to visit throughout the day. I have decided to take a day of vacation tomorrow. Even though I am home, I am supposed to be doing work stuff and not farm stuff. Tomorrow I'm gonna be a farmer!

Farm Life - Best Life!

The Harvest of...

animals....more specifically ones with feathers.

A few people are aware that we raise chickens for meat and that the piglets that may come will also become bacon and ham.

The reactions are varied, but mostly whoever we might be chatting with will undoubtedly say "Oh, I couldn't do that!" Well, we usually aren't asking anyone to participate in our crazy ways unless they show a little bit of interest. Also, we try to steer the conversation away from the chopping the head off of a chicken and try to explain the humane way of doing the deed. Still no one wants to hear that there is a better(?) way.

You know, I have to say that I probably would be that person too. However, when you grow up with chickens and ducks inevitably one or more of those birds will end up in the soup pot. Which they did and my mom was tricksey about it and didn't say so ahead of time.

OH MY GOODNESS....

Well, the old chickens have to go sometime right? I imagine that his one had outlived it's productive tendencies and was just taking up space. Back then I never thought about it. It was just something that my mom did. At that time I don't think that I had much to do with the process. I think I may have been present for one of the slaughters...but I don't remember.

So fast forward a lot of years and here I am growing my own food. We (Tom and I) are growing a lot of our food. Not all though and I will be the first to say that we could do better, but we are growing more than we ever used to.

We are more that halfway to the next Freedom Ranger harvest date. On June 8th we'll be harvesting our 24 Meaties. Over the next several weeks I'll be testing the waters and looking to see who we might recruit to help with the big day. I already have a couple of people who are interested, but more hands is always a good thing.

There is no delicate way to ask someone to join in the experience. When we do just ask out right it's fairly easy to tell which camp someone is in. If we hear "Ummm...no...I couldn't do that." or just a adamant head shaking. Okay, that's probably a no. Then there are those who say "Yeah, that would be interesting I'll come watch." I also know who NOT to ask - I do want to keep certain friendships intact.

You get the idea.

So I do have a couple of neighbors who I hope will be able to come help. One is a woman who helped us last year and she was all over the evisceration of the chickens. The other is a neighbor down the street from us who is very curious about raising chickens for meat and would like to come and learn. If he has done what I suggested, maybe he'll have a couple of his own birds to harvest also.

I'm very excited that we have gotten to eight weeks with 24 chicks. I am optimistic that we will get through the next five weeks with 24.

Farm Life - it's not so bad...in fact it's awesome!

Less Than One Week

The Freedom Rangers all smooshed in the box.

The hours old chicks in the big brooder

The Meaties are coming back to the farm in less than a week! Actually, we are going to Tangent next week and will pick up our second batch of Freedom Rangers. As soon as that happens and we get them home, the countdown starts.

This year we are letting them grow out for just under 14 weeks. Our last batch was right around 11 weeks and the smallest was 3.5 lbs and the biggest may have been 4.5 lbs. I would like the smaller ones in this year's batch to have a chance to get just a little heftier by harvest day.

My other goal is to get to harvest day with a whole lot less loss than we had last year. Due to our inexperience we lost 9 chicks around week 4-ish. We should have started withholding food and keeping them to only daytime feeding. It was a huge lesson learned and now we know better.

Farm Life!

Things Just Got Real

OH.

MY.

GOODNESS.

What have I done?! Check it out...

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Product image	Description	Quantity	Price
25	Freedom Ranger07/03/2018Pickup time: 12:00 PMDelivery: NoAdd Coccidiosis Vaccination: NoAdd S.E. (Salmonella Enteritidis) Vaccination : NoShipment Temperature Recorder (100°F +): NoShipment Temperature Recorder (50°F -): NoWithhold Marek's vaccination: No	25	$58.50

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Come July 3 we will be starting to raise our first real batch of meat chickens! This is something that I have been wanting to do for a while. However, now that I have actually placed the order - I'm only freaking out slightly. I mean I'm excited, but wow, 25 little chickies is a huge deal! I was worried about keeping 10 chicks alive...but 25?! AHHHHHH!!!!

I'm seriously feeling all the crazy feelings right now. For REAL!

The video that started off this whole grow your own food thing would be THIS video. We probably watched this a bazillion times just to get ourselves ready to do the little roos last September. Also, this video will be helpful to review when we do this batch of chickens HERE. Danelle is very thorough - she explains each step as she is processing the chicken.

The good thing is that we have a little bit of time to get all mentally prepared for this - is it just me? Maybe. Once I get over the shock that I actually have done this all will be well. Then it will be business as usual. The only difference is that these chickens will only be with us for 9-11 weeks. I'm sure that the time will go fast and that processing day will be long, but I think of all the food that we'll have in the freezer. From chicken to veggies (hope, hope) we'll be set for a while. That will be worth it!

We can and will do this!