Yesterday was a true test of a farmer’s mettle. I and my friend and neighbor Bobby Hunter and my dad were able to separate our eleven day old calf and contain him while banding him. We now have a beef steer! I guess more technically, in a week or two we’ll have a beef steer, but it’s all done now except for the waiting. In about 24 months he’ll be ready to harvest.
In other news, we have an imminently pregnant cow who we’re keeping a watchful eye on and anticipating a new arrival soon!
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Cows and Bees and Chickens, Oh My!
First of all, I would like to announce that the pictures page has finally been added properly. We are using Picasa Web Albums to do the picture management and it took me a while to find a plugin that worked to my satisfaction, and then another while for me to figure out how to use it properly.
Secondly, it has been an exciting and tiring two weeks for us as we’ve been preparing mentally and physically for the arrival of our new farm residents. I’ve been putting up fence in order to be able to move the cows daily through different parts of the field. This is good for the cows and for the field. Saturday they all arrived safely and unloaded calmly settled in quickly. Since then, they have been getting familiar with the electric fence and a water trough that moves daily, both of which are new to them. The dogs have also been getting to know the place and the new people. I’ll not be saying “pictures will come soon” much anymore since one of my Christmas presents was a small digital camera that I can fit in my pocket and generally always have with me. In other words, click here for pictures, and here are a couple to preview.
The end of winter is near!
We have completed the cross fence. I have a picture of it in progress with snow on the ground. We had quite a little rain this past weekend and even though our little bridge look WAY overbuilt back when it was really dry, after the few inches of rain it doesn’t look so overbuilt now 🙂 The water got up on the drive, but did not wash across, so our gravel is still all there!
We’ve also been doing a bit of planting, at the beginning of winter we planted 12 more blueberry plants. This past week we planted 5 redbud trees and two grape vines. There’s a picture of the trellis too.
http://picasaweb.google.com/kg4fyh/Farm#
Winter Quiet
Just wanted to get something out about what’s going on in all this cold. It’s quiet at the farm for the most part, the bees are all in their hive and all the plants are in their dormant state. It’s a very harsh, sharp landscape compared to the lush of summer green, but I do enjoy being able to see the field contours and through the woods. The only thing really changing right now is the addition of a cross fence between fields 1 and 2. As I get more of it constructed there will be pictues 🙂
Time to Make Chicken Stock
The weather cooled off considerably so I can turn my attention to making chicken stock and heating up the kitchen with my Grandmother’s old, trusty, avocado green stove. So I will break out the necks, backs, and other miscellaneous chicken parts I have in the freezer and shortly my house will smell like delicious chicken soup.
My “recipe” for stock was adapted from this recipe below but I typically use what I have without getting uptight about the preciseness of measurements. I like to freeze it in 2 cup increments which make it easy to use in recipes later.
One note on food safety…..warm stock can be a breeding ground for bacteria so it is very important for the strained broth to be brought to room temperature quickly and then promptly put in the freezer or the refrigerator. I always make sure that I bring any reheated stock to a boil for a few minutes just to be on the safe side.
If you have any questions, just let me know!
Chicken Stock
(Adapted from Dairy Hollow House Soup and Bread, A Country Inn Cookbook by Crescent Dragonwagon copyright 1992)
4-5 pounds chicken, preferably from 1 stewing hen or the necks, wings, backs, and feet from young hens
2 medium onions, unpeeled and quartered
8 whole cloves
3 ribs celery with leaves, each broken in 2 or 3 big pieces
2 medium carrots, scrubbed and cut in large chunks
2 bay leaves
3 cloves garlic, unpeeled
1 ½ teaspoons salt
6-8 black peppercorns
Large pinch each of dried rosemary, thyme, basil, sage and savory
3-3 ½ quarts water
1-2 tablespoons white or cider vinegar
1. Rinse the hen or chicken parts leaving the skin on but removing any big lumps of fat. Place the chicken pieces in the pot.
2. Stud each onion quarter with a clove. Surround the chicken with the studded onions and add all the other vegetables and seasonings. Pour over all the cold water and vinegar.
3. Bring the liquids gradually to a boil over medium heat then immediately turn down the heat and let simmer, uncovered, skimming any surface foam, for 2 ½ to 3 hours. Stir occasionally. You may replenish the water as it cooks down; otherwise, you will get a lesser amount of stock.
4. Remove the stock from the heat and strain into a clean container. Discard the solids. Let cool, uncovered, 30 minutes. If the weather is warm, speed up the cooling processing by placing it in a sink of cold water. Refrigerate or freeze the cooled stock immediately. You may defat the broth easily after chilling as the fat will form a skim on the surface. Simply remove before using the stock.
Honey Haul
We harvested honey this year! This is our second year managing honeybees and we harvested a bit of honey for our efforts so far. We just finished bottling our haul this year and have about 1.5 gallons of honey. Unfortunately the honey we harvested has already been spoken for, but hopefully next year we’ll reap more and have some extra to sell!
Broilers, Round Two
Well, it’s been a while since we’ve posted anything new, but here it is now! We have successfully finished round two of broilers, which will be the last round for the season. Our feed conversion ratio was 4.38:1, or 4.38lbs of feed for 1lb of dressed meat. There were some hiccups with the feed situation, but I think that we’ll be able to remedy them for the next round. One was the grind for the baby chicks was too coarse and the other was that we think that either the protein was too low, or there was a genetic abnormality with the birds because we had weights ranging from 1lb to 6lbs and they should have all been pretty close to 4.5, but they weren’t. We’ll just chalk this up to experience and try again next year. All in all not a bad round, just not everything we thought it would be.
New batch on the way
Well, the first round went well and now we’re going to try it again. A little differently this time… We are changing the ration fed to the chickens from the feed mill (using fish meal) to a totally local vegetarian certified organic ration. The feed is from Mr. Alfred Farris at Windy Acres Farm in Orlinda, TN, just 30 miles from us. They are a certified organic grain producing farm and I think we’re lucky to have such an opportunity so close! I picked up the ration on Monday and unloaded it into our little storage shed and it filled the WHOLE thing to the rafters. I now have to find another place to put my layer feed and all the other chicken accoutrements like waterers and lamps and such.
Raising chickens so far is fun and I’m approaching it as an experiment, I am an engineer after all, and we’re trying to change as few variables as possible. So for this next batch we’re changing the feed ration and the weather will be different. I have also changed the pen very slightly to make it a bit easier to move, but I don’t think this will have any bearing on the experiment. The weather this time is MUCH warmer than the last, so it will be an interpretation of results in the end and a challenge to attribute differences to either the weather or the food.
Our next batch of chickens arrives tomorrow or Saturday and we’re ready and excited! Oh, here’s a picture of the feed stacked to the ceiling:
Survey Time!
Thanks again for being willing to participate in our focus group and to share your feedback with us. Hopefully by now you have had a chance to try your chicken. If so, here is the link for you to complete a 10 question survey regarding your experience here. If not, please keep this email and complete it once you have.
Thank you, too, for your support and encouragement of our endeavors. It means a lot!
Judith and Jonathan
First Batch Complete!
Yesterday was processing day, the day of truth, if you will and it was a SUCCESS! With the help six other people we were able to process 88 chickens in under 4 hours for a time of about 2.7 minutes a bird. A BIG thank you to all our help, it would not have happened without you! Thanks to our fastidious bagging and labeling help who dutifully recorded the weight of every bird twice, once on the label and once on the record sheet, we were able to calculate some numbers last night and I really do love numbers, especially these numbers. The average weight was 5.1 lbs and using that weight we have calculated that the conversion ratio of grain to pound of dressed bird was 4.1:1, so it took 4.11lbs of grain for every 1lb of dressed bird. Not too bad for our first attempt! We fed exactly 2000lb of feed and the birds were eight weeks and one day old.
We’re looking forward to more customer feedback, but at this point we’re almost certain we’ll do it again in the near future!