Chicken Littles

We have had the worst luck with chicks lately.  Our current batch of hens we got two years ago as chicks.  The chicks were raised in our garage initially requiring a heat lamp.  Brooding chicks is not hard but very filthy work.  The chicks fouled (pun intended) their water and food supply just as quickly as their supply was replenished.


Don't count your chickens before they hatch.

The chicks grew fast.  The rapid growth of the chicks led to overcrowding and more filth which prompted many weekends working in the cold of January to build the coop.  Our exuberance and anticipation of fresh farm eggs outpaced our planning for and construction of proper chicken quarters.  Once the chicken mansion was completed, the juvenile birds were moved in and thereafter the birds required very little.  We slaughtered all of the cockerels save one who we kept with the idea of breeding our own birds.

After the messy experience of raising the chicks by hand, we believed that it would be best if we let mother nature handle the details.  This spring two hens went broody.  A broody hen remains on the nest and rarely leaves the clutch of eggs behind.  We left sixteen eggs in a nest.  Two hens sat together keeping the eggs warm while kibbitzing about the latest gossip.  The hens soon became infested with mites due to their refusal to leave the eggs and take dust baths. 

Chicken mites are incredibly prolific and will literally suck the life out of your flock.  The mites will bite humans too as our son learned.  Aside from constant coop cleaning, we found diatomaceous earth to be the best remedy.  For much of the wet spring and early summer, we suffered the mites, members of the arachnid family.  The mites finally went away when it got warm and dry. 

After twenty days, we moved the hens to a smaller enclosure because we did not want any hatched chicks to live with the other hens and the rooster for fear that they would be pecked to death.  The nursery did not have enough room for both hens in the nest so one hen sat in the box while the other did not.  The excluded hen would steal eggs from the box and sit on them but in the process she broke an egg which was a dud.  It stank just like when Templeton took the goose egg in Charlotte's Web.

The second hen was soon ousted.  She was most displeased and clucked sadly refusing to be reintegrated with the main flock.  We broke her broodiness by locking her in a dog crate alone just like they did to Andy Dufrense (Tim Robbins) in Shawshank Redemption.

Obtusely optimistic.

We waited eagerly for our eggs to hatch expecting to have at least a dozen little chicks.  After a day, we heard cheeping from the nest and spied a lone baby chick.  Success!  Over the course of the next few days, we found a fully developed dead chick with a small hole in its shell.  It was either smothered or could not manage the energy to free itself.  Beside the stillborn chick there was no other action.  Chicks usually hatch after 21 days so any time after that the hen is forced to make a Sophie's Choice of abandoning the unhatched eggs or caring for the hatched chicks. 

Balut anyone?

The remedy, or so we thought, was to hatch the remaining eggs in our incubator and hope that the hen would accept them as her own if we could surreptitiously sneak them into the nest.  After consulting the Internet, we floated the eggs in water and found what we thought were duds.  Of course we had to test a dud and when the egg was cracked there was a fully formed chick inside.  Our son shouted, "The Internet killed the chick!"  Who knew that the Internet could be loaded with false information?  Makes us wonder if we will ever get our cut from that Nigerian Prince who so desperately needed our help.

In the end we hatched another two chicks in the incubator.  They were adopted by mama hen and are doing well.  Later, we tried to hatch another clutch of eggs in the incubator.  Of the dozen, only two hatched and one died within a day.  The other chick lived for a week before it was picked off by something.  In the end, we had twenty-eight eggs of which we managed three live chicks.

Survivors.

Two weeks ago, we ordered twenty-six chicks from a farm in Pennsylvania dutch country.  We were looking to raise some meat birds in our pasture since we did not get lambs this year.  The breed of chicken were known as "Freedom Rangers" which supposedly were better at foraging than their hyper-inbreed Rock Cross Cornish birds.  There are stories of Cornish Crosses dying from heat and dehydration because they could not figure out to move into the shade where water was awaiting them.  The Cornish Crosses also grow so fast that they can develop leg problems.  Apparently, the legs cannot keep pace with their gigantic breasts. 

The Post Office called early this morning to tell us that our chicks had arrived.  Our son insisted on going into town to get the chicks.  When he opened the box, all but two of the chicks were dead.  Nothing cuter than a box full of dead fluffy chicks.  The farm in Pennsylvania was nice enough to refund us the entire amount.


The sky has fallen.

Final tally is twenty-eight eggs unhatched or prematurely dashed eggs, twenty-six hatched but dead chicks and five live birds.  That's some good animal husbandry.

Undeterred, we ordered forty broilers from our local farm store.  Based on our prior track record, we fully expect to be ordering our fried chicken from KFC.

Pigonomics

Apologies for the lack of postings lately but the truth is we have been very busy raising the hogs; putting in a new vegetable patch; old house repairs; and working full-time jobs to support our farming habit.  New and interesting content can be hard to come by because the reality of farming is that nothing happens quickly.  For example, our three little pigs took over five months to rear, another two weeks to orchestrate the slaughter and another month for the butcher to slice, dice and smoke the meats.

We toiled through a wet Spring putting in new vegetable plot and finishing the greenhouse.  More about the vegetable patch and the preceding winter of discontent later but first let's do the numbers...

$240 Total purchase price of the three pigs
$581 2420 pounds of grain
$85   15 bushels of corn on the cob
$11   Dewormer

$917  Total cost
$604  Butcher and slaughter

Porkacopia

Bear in mind that these costs do not include fuel, labor or time which are not insignificant particularly when your dialy routine involves hauling twenty pounds of grain twice a day and watering the pigs at least three to four times a day.  The pigs loved to flip the water bucket to either make a wallow or to irritate their owners.

There is a formula to estimate the live weights of pigs which involves measuring the heart girth and length from ears to tail.  Hanging weight is roughly 70% of live weight.  Measuring a pig is not as easy as you might think.  If you have ever been in a pen with pigs you quickly realize why they say you should never trust a man who raises pigs.  The pigs are curious and interactive in the same vein that a diner eyes a lobster in a restaurant tank.  One misstep and you are going out Deadwood style.  Ironic.

Our best guess for live weight was 276 pound for Petunia, the largest animal.  She was 48" in diameter and 48" long.  Turned out that the estimate was close albeit high.  The hanging weights of Petunia, Piggy and Marigold were 196, 192 and 170 respectively.  By way of comparison, Lenny and Squiggy weighed out at 150 and 130.  To be fair, last years pigs were kept only three and half months versus five months for this year's batch.

Three not so little pigs.

The lowest pig on the totem pole invariably weights quite a bit less than the top dogs.  It is always better to raise pigs together as the competition fosters faster growth.  It can be harsh to watch the smaller pig squeezed out of the food action when the bigger pigs box out for a position of dominion over the food.  A good practice would be to have separate feeding areas or to have feed always available.

Petunia and Marigold were sold to friends at $3.49 per pound hanging weight.  This means that we recouped our out of pocket expenses and earned 194 pounds of Piggy, who incidentally is delicious.

Petunia Pig versus Lola Puppy

Pig Parable

It has been a real slog lately.  All of the snow and subsequent rain left the pig pen a quagmire.  The porkers pushed all of the straw to the side of the pleasure dome collapsing the roof.  Filthy little beasts.  The original hog panel enclosure was sufficient for two animals but the third really multiples how quickly an area is reduced to muck and deep mud.

Mud raking

Petunia, Marigold and Piggy seemed unfazed by their filthy hovel and the general malaise brought about by winter.  They are growing at a good clip albeit at different rates.  Both girls are thriving and gaining girth around their bellies and sides.  Piggy is lower to the ground and at times seems a step slower but is certainly within striking distance of his kin.

The pen area has been doubled merely by adding two panels.  The panels incidentally can be a real challenge to transport because they are sixteen feet long and four feet high.  It is a good thing that they are flexible as I was able to bend them into the pack of the pickup truck I had rented.

Set boundaries

Moving the pen is to higher ground is not overly difficult but one can get mired in the muck.  The pigs were thrilled to be on solid sod again.  They squealed and oinked as they moved onto greener pasture.  The chickens also benefit by pecking around the trenches of unearthed sod looking for leftover bugs.

After the pen was moved, the three little pigs were given a healthy ration of grain and fed kitchen scraps consisting of some leeks, eggs shells and an aborted pizza.

The pizza was a spectacular failure a few days nights before.  If you have ever made pizza you know that there is a moment of truth when you have your pie loaded on your peel and try to slide it onto the pizza stone.  In our case, the peel was short of flour or corn meal because when I tried to shimmy the pizza off, it sputtered and a couple shreds of cheese flew off but that was it.  I tried again and the pizza did a NBA-esque step fake where all of the sauce and cheese went in one direction and the dough remained fixed to the peel.  The dough was dumped unceremoniously on top of the gooey mess with the hope that the whole fiasco could be salvaged into a calzone of sorts. Talk about putting lipstick on a pig.

In the end, the pizza turned out to be an unmitigated disaster.  It looked like baby Voldemort at the beginning of the heaven-like Kings Cross station scene with Harry Potter and Dumbledore.  Rather than waste it, the pizza that must not be named was given to the pigs and a riot ensued.

Hog wild

Out of the gates, Petunia tried to monopolize the pizza fetus by boxing out the other pigs and standing in the trough.  She seemed to be the clear front runner.  Marigold would not stand for this and put her snout underneath Petunia's hind legs and upended Petunia on her head.  At this point, the girls started to scrap and nudge for better position.  During the ensuing melee, Piggy who had been waiting in the wings, snuck in and grabbed the pizza abomination and ran off with it but not before Thomas the Cock pecked out a juicy strand of cheesy goodness.

He who remains above the fray gets the last laugh.

In the end, Piggy made out like the bandit that he is.  The two other pigs were overly cocky with their large reserves of fat and muscle to notice the pig of lessor stature steal away with the prize amid all of the mud flinging. 

Meet the Porkers

Bye bye fence.

There has been a lot of action on the farm lately.  The garden lies in repose but we cannot afford to remain idle.  There are fences to be demolished and ironically, mended and installed.  The chicken coop has been moved which is more of a feat than it sounds.  The coop probably weights at least five hundred pounds.  In hindsight, it should have been built with lighter materials and wheels.  Skids were added under the coop.  My neighbor graciously let us borrow his tractor to haul it fifty feet to its new site which is closer to water and electricity.  Moving the coop gave me serious tractor envy.

Hello greenhouse hoops.

Speaking of toys, our farm could really use a full-sized pickup truck.  A week and half ago we brought home three little pigs from Bruce King http://ebeyfarm.blogspot.com/.  In addition to the pigs, the car was loaded to the gills with five by five by eight foot long juniper timbers and a full keg.  The timbers will be the base of a greenhouse and the keg is for all-grain beer brewing.  The juniper smells like cedar while the pigs smelled like pigs.  In fact, to this day the car still smells piggy.

Marigold, Piggy and Petunia eating out of a handcrafted trough.

The pigs are predominantly Berkshire, hence the black markings.  Berkshire pigs are a heritage variety known for higher marbling and darker flesh.  My father-in-law, who has raised his share of animals and pigs, says that they have more of a “dish face”.  Not sure what that means but they do have a more upturned snout than our previous pigs.  Their backs appear more humped too.  They are much calmer than the two Durocs that we got last year.  

Hmmm, brussell sprouts or an old gingerbread house?

The two little ones are siblings.  They were in a paddock with about fifty other pink pigs.  They were the only ones of their type and Piggy had scars on his flank.  Not sure why the other pigs would have beat-up on him but I have noticed discrimination amongst the different chicken breeds that we keep.  It is true that “birds of a feather flock together.”

The third pig, Petunia, was still in a farrowing pen with her mother and siblings.  Her red coloration mostly likely indicates that she is part Duroc though I am no pig expert.  She was by far the largest of the litter.  She likes to ham it up by running laps around the pig dome and standing on top of Piggy.  Poor Piggy.  All he can do is squeal mercy until something else catches Petunia’s whim.  She has broader shoulders and more condensed hams but still manages to prance.  Petunia is without a doubt queen of the roost and will probably outweigh the other animals by twenty pounds.

Pig plows and the stately pleasure dome.

We opted to get the pigs earlier this year than last because we intend to develop a new vegetable patch on the side of the old fenced yard.  The new vegetable plot will have a greenhouse.  We wanted the pigs to break up the sod prior to the greenhouse being built.  In one week the pigs rooted and manured their pen which is sixteen feet by sixteen feet.    The pen was moved recently and within an hour the pigs had torn up the sod which would have taken at least 15 minutes with a tractor or a day by hand.

"I'm worth only a few bags of grain." -Lucinda Williams

Tonight, I bought 1360 pounds of pig feed.  Feed prices are really high right now which will no doubt equal higher food costs for everyone.  Buying in bulk brings down the price to roughly $.22 per pound versus $.34 per pound if purchased in single bags, like we did last year.  You may think that ten cents is minor but over the course of raising three pigs it can add up quickly.  There is a razor thin margin of profit when it comes to hobby farming which is why most people hold a full-time job to support their farming habit.

Xanadu

The low profit margin per animal gave rise to factory farming where volume equates to profit.  After reading descriptions of industrial pig farming, we are all the more happy knowing that our pigs will have a pretty decent run even if it would be cheaper and easier to buy pork from the supermarket.

Food Folly

The news these days can be downright depressing with the Wall Street protests, middling economic growth, reports of higher food costs and the birth of the seven billionth baby.  In this season of discontent, we sought refugee by traveling to eastern Washington to fish Lake Roosevelt.  The terrain differs so greatly east of the Cascades that it felt like Arizona more than the Pacific Northwest.

Lake Roosevelt is big.  It was created by the Grand Coulee dam and stretches 150 miles practically to the Canadian border.  The Columbia River is no joke either.  No wonder the federal government is spending billions of dollars trying to reform the Hanford Nuclear reservation given the enormous value of the river to so many.

Occupy Lake Roosevelt

Fishing Lake Roosevelt is not for the faint of heart or the cash poor.  We used a 24 foot aluminum hulled boat with a gigantic inboard motor.  There was a separate engine for trolling along with a downrigger and sonar.  Despite all of technology, we managed to land a solitary rainbow trout, which is probably the most expensive fish ever.  Chalk it up to experience and quality family time.

Meet my catch, Spruce Goose.

 Upon our return home, we resumed the final harvest which included quince and squash.

Quintessential goodness.

 

Our neighborhood apparently was once an apple orchard.  Vestiges of the orchard remain in heirloom varietals scattered over our neighbors' lots.  We were invited to a cider crush where two of our neighbors combined the harvest from roughly five trees.  The total output was close to 25 gallons of the best cider ever.  The juice was not quite as sweet or rich as store bought but the price was right.  More importantly, we were able to add to our locavore karma after the fossil fueled fishing trip.

Cider crush rules

Monster (apple) mash

Next stop, hard cider or a lot of vinegar

Silence of the Lambs

Hoptober

Autumn has arrived in its full glory.  Harvest has been in full swing.  We have been harvesting hops, tomatoes, cucumbers, Asian pears and squash.  Last weekend we collected over five pounds of chanterelles.  Firewood collection has been going full tilt with the daytime temperatures in the sixties and overnight temperatures dropping to the low forties.

Burn baby burn.

The change in season has given impetus for meat curing and meat harvesting. Two weeks ago, we made sopresseta which is curing in the basement.  When visitors come to the farm, I always offer to show them my sausage downstairs and then my wood outside.  Husbands are usually shocked by my audacity but soon fall into jealous envy of my well-hung meat and turgid wood pile.

Dirk Diggler has nothing on me.

Yesterday, we slaughtered the lambs.  Gary and Ginger had become great additions to the place.  We lost Lovey to coyotes at the beginning of August.  We found poor Lovey eviscerated and missing her leg.  Damn coyotes could even bother to eat the choice ribs cuts or loin.  After that we made sure the lambs were penned in at night.  Farming teaches you that hubris or inattentiveness leads to loss.  Some events can be arbitrary and uncontrollable (like summer happening late) but by in large you have to be in constant motion if you want to even attempt to keep up with all that nature throws at you.

The lambs were Katahdin, a hair sheep, bred to survive the tough climate of Maine.  Our lambs, once they got over their scours did a great job in the pasture that had a variety of grasses, brushes, alders, nettles and of course blackberries.  Amazingly the sheep stripped the blackberries of their leaves and ate ivy.  Their palette was not as diverse as goats but we were impressive nonetheless with their overall hardiness and temperament.  In the afternoons they would frolic while eating fallen apples and plums.  They refused to eat Asian pears probably because they were racist.

Tools of the (skinning) trade

We lost two chickens a few days ago to either raccoons or coyotes signaling increasing predator activity.  The slaughter has been planned for sometime but it is nice not having to worry about the lambs or rushing home before dark to be able to find the lambs.  On more than one occasion the lambs were stuck in a bramble or in the rain and would not go to their shed easily.

This time, the slaughter was done by us.  Our goal was to drop both lambs at the same time with a head shot. Ginger went right down but Gary was tougher.  My shot must have been off because he seemed to be still breathing albeit labored.  We drug him out and I cut his throat and he was still moving.  I shot him again and after one great death throe he finally passed.  The scene reminded me of Good Fellas when Tommy DeVito (Joe Pesci) brutally beats Billy Batts (Frank Vincent) and stuffs him in his trunk.  After a leisurely dinner with Tommy's mother, Henry Hill (Ray Liotta), Jimmy Conway (Robert De Niro) and Tommy learn that Billy is in fact not dead and are forced to finish him with swift brutality.  My mob analogy continues with the bodies hanging in the garage with plastic sheeting on the ground.

Slaughter, not  funny like a clown or meant to amuse you.

We might have the lamb livers tonight with some fava beans and a nice Chianti.  Oops, I am mixing my movie metaphors.

Apple of My Eye

Pure joy in the garden of eating.

We have been harvesting the ancient craggy apple tree that we inherited with the property.  Funny, we had no idea what and if it would fruit but I spent the better part of three weekends this winter pruning.  The reward was a bounty of apples that our neighbor calls "Golden Transparent".

The apples range in size from golf balls to softballs covered with a thin yellow skin.  There was no water core but on the larger apples the cores can be hollow and cavernous.  The flesh bruises easily and has a texture of a golden delicious.  The flavor on the greener apples is tart but sweet, like a granny smith only more intense.  Overripe apples can be mushy but still edible in the same way you can devour all of a perfectly ripe pear until only its seeds and stem remain.

How do you like them apples?

All in all, we were happily surprised that our magnificent tree produced such good produce. The tree produced about five large shopping bags of fruit with a lot of fruit still left on the tree, out of reach of our climbing and ladder efforts.

Being "food industrious" can be oppressive.  You feel as if you must process every piece of fruit even if after peeling and coring some of the smaller apples all you have is a bite. We gave a couple of bags away not wanting to have guilt of wasting food on our souls.  It is better to spread the oppression of being food misers.  

We ate as many ripe apples as we could manage in order to capitalize on our good fortune. After that we set out trying to preserve and store the apples.  The apples represent storage of the sun's energy just as all food does.  Animals are energy batteries in that they convert their feed into flesh. For farmers, being able to preserve or extend the energy saved in plants, fruits or livestock resulted in great inventions such as beer, jam and bacon.  (Yum, that sounds like the start of a good meal.)

The old-timers must have taken great satisfaction staving off starvation through the bleakness of winter with calories that they had grown and processed the summer before.  So when life gives you apples, then make apple sauce (among other goodies).

We added some ripe rose hips to coarsely chopped apples and boiled the essence out of them.  Rose hips incidentally are pretty delicious fresh picked too, almost plum like.

Life through rose hip glasses.  Isn't it grand?

After several hours, the remaining mash was taken off the heat and added to a cheese cloth lined colander where it dripped drop by drop overnight.  Add some sugar and the result was about seven small jars of apple rose hip jelly which tasted like floral honey.

Trade for two tickets to Jerry band?

Some of the apples were chopped and frozen for future fruit pies, more was made into apple sauce and canned.  The remainder was processed into slices and run through the food dehydrator.  We ran several loads and we got three quart baggies.  The kids love them and are chowing them constantly.  If we were in the olden days, we would have starved two weeks after autumn began.  We will have to plant at least ten more apple trees if we are to produce enough for a full year.