Our New Addition

We've got a little problem here.

THE PROBLEM

Actually it's a fairly large problem.  Our barn which is probably a hundred years old is just overrun with vines. Poison ivy and other mystery vines are eating it.  I certainly don't have the ambition to tackle such a task let alone the time to do it if I did have some burning desire to be up to my earholes in poison ivy.  Becky says her ex once attempted to clean up the monstrosity, but ended up being one big poison ivy rash. (I'm not laughing at him just with him :)  Anyway, I'm not much allergic to poison ivy, but still I'm not interested in all of that. Here is where several pieces of life come together. 

• We've got a barn that needs some attention
• We've always been interested and intrigued at the thought of having a goat or three
• Becky's new program means that she is also now the FFA advisor at school
• Becky met an FFA teacher named Anna at a conference she attended this summer
• Anna raises goats
• Goats love woody viney overhead type plants

This is where the light bulb comes on. "DING!"

THE SOLUTION

Meet Nemo. She's a  little special as you can see.  She's got a genetic deformity in that her one ear didn't develop properly, so to someone who is trying to build a whole herd of goats she may not be worth much but to a small farm just starting out like Red Rooster Ranch she's perfect.  She's probably not going to end up as much more than a pet, (we have a bad habit about that) but the idea is that Nemo will gladly do the work of cleaning up around our barn for us and love every minute of it.  We're going to put her to work around the hay barn and then after that I think she's going to clean up around the pole barn where I intend to put my chicken slaughtering operation next spring.  I'll keep you updated on how she's doing here as time progresses, but we are very excited to welcome her in.

Our broilers are doing very well and I'm encouraged that as of today we've only lost one bird out of the batch we started with.  We had one die at about three days old. Must have just been a weak one. Anyway, with this being the first year we've raised broilers I'm absolutely astounded at how fast they grow.  Don't get me wrong here, I'm not sure I love the fact that we've created a demand for such a freak show of a bird, but fast growing, double breasted chickens are what we (the consumers) have told the market that we want.  So, as I may have said before we are going to raise broilers in the healthiest way we can.  We are going to (as Joel Salatin says) let the chicken express his chickeness.  The results, we hope and Joel swears to, will be a better tasting, healthier, and more nutritional end product.  I can't wait. We are getting closer to the day when they will meet their maker so I guess I need to figure out who is going to process these for us this first year. Well until next time....