Aaannnd...

Just like that the year is almost over! I'm not sure where the past couple of months went! As I look back on the year I am amazed at all that we accomplished and the things that didn't seem to work out at all.

Adding poultry went very well!  We didn't lose any as chicks from the original 10 chicks to illness. One cockerel was cannibalized later after they were relocated to the great outdoors. We added six more pullets since our original 10 ended up being half pullets and half cockerels. Early last month one of them decided to run away from home. Not  long after getting the first chickies we we brought home the duck and the goose. They are quite the characters and we love that we decided to add them to the flock!

They didn't seem to mind the snow. Although before I took this photo they were
huddled in their little shelter next to the coop.

We successfully processed three cockerels on Labor Day. They were about 19 weeks old and about 10 weeks past their prime as far as being considered broilers. They were excellent stewing chickens though. Labor Day morning was interesting go HERE to read that experience.

So we know that we can raise chickens and waterfowl!

What didn't go as well would be the garden. Hardly anything worked. I decided to try growing the tomatoes in the big garden this year and they did okay, but not great. We hardly had anything to harvest that wasn't affected by the blossom end rot which. We did have a few that we brought in ate with a few meals which were good, but not enough to actually make sauces to save for later. The two hoodlums (duck & goose) enjoyed most of the tomatoes since I pretty much gave up on them.

The tomatoes will go back into the hoop house in 2018.

I did get greens, carrots, peas and loads of potatoes. However, no beans - thanks to hungry bunnies - one of the easiest things to grow and we didn't get enough to make a meal. I had direct sowed over my seeds and had over 20 little seedlings pop up only to have almost each one nipped off a few weeks later. I'm blaming the deer for that. And the bunnies for keeping the plants trimmed to almost nothing. No flowers except for some really late germinating Cosmos and even later blooming. Tom's pumpkins worked out pretty well, but with them being planted in the front yard - they were shaded by the tree that is smack-dab in the middle. There were a few decent pie pumpkins and a few carving pumpkins. They more than likely cross pollinated so they turned out slightly off from what they should have been. To say the least the garden was very disappointing.

The plan for 2018:

1. Add a few more pullets - at the neighborhood holiday party we connected with several people who are interested in buying eggs.
2. Add a half dozen or so of little girl ducks for Mr. Shelly. It would be nice for Sheldon to have some of his own kind to boss around and not the chickens. Plus, duck eggs are fantastic!
3. Meat Chickens - processing our extra cockerels was not a terrible experience. It was nice to have a little extra food that we grew in the freezer! 
4.  Pigs - Maybe a breeding pair...maybe a couple of piglets for meat. We could raise the offspring for meat or sell the piglets...this will be a totally new learning experience!

A little ambitious? Maybe, but we know that we can raise poultry from chicks so that won't be too much of an issue. We got our feet wet by processing three of our own chickens already and I know where we can rent the equipment - so I'm not freaked out about that. The other thing that we'll need to do is build that Chicken Tractor for the broilers. Also, I have the idea to modify a small room on one end of the parking shed that would be perfect for the little chickies. They will be spending a few weeks in the brooder in the garden garage. They will grow out of that box fast though, so we gotta start  thinking about what needs to be done to make the modification. More on that later...

The one thing that I am concerned about is the pigs. The only other mammals I have been responsible for keeping alive have been cats and dogs. So, this will be quite the learning experience. After some research (not much, but enough to make a decision) we have decided that the American Guinea Hog would be ideal for our mini-farm. The basics of these little guys is that they top out at around 200 lbs for males and 150 for females. Other breeds would be slaughtered AT 250 - 300 pounds...that's a lot of pig!! So, in my quick research I have figured out that these guys would be a great addition to our mini-farm. They don't root around, but are more of a forager. They are pretty friendly and on the smaller side. Also, there is a YouTube channel we have been following, Art & Bri, they recently added pigs to their homestead and they are American Guinea Hogs. Coincidence? Perhaps...but it will be another place to observe the habits of these swine. Another help will be the farm that specializes in these guinea hogs and they are located not terribly far from us. I hope to schedule a time to visit and take a look at their operation and get more information on raising these pigs.

So as this year quickly comes to an end I look back and see more success than failure. We have to fail in order to learn...so really, this year has been one learning experience after another.

Here's looking forward to 2018!!

Day Before Thanksgiving

I've been away from this space for a little while and bam! It's the day before Thanksgiving! I'm tired, but thankful for a variety of things. So here we go...

Let's start with having Tom home from the hospital! Way back on October 25 he was feeling not so great and visited Urgent Care who in turn said - You've got appedicitis, you need to go the hospital. Oh okay - simple appendectomy. Not so much. After two and half weeks and a second surgery he was discharged and came home on the 12th. Yay!

Having Tom was in the hospital meant it was up to me to keep the outdoor feathered creatures and the indoor furry creature alive...okay that worked out. Yay!

A week after Tom was admitted I came home from work to this sight:

The coop lost it's lid during a wind storm. 

After I took this photo I pretty much lost it. It felt overwhelmed and didn't need to see this upon my arrival at home. The good thing was that we didn't lose any chickens due to this minor catastrophe. My dinner plan for that evening was to spend it with friends at their house, but after seeing this - that wasn't going to happen. So I sent a short text and the photo to my friend Dani and said that I needed help getting this put back together. It wasn't that the top was heavy, it's just too big for me to handle. Good Friend Dani came right over and then her husband Dan shortly after and we were able to get the roof back on the coop and then I weighted it down (as it should have been) and called it good. Tom will need to do the repair - again.  Yay!

We had planned to get the chickens moved to a new spot the weekend after Tom happened to be admitted to the hospital. So I had to go to plan B which was to wait and see when he would be coming home. Once I realized that he would not be anytime soon, I then asked for our small group peeps to help with some chores that needed to get done and were put on hold. A couple of hours during the morning of November 10 and the chicken fence was relocated and the front yard garden was cleaned up. Yay!

This was taken after I rolled the coop to the new space.

Later the same day after visiting Tom and then running some errands I arrived home to find that the chickens were not in their temporary area. Dopey me didn't secure the fence before heading out for the afternoon. Perfect. Actually it WAS perfect - the coop is pretty heavy when all of the birds are in it! Jersey Giants are BIG and a little hefty! So wheeling around an empty coop is AMAZING! Yay!

Of course, now I have to get the girls and Thor into the new space. After trying to herd them in - which is like herding cats...I had to think about it for a minute. I then realized that if I wheeled out their food bin they would probably follow. So I did and they followed! Yay!

The new space where the chickies promptly started working on Mary's garden boxes.

The only other thing that REALLY needed to be done I need to transplant some plants into the Fall Garden space. I could have had someone stay and help with that task, but I felt that they did enough and I didn't want to ask for more. I suppose all is not lost...I'll have a chance to do that this coming weekend. It will be late, but it can't be  helped. It will be an experiment - like most things are in our gardens.

After all of the fun things that happened at our house, Tom finally got to come home!! Yeah, it was an appendectomy, but it wasn't so routine. I am thankful that it wasn't even MORE serious than it was, and as it turns out, it was pretty serious. In this I got a taste of what life would be like if he were not around. I'm not so sure that I could do this working full time and trying to maintain a mini-farm.

I'm incredibly thankful for our friends who said they would help and they did - providing meals for me, helping on our property and visiting Tom in the hospital as well as being awesome prayer warriors! Once again I am reminded that we are not meant to live life alone. We were created for relationships whether the times are good or otherwise, we need other people in our lives.

Here's to the 2017 Holiday season which seemed to come so fast this year!

Making Connections

At one time during one of our small group meetings we had talked about goals or something ~ I don't remember what the focus was, but I do remember that I shared my big ol' dream to make something of the property that the Lord so graciously led us to nearly 20 years ago.

Overall, the goal of the church that we belong to is to be mission minded. Sharing who Jesus is in our everyday existence?

Oh sure...okay...hmmmm - Got It!

I keep wanting to say that I'm not very good at this whole sharing Jesus thing, but I forget that just being a friend to someone or encouraging someone who needs it is sharing Jesus in a very personal way. I was reminded of how we are connected with all sorts of people that we encounter in everyday places. So yeah, I guess I got this sharing thing down. 

What I'm learning about myself is that when I am home, I want to be home. Doing my own thing and not having to interact with more people than I really need to, because deep down inside I'm an introvert. I can socialize and be engaging for so long, but I need and LOVE my down time. However, if we are going to make something of this property I need to step out of my comfort zone and share what we have with those around us (our neighbors) and those who are a part of our church family, but mainly with the people who are not a part of our church family.

What am I getting at here? Ever since the houses were built across the street from us I had thought of ways to get to know our neighbors. More than the smiling and waving as we drive by. Anyone can do that! The more that I thought that we would create a little hobby farm for ourselves, the more I realized that whatever abundance we are blessed with the "extra" could be our way of connecting to our neighbors (aka "the world" per Felida Bible's purpose statement). I'll tell you what...this has been a project in the making, but this connecting thing is finally starting to happen!

Until this year we had been sharing what we have been growing in the garden and it's been fun bringing fresh tomatoes or whatever else we might have an abundance of to our neighbors and chatting with them for a minute or two. Seriously, nobody can turn down fresh veggies right? 

When we added the chickens to the mix in the form of baby chicks, that was the game changer. We started out with one week old chicks (straight run) and when we figured out how many of them might be little dudes, we added six more Australorps which were about a week behind the Jersey Giants and a good deal smaller. Eventually the sixteen chicks turned into five cockerels and eleven pullets. Then the cockerel count went to four (one died, let's chalk that up to Natural Selection) and then on Labor day down to one. 

Before we harvested the cockerels, one or two of the Aussies started laying. So, I was curious and really wanted to start understanding what kind of timeline we were working with I started reading about when the girls would start laying. Many of the forums had varied answers to my questions. Jersey's, being a larger breed, would start later than normal. The Aussies were pretty much right on track though and started laying at around 20 or 21 weeks which was at the end of August. 

Miss Chickie says "Excuse Me!"

At the beginning when the little girls (Australorps) started laying it was slow going, a couple eggs here and a couple eggs there. It stayed that way for a little while and I started having eggs for lunch! A couple of weeks ago things changed and all of the littles were laying then about a week ago we started getting more than 6 a day. Which meant that the Jersey Giant girls started to laying. The laying habits of the little girls is pretty much what I have read. The Jersey's were a different story. 

All of the things that I read about the JG's is that the grow fast and take their time maturing. Also, some people had posted that it took more than 6 months before they would see their JG's first egg. Well, the number started going up around October 4th - so either the Aussies are laying more than once a day or those BIG girls are getting into the nesting boxes and getting to work as well.

Good Girls!!

Now we are experiencing an abundance of eggs more than we can use in a week. It's time to get a little creative. One of the things that I was doing was making ice cream once a week with yolks in the base. The difference - my previous batches were made with store bought eggs - this last batch home grown eggs! We also an egg here and there for breakfast or for a special meal like Huevos Rancheros. So simple, but oh so good! Seriously, I need to get some more egg dishes going! 

Even so we still have quite a few eggs on hand with more eggs added to that daily so what do we do?!

Share them of course!

In doing this we have made some "deals" with a couple of people. The family directly across the street from our driveway asked if we wanted the eggshells back for the chickens - something I hadn't thought of...YES!! Somehow that turned into us also saying that kitchen scraps would be good too! Yesterday afternoon their two oldest boys (poor little brother had to watch from afar) came over with a little bucket with a few food scraps and tossed those into the chicken pen. Yay! Way to get the kiddos involved! One of them even asked if they could pet one of the chickens...oh goodness, that is cute!

Tom decided that we should take some to our Master Gardener neighbors who are in the older neighborhood just a little further down the road. I love their yard! They pretty much took all of the grass out of the yard and planted flowers and veggies (annuals and perennials) - amazing! So a few days ago we be-bopped over and presented a basket of eggs to Julie. She was surprised and so thankful that we would offer up the eggs for FREE. It was fun connecting with her and chatting for a few minutes. Before we went back home she mentioned how she had a friend who raised chickens and she used to get eggs from her and helped her process some chickens for meat. 

What the WHAT?!

That perked me up and little more about when we get raise the birds she could come and help with the harvest. That would also mean she take home a chicken or two. Man...we need to get out more!

This is just a step in the connection direction and things are going well right now. It amazes me how things work out when you say it out loud to a group of good friends who believe in encouraging each other and their dreams. So thankful for them!

Farm Fresh Eggs!!!

Now, I know that the egg production will go down during the winter months, but I'm not sure how much. That is the big question right now. I'm hopeful that the Aussies will continue to lay here and there when the days are shorter and cooler...there will be a report here when we are in the middle of our Pacific Northwest winter.

The other way I'm going to try connecting will be by growing veggies in low tunnels and the hoop house. I've already got the plants started, just need to get them into the beds and covered up before the month is over!

Oh man, connecting on the food level is AWESOME!

Three Less...on a Labor Day

Why we chose to process three of the cockerels on Labor Day is beyond me, besides the fact that we did not have all of the items to do the processing, I don't know why I chose Labor day. Being a holiday probably was the biggest reason and we didn't have any other plans.

As far as needed equipment, we knew that we needed something to dunk the birds into before plucking. We thought we still had our turkey fryer from soooo many years ago. After Tom looked for it he vaguely remembered that we donated it for a church sale thinking that we wouldn't ever used it again. So early last week I was pokin' around on craigslist for a turkey fryer and there was a barely used one for $40 - SCORE!

With the turkey fryer purchased, the only other things we needed were knives - sharp ones. So Tom decided on a couple that we have at home and used the honing tool to get a good sharp edge on them. They worked fine, but after having done the processing, we're going to have to revisit the knife situation for future processing days.

We would need a table - so we covered up an old homemade table (formerly used for seed trays) with plastic. Then we took a couple of storage bins to fill with ice and water for rinsing and keeping the birds fresh post plucking/eviscerating.

The first task after getting stuff set up was to gather up the young roosters we wanted to cull from the flock. As I have mentioned in earlier posts we do not need 4 roosters! As the young roosters started maturing more there was more chaos in the chicken run/arena. The boys really were bullies! Also, there was one in particular that I have been wanting to be rid of as he had been coming after me and challenging me during evening chores. It was getting bad enough that I didn't want to really go out there and have to deal with him. We had to get a little tricksey to catch these guys and the first one actually escaped the old brooder (he is our keeper). We were able to grab the others once they let their guard down and started heading out of the chick mobile. We used their old brooder as a waiting room - if you will. By the time we got around to doing the deed they were not as crazy. Here the the "lucky ones..."

The one in the middle was the more aggressive dude.

My hope was to keep the "good" one. Having observed the young boy birds the past couple of months we had him picked out, but we never got the leg bands to tag him. Over the past month or so, his tail feathers started to look like the others and we lost track of which of the dudes was our keeper. In the end I am not sure who we have, but he seems happy and his crow is the least strong of the four, so I'm okay with that. He might be our original Thor - if he wasn't before he is now. As there is no more competition from the others, he will mature into a nice roo.

How the processing went - it wasn't smooth. However, I can say that it was a learning opportunity. We wanted to make sure that these 3 didn't suffer too badly, but in all honesty, the first two were the learning kills. The last one (which was also the undesirable young rooster) actually went well.

This is how the morning went down...

#1 - With this dude we figured out that the cone was a little on the smallish side. Man, Jersey Giants are BIG! Everytime Tom would try to get him in there he would crane his neck in such a way that we couldn't get a hold of his head through the bottom. Once I was able to get to his head and we could stretch his neck out through the bottom it was time to make the cut. Well, things didn't go that well and he ended up not bleeding out very quickly and he was still breathing. So we took him out and had to lay him down on the ground and do another cut. Once we felt confident that he was unconcious we felt pretty bad because the process was drawn out a bit. Then we got him plucked (by hand) and eviscerated him - it wasn't pretty.

#2 - Okay, I decided that I needed to try to do this one. After we got him into the cone I contemplated for a moment where I needed to make the cut and thought it was good...he was bleeding out all right, but at one point he totally popped out of the cone. The only fortunate thing is that he had almost no strength so actually being able to get him was easy. Tom returned and we did the deed and felt a bad for this kill as well.

#3 - Well, with two failed kills we had the motivation to not fail again on our side. Also, this was Mr. I'm-Gonna-Kick-The-Person-Who-Feeds-Me dude, so that helped us ensure this one would be the "clean" kill. Thankfully it was and we both felt relief. I tried my had at the evisceration, but it wasn't going well, so Tom essentially did all three of the birds.

Since the weekend I searched for chicken processing on the YouTubes and found a really good one by Weed 'em and Reap go HERE if you want to check it out.

How are we feeling about doing this? Personally, I was determined. After following many homesteaders on YouTube and other farmers I have decided that in order to make sure that what we are eating is good for us, we need to grow it ourselves. This makes sense to me and I wish that we had started doing this a long time ago. Also, I come from a home where there were chickens on the property (not just a few) and culling the flock was done on occasion. So it wasn't anything that was terribly freaky. It has taken Tom a few days more to work through what has happened, the mistakes that we made and the things we need to do differently.

Since I really didn't feel terrible I am starting to wonder if I'm more heartless than I ever imagined...

In the end, there were two things that made this first processing difficult. The Jersey's are: 1. A large breed and 2. They were almost 20 weeks old. Cornish Cross are processed at 8 weeks and are a more standard size bird, as they are the bird that you'll find in the meat case at most markets. A mature Jersey Rooster can get up to 15 pounds and I don't think that they were far off of that weight. Even at 8 weeks we still weren't quite sure which of the roos we wanted to make sure to keep. It took some time to really figure out the personalities of the 4 that were left (#5 was eaten by something).

So, we will explore other breeds specifically for meat birds - that will be a future post.

What will we do different next time?

The number one thing would be get better knives that we can just dedicate to chicken processing. We used knives that were a mish-mash of items from the kitchen and a couple that we had used in the garden. Earlier this week I did a little research and found that others had gotten a set of poultry processing knives from a place called Cornerstone Farm Ventures:

Go HERE to check out the set

Our goal for a future chicken harvest is to raise more meat birds which will probably require more of a set up as pictured below. We can equipment from the local Conservation District. Let me tell you this is a sweet deal for $70 (which includes a $50 refundable cleaning deposit). This set up has everything that we will need to process more than three birds! Check it out...

What an AWESOME set up!
(Fake chickens not included)

The last thing that I can think of would be extra people. More hands would make for a quick processing. The three that we did took most of the morning and we did alright. I know that this will be the challenging part. Even if we were to offer a chicken to those who come and help, I'm not sure that would be alluring enough. Not many of our friends that I can think of would be remotely interested. We might have to call on friends who hunt to help with the next round of chickens.

I get it, the idea of taking the life of a happy, healthy bird is not a popular one. It has been said on Abundant Permaculture "Every day something must die so that you can live."  

Seriously, I could go on and on...I feel so strongly about being responsible about our food and how we grow the veggies (no chemicals) and how we would raise the chickens (on pasture). Why oh why wouldn't other people consider that too?

Grow.

Your.

Food.