Winter Storm On The Way

The word on the street is that a pretty powerful winter storm is headed our way.  I've heard several reports, but it looks like we'll see a couple inches of snow tonight and then it should change into ice and freezing rain.  The latest forecast I saw showed us getting more ice and the heavy snow going further to the north.  I guess we'll have to wait and see.  Last night the projected snowfall was 8 inches by Thursday, but the latest update of that projection only calls for four and a half inches by Thursday morning.  Either way it should be pretty interesting to see how it unfolds.  I'm ready for warm weather, but I am also a sucker for bad snowstorms.  I love them.  I think it's because for just a minute it slows everything down.  We really don't have any reason to be out on the roads anyway around here so I hope it comes in full force.  We've got a freezer full of meat and I've got hay and layer feed to get us through until it clears up so I kind of hope we get a pile of snow and ice dumped on us.  That's just me.  I know Becky and the kids will be doing the snow dance tonight in hopes of a day or two off of school. 

Running Around Town

This morning I got up and got the kids fed and on the bus.  After they left Kennedy and I got ready to leave because I had to take her to preschool.  I dropped her off at nine and Micaiah and I ran into town to finish a few errands.  I ran back to the house to feed the critters and collect eggs and then drove back to pick Kennedy up at noon.  Whew! We'll finish off the day by cleaning up the kitchen and getting dinner prepared.  Tonight we'll be enjoying some Oven Barbecued Chicken.  Mmm Mmmm Mmmm!!!

More Great News About Free-range Eggs

A recent study has shown many health benefits of pastured eggs.  When compared to the USDA's  data for factory-farm eggs, pastured eggs tout the following advantages:

• 1/3 less cholesterol
• 1/4 less saturated fat
• 2/3 more vitamin A
• Two times more Omega-3 fatty acids
• Three times more vitamin E
• Seven times more beta carotene

"And now studies are being done about vitamin D.  An article in Mother Earth News says this:


Now we’re looking at vitamin D, of which many people don’t get enough. New research is showing that this common vitamin deficiency may be related to much more than just weak bones — from diabetes and cancer to heart disease and multiple sclerosis. (You can read more about this important health issue in Vitamin D: Sunshine and So Much More.)
Our bodies can get vitamin D in two ways: when sunlight strikes our skin, or from our diet. Eggs are one of a small list of foods that are naturally rich in vitamin D. The USDA says supermarket eggs contain an average of 34 International Units per 100 grams. Our tests of eggs from four pastured farms in Texas, Kansas, Kentucky and Pennsylvania found that their eggs contained three to six times as much vitamin D as typical supermarket eggs. This means two scrambled eggs from pastured hens may give you 63 to 126 percent of the recommended daily intake of 200 IU of vitamin D."

Read more: http://www.motherearthnews.com/Natural-Health/Health-Benefits-Free-Range-Eggs.aspx#ixzz1CCFRJLaQ

Happy Hens

Well, the camera is still M.I.A.  UGH! It'll turn up eventually, it just hasn't done so yet.  

The hens seem to be healthy and happy and are starting to give us plenty of eggs.  Yesterday I collected 13 eggs and this morning I had six eggs by ten o'clock.  I'll be heading back out there in a bit to collect the rest of what was laid today.  Becky will likely be taking the first sold dozen to work with her tomorrow.  This year the price will again be $2.00 per dozen eggs.  I'm watching closely what has been spent on feed and other associated costs this year and will adjust the price next year if need be.  I truly believe that the eggs are probably worth more that two bucks, but we'll have to see what kind of response I get from my egg customers.  I don't think three dollars a dozen would be unreasonable to ask for the quality of egg produced, but for now it'll remain at two dollars.

Seeds Enroute...

 Just ordered some seeds from the Seed Savers Exchange.  Seed Savers is a company that sells heirloom veggie, herb, and flower seeds.  I really like buying from Seed Savers because most of the varieties have a story that goes with it.  For example I ordered some black bean seeds called, Cherokee Trail of Tears.  The guy who donated the seeds said that they were seeds that had been passed down over the years in his family.  His ancestors were Cherokee Indian and they carried the seeds with them on the infamous winter death march from the Appalachians to Oklahoma that left a trail of nearly 4,000 graves.  I really enjoy the history connected to the food.  It's very cool to me.  Maybe it's because I'm a history nerd.  Anyway, some things I'll be starting from seed whether I direct seed them in the garden or start them indoors first, other plants will be transplants that I buy from out local farm market.  I'll be buying most of the peppers all of the tomatoes, half of the cucumbers and all of the seed potatoes from the farm market.  I have ordered and on the way from Seed Savers some Leeks (an old French variety that is great for short growing seasons and is a good winter keeper), black beans (Cherokee Trail of Tears), Painted Pony beans (a dual purpose bean that produces a stringless, green pod in about 60 days and dry soup beans in about 80), and some Amish Snap Peas.  We also will be planting beets, swiss chard, sweet corn, broccoli, spaghetti squash, pie pumpkins, three kinds of cabbage, carrots, dill, basil, garlic, two kinds of lettuce, zucchini, yellow squash, spinach, strawberries, and a partridge in a pear tree.  I think that last item is from another list. Sorry.  I'll be keeping a tally of total quantities produced this summer and documenting how much of our family's food we'll be able to produce.  It should be fun to watch it unfold.

The World According to Monsanto

 A few posts ago I alluded to the evils of GMO grain.  I told you that it was very bad and that I'd follow up on it later.  Now is later.  GMO as I've stated before, stands for Genetically Modified Organism.  It is genetically modified because the plant's DNA is tinkered with in a laboratory.  At first glance we may say what a Godsend GMO corn and soybeans are.  I mean after all how will we feed the world with out massive harvests of grain in the good ol' US of A? 

I'm sure that there are other companies involved in the GMO sciences, but the major one that I know of is a company named Monsanto.  Monsanto is a chemical company.  They are the producers of RoundUp weed killer.  Well, Monsanto discovered that they could alter the DNA of plants in the lab and produce a crop that will not die when sprayed with RoundUp.  These plants are what are known as RoundUp Ready crops.  So a farmer plants RoundUp Ready beans in his field and applies regular doses of RoundUp to the field and everything except his cash crop withers up and dies.  Sounds great.  Don' t you think? 

The first problem is that RoundUp like most chemicals is a petroleum based product.  I for one think we are already tied to tightly to the oil rigs and is likely a good chunk of the reason that we keep on ending up fighting in the deserts of the Middle East. Just a thought.    

Secondly,  the fields are getting addicted to the chemicals like drug addicts and it is now requiring larger and larger doses to achieve the same effects.  Buy more RoundUp.

Thirdly, all of those chemicals then run off and end up screwing up our streams and rivers.  We already have a dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico the size of Rhode Island that is attributed to this type of run off coming down the mighty Mississippi.  

Fourthly,  I don't feel good eating a plant that was engineered by human hands in a lab with plant properties that don't occur in nature.  Our bodies don't know what to do with the stuff.  GMO corn lacks seven enzymes that the open pollinated varieties of corn do have.  What do those seven enzymes do?  We don't know.  Nobody knows.  I'm guessing though that they are important.  Why would God have put them in they weren't important? 

Corn is pollinated by wind.  If I plant non-GMO corn, but my neighbor plants Monsanto RoundUp Ready corn and his field pollinates mine I can be sued by Monsanto.  They do that.  They have a team of like 75 investigators that go around trespassing into fields and checking corn and beans to see if it's got their DNA or not.  If that farmer didn't buy it from Monsanto they sue.  It's also illegal for the farmers to save seed like they used to do for years and years.  If you save Monsanto seed and they find out you're going to court.  If you really want to see a heartbreaking picture of what I'm talking about watch the movie "Food Inc."  I was so stinking mad when I got done watching it.  You literally have a hard time believing that that kind of evil exists in this country and that they have that much power and that they are woven into our government all over the place.  

There is a book I saw the other day titled "The World According to Monsanto".  It's written by a lady who did some investigating about the company and goes on to tell what she found out.  I want to read it, but then again I don't.  I already know that they are evil.  If I read that my head is likely to blow off.  Be informed people.  Read make your own decisions.  I've made mine and I'm choosing to not patronize that kind of evil if I can help it. 

Hello, Morning....

The coffee is brewing.  The sun is starting to warm the side of the barn.  I can hear that baby fussing.  Another day is getting about to take off.  It's two degrees here this morning, and soon I'll be bundling up to refresh water buckets for animals, get hay for the ruminants and check for morning eggs.  If I wait too long the eggs will freeze and crack open.  That's no good, I'll be there to receive those fresh little hen fruits.  Kids are all up now and each one making his or her way to their "heater" (the register vents).  I should be going the kitchen is a wreck and I've got waffles and bacon to fry.  In the next day or two I'll be ordering some seeds for the garden.  I've been taking count of what I've got, what I need, and which will be planted here as seeds or transplants.  I've just about got it all figured out.  This is the good life. surrounded by these crazy kids, that screaming baby and all the worries of trying to plan our garden for 2011.  This is the kind of trouble I'd only wish on my best friends. 

WANTED!!!!

I'm trying to gather the parts I'll need for my automatic chicken plucker that I'm going to build.  Two items I'm looking for now are:

1. A plastic barrel

• needs to be 50 or 55 gallon capacity
• needs to be new and unused or only contained non toxic substances such as food items
• does not need to have a lid
• free or cheap (remember this is a low budget project)

      2. An electric motor

•  3/4 horsepower
• single phase power
• around 1725 RPM
• capacitor start
• TEFC (Totally Enclosed Fan Cooled)
• needs to work

I've been searching the internet (ebay, Craigslist, etc.) I might have an option for the barrels from a guy out in Rocky River, but would appreciate any help you guys may have locating cheap parts for my plucker.  These seem to be the two parts that are likely to cost the most.  Thanks in advance for keeping your eyes for me.

HALLELUJAH!!!!!!

Hallelujah indeed! We have finally gotten our first eggs out of this new batch of hens.  Whew!  I don't have enough to do much with, but we got one on Sunday and another one Monday.  Slow and steady but I am quite relieved to be going out to the coop expecting to see eggs and not dead chickens.  As we get closer to Spring and they really start laying I will let you all know when eggs will be available for sale.  

It's nasty out there this morning.  We had a slight warm up over the past two days and this morning we've had some freezing rain.  No school for our kiddos today.  That's okay Brenna is anxious to help me with the baby today.  I'm excited about that too! :) 

Monday and Tuesday I went to work for Dad.  He was more short-handed than normal so he asked if I could lend a hand and I was glad to.  I will say though that I do not miss it yet., but  it was nice to be out of the house for awhile.  I'm glad to help out if and when he needs some extra help though.

At the moment I'm a little limited in what pictures I can post on here.  I lost the camera....allegedly.  More likely what happened is that I put it somewhere safe that I wouldn't lose it....I just need to remember where exactly that was.  Darn memory anyway! 

Getting My Ducks In A Row

Red Rooster broilers in our chicken tractor field pen.  Moving the birds to fresh pasture each day provides them with plenty of grass and bugs which allow the birds to grow healthier than industrially raised birds.

I've been trying to get all of my ducks in a row while I'm cooped up inside awaiting spring.  Before you know it new broiler chicks will be in the brooder growing big enough to put out in the field pen.  In a few short weeks I hope to mail out our first (of many to come, I hope) newsletter talking about the products we'll be selling and hope to sell in the future.  The newsletter will be a way to communicate with our customers and potential customers.  It will be a way for us to educate and inform them about things going on in farming and the food system as a whole, and a way for us to show that our products are superior to the industrial fare.  The newsletter is still a work in progress and I'm stressing about it a bit because I don't want to come off as a cocky know-it-all who is "holier than thou", but still yet I need to inform people in our community of the problems with the food that is most dominant in our communities.  I need to be eloquent in my writing and educate the public and then to allow them to choose for themselves without being bullied into buying something.  

I've also been pricing out feed for these birds.  Although prices are likely to change come spring time, I figured I needed to get an idea of what it's going to cost to feed these birds.  At a minimum we'll be growing 100 broilers this year, which will require a little more than 1000lbs of feed during their short lives here.  The feed dealer tells me that for 100 birds it will take about 1300lbs, but the fact that the broilers will be on pasture should reduce their feed consumption quite considerably from the industry standard.  We have every intention of feeding our flock non-GMO feed this year. GMO stands for Genetically Modified Organisms.  For those of you who don't yet know that term, it's bad.  Very bad.  I'll post later on about the evils of Monsanto and their GMO world.

I've also got to get my equipment bought and purchased for butchering the chickens.  I'm going to use a home made design that I've got the blueprints to already, but I'll need to purchase or scrounge the materials to make my scalder, plucker and evisceration table.  

I'm worried about people understanding that the reason our chicken will cost more is because we are doing it on a much smaller scale than Tyson or Perdue and that meat worth eating actually costs more.  That is where the education of our patrons will come into play.  I feel confident that we can produce chicken and eggs that are worth far more than Wal-Mart grade pseudo-foods.  Your truly do get what you pay for. 

We've Got Worms

Well at the top of this posting was supposed to be a picture from Thursday night when we were sorting out the worms.  For some reason I can't get the two pics of that night to transfer from the computer to this blog, but the show must go on so I'll tell you all about it instead.  As a part of Becky's science curriculum she is keeping worms to teach her students about vermicomposting.  Vermicomposting is when you use worms (red wrigglers in our case) to digest your food scraps.  Becky could probably tell you more about the science behind it all but I'll do my best to tell you about them anyway.  The worms have actually spent the majority of their time living in a rubbermaid container in the corner of our dining room and usually only make the pilgrimage to school with her for special occasions like recruiting new students to her program.  To start with we put 1000 red wrigglers in the rubbermaid tub with some wet shredded newspaper.  After allowing the worms a few days to get settled in to their new home we started adding the worm food.  The worm food of course is our table scraps, the newspaper itself, and other organic material.  We never add meat or any dairy products to the bin, but I have read of people doing so in small quantities in larger outdoor bins with some success.  Fruit and veggie scraps along with spent coffee grounds and filters are our most common items put in the bin.  We've been doing this now since August, I think, and the amazing thing is that as long as you bury the contents under the existing bedding you have no problem with pests or smells of any kind.  We've had plenty of people in the house who never knew what was in the bin.  Well, once the worms have digested all the bedding and scraps you're left with vermicompost.  It is a super rich fertilizer to put on the garden and the best part is that it's free.  So anyway the other night we needed to change out the bedding and give them some good clean bedding.  We took out the dirt and separated it into small piles then put a heat lamp shining down on them so all of the worms would concentrate at the bottoms of the piles then simply sorted out the worms and put them back in the bin with new bedding.  It was really pretty cool.  We got about half of a five gallon bucket in the basement now with vermicompost ready to be used in the garden.  It's pretty cool and another neat thing is that the worms reproduce quickly and your worm populous in healthy worm conditions should nearly double every ninety days.  WOW!!! Maybe we should sell live bait.

Monkey in a Tree

 

 

 

 

Brodey in the backyard pine.

Last Thursday we were sitting in the living room, Becky and I, and we could hear Tate and Riley laughing their butts off looking out in the backyard and yelling "Higher Brodey! Higher!"  We got up thinking "This can not be good", and went to see what all the commotion was about.  Out in the backyard we see Brodey about fifteen feet up in the pine tree.  He did not seem scared and was climbing all over it.  I didn't think he was in any immediate danger and so I ran to find the camera to get a shot of him in the tree.  Becky yelled out to him to make sure he was okay and the following conversation ensued:

Becky: "Brodey are you ok?"

Brodey: "Uh?"

Becky: "Can you get down?"

Brodey: "Uh?"

Becky: "Are you stuck?"

Brodey: "Not that much."

I think that last line had me laughing for the next three days.  Man that kid has some funny moments from time to time.  Anyway, he climbed around the tree a few more minutes, shot his mother a thumbs up and a smile and then climbed down and out.  He is definitely our wild card around here.  He keeps us all on our toes.

A New Day

The Three Amigos

Today is the first day of my new "job".  Becky went back to work today and I'm officially working from home now.  So far today I got kids up dressed, lunches packed and on the bus.  I put a venison shoulder roast in the crock pot, dressed and fed a screaming baby and then went to the bank and to the grocery store.  Micaiah and I got back home and he was sleeping so I grabbed some lunch and then put the groceries away and did a load of his laundry.  Whew!!! It's time to sit down for a minute.  Anyway, I'm here taking care of things around this place and starting to plan farm things to come.  In the next few days I'll be typing up a newsletter to send out in a month or so in hopes of soliciting some orders for our pastured broilers.  We'll see how it goes.

I"m still trying to figure out what is going on with these birds dying on me.  I had two roosters found dead on Friday and one more yesterday.  I've been trying to see what's going on.  Did they get into rat poison or poisoned rats or rat poop with poison in it?   I don't know.  From what I've read I don't think it's bird flu.  Thank God!!!  I posted some questions about what I've got happening here on a forum where chicken owners come to post questions and to help each other out troubleshooting these kinds of things.  A few people suspected mold or moldy feed.  I wouldn't doubt that it could be moldy feed or something like that.  I've read stories of stuff like that happening before.  Another person told of a time she had something similar happening and they found mold in the coop bedding.  I haven't see anything like that yet.  Still two other people are convinced that we have rattlesnakes somewhere in the barn.  I'm pretty sure we can rule out rattlers, since this is northern Ohio in January.  I guess the only thing to do is continue to look for causes and see how many birds come out healthy on the other side of all of this.  I'll keep you all posted on the progress of this.