Garden Overload

Meaty Birds!

We are starting a heritage breed meat flock!  I found a woman selling chicks just the next town over, and on Monday we are picking up 6 Black Jersey Giant hens and a cockerel from a separate bloodline, so we can breed them.

The new additions will go in with the laying hens for now, to be moved to there own henhouse, where they will eat grower ration instead of layer ration like our RIR hens do.  They will be able to range as well, but are also docile and able to take being largely confined during the winter.
Jersey Giants are a slow growing bird, the original slow food, taking about 10 months to hit their dressed weight of 8-10lbs!  Now that is a big bird!  We are now on the prowl for an incubator or simple plans to make one.

I am so excited to start on this venture!  Shawn just decided that he can't bring himself to raise Cornish-X, as every time we go to work with Madeline's Angus calf, we see them laying down eating and pooping, or lurching a few steps before giving up and laying down.  He said he just couldn't invite people out to the farm to see our birds growing, and be proud to be selling barely moving, crap covered birds, just because they finish quick.  With the Jersey Giants, we can breed them, where you can't with Cornish-X.  Ours will produce true to breed.

Now I think I can get the kids to willingly do a little more in the way of farm chores, if it means they are actually raising more than a veggie.

Harvest Begins

Wow!  I guess it has been longer than I thought since I updated.  The garden has been producing well, and I have begun to preserve some of the harvest for winter.  I have blanched and frozen 28, 2 serving bags of beans, made 6 quarts of pickled peppers, and 2 quarts of dill pickles.  Shawn also started selling some of our excess to a high end restaurant in town, and they have taken 70 pounds of baby carrots, 15 quarts of beans, 3 quarts of beets, 10 pounds of cucumbers, and 40 heads of butter crunch lettuce.  We haven't made a fortune selling, but the money has come in handy, and has only been produce that we have an over abundance of.

We also ended up with 4 new hens that we found free on Kijiji.  I believe they are a little older than our original ladies, but are still producing well, so all is good. The man we got them from said that they free ranged, but here, for the first few days, they barely ventured outside of the coop, hanging around the feed tray.  You could tell which eggs were theirs, the yolks were pale, like grocery store eggs.  They have begun to venture out in front and behind the barn, and when Parker discovered a horned tomato worm in the garden, we gave it to them, and they about lost their little chicken minds!

I have 2 dozen eggs in the fridge.  I ate 4 eggs yesterday!  Poached on toast for breakfast, an omelet for lunch, and a poached egg on brown rice served on a bed of sauteed kale.  Yesterday was our first time eating kale, and it was pretty good!  Kale is a super green, and we will be eating it as much as we can while it is still producing.

I found out you can steam and freeze chard, so now we don't have to worry about eating all that we have in the garden while it is still fresh....we are going to have a lot of veggies stored for the winter!  I think it is high time I went out and got some photos from around the farm.  So much has changed!

Veggies

The garden is coming along great.  The hardest part is the waiting.  The lettuce varieties are ready, and we have been eating salad every night.  I'm sure we'll be sick of it soon, but I am trying to no buy any veg from now til next spring.  I better cross my fingers that the stuff that stores or freezes produces well!
The tomato plants are like shrubs, covered with green globes.  There are tiny little cukes on the vines.  The carrots are almost big enough that we can thin them by eating baby carrots.  The cabbage has bounced back from rampaging chicken and a flea beetle attack.  The beets and turnip are well on their way. 
The spinach and arugula both succumbed to the flea beetles, so we have replanted, and the seedlings are doing better.  As soon as we notice that the beetles are back, I break out the organic bug spray, and it seems to knock them back.

There have been a few disappointments this year.  The peas are growing slow.  They should be about done by now, and awaiting a replant.  Instead they have been slow to grow, only about 8 inches tall.  The herbs in the other garden closer to the house have barely come up at all.  The cilantro was slow, and then only about 6 plants came up.  The rest never even germinated.  We tilled the soil, and reseeded.  So far, the basil has shown itself, but thats it!  I was dreaming of food seasoned with my own herbs all winter.  At this rate, I'm going to just buy some potted ones and put them on the window sill!

New Reading

"The practical advice in this exhaustive reference tool includes how to cultivate a garden, buy land, bake bread, raise farm animals, make sausage, can peaches, milk a goat, grow herbs, churn butter, build a chicken coop, catch a pig, cook on a wood stove, and much, much more."

How farm geek have I become??  I totally want this book as soon as it hits the shelves in November!

Thwarted!

We carefully baited 2 live traps with chicken found in the dark recesses of the fridge.  WE placed them near the coop, and hoped for a nocturnal visit from the poultry killer.  Whatever it was, it rolled the traps around the barn yard so the chicken tumbled around inside, and ate all the meat off the bones. The traps sprung, but caught nothing.  I hope the chicken was really old, and the creature gets gut rot.

Tonight, cinder blocks on top of the traps.

Factory Farming Rant

The first animals with hooves that will be raised on this farm will be heritage Berkshire pork.  All factory farming pisses me off to no end, but somehow, gestation caged pigs burn me the most. 

Cheap meat is cheap in $$ at the grocery store only!!  The cost to our health and animal welfare is far higher than we can afford to pay!  We need to vote with our wallets!!  Sure, pastured meat is more expensive!  Eat less meat, have meatless Mondays!  We won't die if we don't have tacos or ribs every night, but a whole bunch of people have died from eating contaminated meat for the factory food system.