Check it Out!!

Click on the link to the right and check out Salt the Earth blog.  It is written by Randee Jo Stroud and gives many great recipes using healthy and local ingredients.  Enjoy

6 Casualties, 1 MIA

What you are looking at is a pile of Plymouth Rock laying hen feathers in the grass.  We came home from church today to find a few hens out and one very nervous goat.  I thought it seemed strange that the hens were out.  We initially counted four out, but as Riley and I were walking out to catch them I counted not four, but ten chickens out running around.  As we approached the pasture pen that was on the far north property line on our farm, I could see that the chicken wire was not fastened at the top of the pen on one side.  Upon further investigation I could see that the wire wasn't just loose a little, but had been completely ripped away from the frame of the pen on the top on two whole sides.  I also, saw piles and piles of feathers.  As I looked around the area I soon realized the gravity of the situation.  I saw one dead hen laying in the bean field to my left and two severely injured, but not yet dead hens laying straight out in front of me.  As I was taking in a good long look at the crime scene the perpetrator returned to the scene.  Out of the beans came a young, clearly starving, Siberian Husky.  I tried to scare her of by yelling and kicking in her general direction, but after initially tucking tail and cowering she would come running right back.  Long story short we called the county dog warden to come pick her up.  She was a very friendly and beautiful dog, but she made a mess of my chickens.  If you are looking for a dog you might call the Huron County Dog Warden to inquire about her.  She will go up for adoption in three days if no owners come forward to claim her.  By the way we found three other victims and realized that we were still one bird short that we never could find.  Those dead  birds went out to the compost pile out behind the barn where I compost the offal from our broiler processing days.  As sad as it is that those birds had to meet such a tragic death at the teeth of the intruder, I find much comfort in knowing that those seven birds lived everyday of their life getting to be chickens and live like chickens and that in their death they will ultimately add to the fertility of this farm. 

What's For Dinner?

Maybe you've noticed and maybe you haven't, but there is a new link to the right of the page entitled "My Blog List".  Right now there is only one blog listed, but it is another one I'm working on which is designed to equip people with the tools to eat local and seasonal.  Check it out.  I'm going to try my darndest to post a recipe each day featuring an item that happens to be in season in northern Ohio.  Like I said, check it out and follow along.

Cukes Coming Out of my Ears

Well, yesterday was another day of canning pickles.  I made 9 pints of Bread and Butter pickles.  We've now got more pickles in the pantry than we would eat in two years.  I don't know how many more pickling cukes I'm going to get because I've got some bugs that are beginning to take over my hills of cucumbers.  I did a little research yesterday to see just what they are and how to control them, but I'm still not sure if it's squash bugs or something else.  Mostly a million little black bugs.  Tiny.  And eggs.  All on the backs of the leaves and flowers.  I'm not sure what it is, but they are sucking the life right out of those vines.  The leaves are yellowing up and wilting some.  Even if I'm unable to save the plants I'd say we had a pretty good year with them.  So far I have canned 32 pints of pickles which is more than we would eat in three years probably.  Somebody will be getting them as a gift.

Last S'mores of the Season

I picked up a truckload of used guardrail posts at a place down the road that leaves them out for the taking.  They are roughly 8" in diameter and 6' long so it was a pretty good workout to load and unload the 18 posts, but I think that the pig pen is sufficiently reinforced now so that they can't dig out. 

The temps have been a little more tolerable here lately and the evenings are reminiscent of fall, which as you know is my favorite season of the year.  The kids will soon be going back to school and we've been having more evenings out around the campfire and enjoying the stars and the steady crackle of the burning wood.  Soon, these late evenings will be confined to Friday and Saturday nights, and not long after that they will be just a memory of summer and something to hope for with anticipation of a new summer.



Free Range Pork

So, I forgot to tell all of you that the other night we had some truly free range pork here at Red Rooster.  Friday night our good friends, Frank and Mandy, and their kids came over to visit and have dinner.  I got kind of a late start fixing dinner because we had had a long morning of butchering chickens here and then I had to run the chicken plucker I borrowed back to some fellow poultry graziers up in Milan.  Frank rode along with me to take the plucker back to Round Rock Farm and we chatted about the struggles of turning a pasture based, soil-enhancing, farmette into something profitable instead of just something romantic and idealistic.  When we got up to Milan, I thanked Luke for letting me borrow the plucker and offered myself and Becky as extra help the next time that he and his wife, Mary, butchered broilers.  After, talking pastured poultry and chicken processing for a few moments, I thanked Luke again, and Frank and I headed home.  When we got home I got the chili started that we were planning on eating.  A few minutes into cutting up peppers and onions and garlic for the pot I walked past the kitchen window and looked out at our pigs.  Only problem was they were standing on the wrong side of the fence.  AAAGGGGHHHHH!!!!! Code Red!  Calling all available units!!  We all scrambled outside to the pigs and eased up to them trying not to spook them.  One pig went inside of a small portion of the barn and Frank closed the door behind it.  One down.  Meanwhile, Becky grabbed a bucket of water and lured the other pig over to her and then led it with the water bucket back inside the fence.  Now, back to the one Frank has trapped in the outside portion of the barn.  Well, genius me, not thinking how easy it was for Becky to lure the first one back in with the bucket of water, thought "oh good, we've got this one trapped I'll simply straddle it's back and guide it back into the pig yard."  WRONG!!!!!!  That pig squealed and screamed and kicked and bucked.  The harder I tried to hold her the more wild she got.  She got loose from me and walked over to the garden to nibble some cucumber vines.  I went on one side of her and she nervously walked away from me and in the general direction of the road, which, for those of you who know what road I live on know that was not an option to let her get onto RT. 250.  I got out in front of her and she turned and made her way into the old abandoned milk house.  I got over there with Frank right behind me and together we tried to grab hold of 150 lbs of solid muscle.  Again, she threw a fit and Frank and I both ended up on the ground as she broke free from our grasp.  She moseyed over towards Becky, who got the bucket of water and guided her back in where she belonged.  Wow, that was easy!  It was right about then that I realized we also had about twenty laying hens out.  No problem, chickens are easy.  Within a few more minutes I had all of the chickens back in the yard too.  How did they all get out?  Well, the pigs had started digging under the fence to get some sod that was on the other side and then eventually loosened up the fence from the posts and had it dug out and loosened up enough that they could squeeze under it.  We fixed the fence in the places that it had been torn away from the posts and reinforced some areas temporarily with cinder blocks, but I'm going to get some heavy guardrail posts to reinforce permanently all the way around the fence.  Oh the excitement that city folks don't get to enjoy, like catching a couple of pigs who got loose and are ready to go hog wild.

F BOMB!!!

Join us this Sunday, August 14, 2011 at Main Street School in Norwalk, Ohio for Elevation Church's series "F BOMB". 

Have you heard about Elevation Church?  Come see what all of the fuss is about.  Come be a part of something extraordinary in Norwalk.  We'll see you there.

Canning makes my feet hurt

Over the past two days Becky and I have been processing some fruits and veggies in our pressure canner.  We picked some peaches and raspberries in the last few days and wanted to make some fruit spreads.  With the raspberries we made 5 jelly jars of jam.  With the peaches we made 13 jelly jars of peach butter-man was it good.  This morning after feeding all of the animals and watering the garden, and after breakfast was cleaned up, I started cutting up cucumbers to pickle.  I got 18 pints of dill pickle slices.  We have cucumbers coming out of our ears over here. Looks like I've already got some of my Christmas shopping done.  Anyway,  standing in the kitchen for hours at a time has just about broken my feet, so I thought I'd put my feet up for a bit and tell you all about what's going on here. 

Elevation Global Norwalk....New attendance record

Yesterday we had the largest attendance to date at Elevation Global- Norwalk.  There were 127 people in attendance and one person accepted Jesus Christ as their personal savior.  That salvation makes the 41st at the Norwalk campus since its launch in April of 2011.  We will continue to break barriers and and set higher goals because we know that through Christ all things are possible.!

Raw Salsa

Tomatoes, onions, garlic, and jalapeno peppers from our garden ready to be turned into salsa. 

Another reason to opt out of the industrial food channels

Meat giant Cargill is recalling 36 million pounds of ground turkey linked to a nationwide salmonella outbreak that has killed one person in California and sickened at least 76 others.  Illnesses in the outbreak date back to March and have been reported in 26 states coast to coast.
Cargill said Wednesday that it is recalling fresh and frozen ground turkey products produced at the company's Springdale, Ark., plant from Feb. 20 through Aug. 2 due to possible contamination from the strain of salmonella linked to the illnesses.
The CDC said this week that cultures of ground turkey from four retail locations between March 7 and June 27 showed contamination with the same strain of salmonella.  The CDC said preliminary information showed that three of those samples were linked to the same production establishment, but it did not name that plant.
A chart on the CDC's website shows cases have occurred every month since early March, with spikes in May and early June. The latest reported cases were in mid-July, although the CDC said some recent cases may not have been reported yet.
The CDC said the strain is resistant to many commonly prescribed antibiotics, which can make treatment more difficult. The agency said 38 percent of those sickened were hospitalized.
The states with the highest number sickened were Michigan and Ohio, 10 illnesses each, while nine illnesses were reported in Texas. Illinois had seven, California six and Pennsylvania five.
The remaining states have between one and three reported illnesses linked to the outbreak, according to the CDC: Alabama, Arizona, Georgia, Iowa, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Missouri, Mississippi, North Carolina, Nebraska, Nevada, New York, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Dakota, Tennessee and Wisconsin.
The CDC estimates that 50 million Americans each year get sick from food poisoning, including about 3,000 who die. Salmonella causes most of these cases and federal health officials say they've made virtually no progress against it.

ThisorThat - Make the right decision!

Best Sermon Ever!!!!!!!

Come to Main Street School @ 11:15 AM this Sunday, August 7, 2011, to hear the best sermon that Pastor Steven Furtick has ever told.  Elevation Global Norwalk is inviting anyone and everyone to come and be a part of this awesome thing that God is doing in Norwalk.  It doesn't matter how far you've run from God.  It doesn't matter what your past looks like.  We are all broken.  We would love to see you there.  

Refrigerator Pickles

Over the last few days we've gotten quite a few cucumbers out of the garden and so last night I decided to make some quick refrigerator pickles.  I used a recipe out the Ball canning and preserving book I've got, and now I'm going to wait a few weeks to let the pickling happen and for the spices and flavors to blend and mellow.  I'm pretty excited to try them out.  I'll tell you that not many things are as rewarding as looking at jars full of food that you grew in right in your own yard.

I can breathe again

     Well, butchering day was a success.  After a long, late night on Friday making sure everything was set up, we got up and got to the first birds about eight-thirty, two and a half hours later than I had wanted to start, but started none the less.  With my dad running the killing cones and the scalding tank, and Becky's mom helping out at the whizbang chicken plucker we borrowed, the birds quickly made their way up to the eviscerating table where I turned objects that just five minutes before were farm animals, into food.  It's amazing how once the feathers, head and feet come off a chicken, it turns in to chicken.  At that point it has made the transition from animal to table fare.  I would then pass the birds down the line to my lovely wife, Becky, who was in charge of Quality Control.  Becky would check the birds over and make sure I didn't miss anything or that a stray feather wasn't left behind, as well as give the birds a final rinse inside and out before they made their way to the cooling barrels.  All in all we processed 44 birds between eight-thirty and twelve-thirty.  Not bad for a bunch of first-timers, I don't think.  I think we'll be processing the remaining fifty or so that are left this coming Saturday.  We shall see.
     In other news,  the garden is starting to really produce some fruit.  This morning I went out and gathered two zucchini, one yellow squash, five tomatoes, four medium-hot block peppers, five jalapeno peppers, and ten cucumbers.  It was exciting.  In addition to what I brought in this morning, our pie pumpkins have blossoms everywhere as do the spaghetti squash.  Next year we are really going to gear up and try to sell veggies here.  I'm excited and have already started mapping out where it will all go.