Chicken Harvest

The chicks I raised from the day they arrived in the mail at the end of the December grew into beautiful birds.  Especially the roosters, who went from cute young chicks to pushy adolescents in just four months.  They created energetic flock dynamics, as they were always tussling with each other, but they were also starting to get loud, pick real fights, and be too forceful with the young hens.  The hens were spending all their time hiding from the roosters. Fourteen roosters is too many when they are four months old, so we knew it was time to harvest some chicken.  Knowing that it's best for the flock that most of them go made it easier for us to kill them.  

I've told you about our first chicken butchering adventure, which we did by lamp light since it took us all evening to figure out our plan of attack.  The second and third time we butchered chickens we had Joe and Jamie to help with the work, and Brandon and I stuck to plucking and gutting, and never actually did the actual murdering.  This time it was just us, so we knew we had to muster up the courage to do the deed ourselves.  We didn't have a killing cone, so we decided to give the traditional ax to the neck method a try.  Brandon made sure the ax was really sharp by using the grinder on the blade.  

We decided to butcher the roosters on Saturday morning.  The night before I picked up each hen from the roost and moved them to the other coop.  This way I was able to let all the hens out for breakfast in the morning, but we could keep the roosters cooped up and I could go into the coop and catch them one at a time and take them to the killing and plucking area.  They were easy to catch and didn't mind being carried in my arms.   

We set up our killing area away from the house, near the weedy fence line since we knew plucking makes a big mess.  We put two nails in an old railroad tie that we used for a chopping block on the ground.  The roosters were calm as I laid them on their backs on the block, and Brandon positioned their necks between the nails and I gently stretched them out so that the nails held their jaws.  Then one quick chop, and it was done.  Our hearts were pounding with the first one, but after we made it through that one okay, it wasn't so bad.  The worst part is holding their bodies after the chop while their muscles spasm.  I didn't let go though.  I've heard too many stories about headless chickens on the run to take any chances.  As you can see in the photo above, we killed the big barred rock roosters first, while the scalding water heated on the gas burner.  Once we had a few de-feathered, I moved to the kitchen to turn them into food while Brandon and the neighbor finished the killing and plucking.  

Butchering in the kitchen was much nicer than doing it on a folding table outside or in a garage, like before.  As Brandon or the neighbor brought plucked chickens to the door, I put them in cold water to chill while I worked.  I kept the necks, feet, hearts, gizzards, and liver from each.  Only the feathers, heads, and intestines with various organs went to the compost.  

Always before we wrapped the whole chicken in plastic and put it in the freezer.  This time I removed the wings and bagged them together, and removed the thighs and legs and bagged them in pairs.  The breast meat I left on the carcass, which fit nicely in a gallon freezer bag without the legs and wings attached.  

Anybody know how to cook a chicken gizzard?  

I've been looking forward to having more chicken foot stock.  It's the best stuff, as long as you don't look at the feet too closely while they are cooking. So creepy!  When I made foot stock before, I washed the feet, then scalded them, peeled them, and then removed the toe joint with the claw, as someone on the interweb suggested.  All that was a lot of work.  This time I just scrubbed them and put them in water in the crock pot for twenty hours.  The claws are ugly, but it was less traumatic than removing them.  Surely, any bit of dirt that didn't get scrubbed away was sufficiently sterilized after being cooked for so long!

After they cooked, I poured the stock from the feet, and then covered them with more water and a few splashes of vinegar, then turned the crock pot back on for another twenty hours.  

The warm stock looked clear and bright, and with a little salt tasted great.  I served Brandon a steaming cup of stock and he drank it all.  

After the stock cooled in the refrigerator, it turned to jelly.  I showed Brandon how thick it was and he asked "That's what I drank?!  But it tasted good!"  Ha!

Making a Garden

The month of May is quickly approaching, and my thoughts are turning to the garden more every day. When my body is away from the garden, but my thoughts linger there, I can feel impatient, or maybe it's more of a feeling that I'm moving too slowly, that I'm losing time.  I never started any seeds inside, or planted early peas, and the potatoes and onions I wanted to put out could have been in the ground for weeks already, had I been ready.  Just imagine all those lost sunbeams I could have been gathering!  

But on the other hand, it's liberating to allowing myself to experiment more now, while the garden is young.  If you remember, I've been adding clumps of top soil and sod to the places where the mobile chicken coop was parked over the winter.  

I quickly realized that I would need a fence before I could actually allow plants to grow in my new beds.  The giant flock of chickens (and now a turkey!) and the roaming pigs could make short work of digging up plants.  Thanks to a gift of orange plastic fencing and some scavenged metal fence posts, I have a small area around three beds that I can defend against the hungry hoards.  The grass is so long in the fenced in area that it tickles my ankles.  

I had two partial bags of organic potatoes from the grocery store that started to grow in the bag before I could cook them, so I made rings of dead sod dirt clumps and placed potatoes in the center.  No digging required since my garden dirt is so chunky I can arrange it like building blocks of dirt and grass roots.  

Last summer a nice lady who let Tamara and I pick strawberries from her garden gave me some small onions.  She said to just plant them in the garden and they would grow more onions.  I braided them and they've been knocking around the house, getting shuffled in the move, and being used as cat toys all fall and winter.  Believe it or not, some of them looked like they were trying to grow!  I planted these in one of the beds amid the dirt clumps and potato mounds.  

I bought garlic to plant last fall, so of course it was mostly dried up or moldy by now.  I'm sure it's way too late to plant garlic, but I did it anyway.  Who knows, maybe I'll get a bulb or two despite my late start.  

I sprinkled the cloves throughout one side of the bed with the onion braid and the potato mounds.  I'm cramming a lot of things in to these small spaces.  I've never been great at thinning plants, but if even a fraction of the things I planted try to grow, I'm going to have to pull some extras or there won't be room.  Remind me of that later this summer when the bed is overflowing and nothing has the room it needs to do well.  

I bought a bag of purple onion sets at Tractor Supply, and left them sitting so long they are starting to grow in the bag.  I actually think these may still be in good enough shape to grow, so I dedicated most of the second bed to them.  I just stuck them in the cracks between the dirt clumps, like hiding Easter eggs.  

Since I had a partial package of buckwheat seeds that was getting rather old, I sprinkled these over the bed of onions.  Will they sprout?  Will they choke out the onions?  Who knows!  Puck guards the entrance to the garden to keep the chickens at bay while I work.  

A package of old sunflower seeds were planted along one side of a bed.  Some dipper gourd seeds I'm sure were dead got sprinkled along one edge.  Home harvested kale seeds went in there too, and marigolds on the corners of the beds.  Oh, and some cantaloupe seeds too.  What was I thinking?!

My over-planting got so complicated that I was inspired to make a drawing and actually take some notes.  You know, like a real gardener!  

Oh boy, nothing inspires my gardening hopes and dreams like compost!  The kitchen scraps we collected through the fall and winter were looking good.  I picked up the metal barrel ring they were in, moved it over, forked the chunky bits on the surface that weren't decomposed back into the ring, and forked all the black compost that was in the bottom into the wheel barrel.  I added some of the perlite left over from the rocket mass heater too.  

The compost was wet from the recent rain, but I spread it over the seeds, bulbs, and potatoes.  Surely, something will grow now that it has such nice compost to encourage it.  

I put a light coating of straw over both of the beds, and then placed pieces of fencing over that, just in case the chickens breach the walls or the wind tries to blow the straw away.  It feels good to have two beds all covered and tucked in.  I feel sort of caught up, despite my late start.  With just two small beds planted, I feel like I actually have a garden now.  Whew - it's about time! 

Reptiles, Amphibians, Flowers, and a Zipline

Peekaboo!  I found this box turtle while I was out looking at stream restoration project for work.  When I picked him up he exhaled so fast he sounded like he was hissing at me.  I pretty sure he was just trying to get a small as possible so he could fit inside his shell.  Like when I squeeze out all my breath before I button my blue jeans after they shrink in the dryer. Wait, I don't have a dryer...

Box turtles are omnivores, so they eat stuff like worms and slugs and bugs and flowers and mushrooms.  I once saw a box turtle take a bite from the fruit of a mayapple (Podophylum peltatum), which is a poisonous plant.  If my parents let their tomato plants grow on the ground, the box turtles eat the tomatoes.  Once upon a time, a coworker and I stopped our work to watch a couple of box turtles mate, which is not something you get to see very often.  It was quite boring, really, and awkward.   For all of us.  

It's not just the reptiles out enjoying the spring weather, the amphibians are active now too.  I hear frog calls every evening, and this puddle was teaming with tadpoles.  I think these are toad tadpoles.  

The fleabane (Erigeron sp.) is blooming in the field behind the barn.  The chickens get curious when they see me focus on something near the ground and follow in my footsteps.  

Winter cress (Barbarea sp.) is blooming now too.  This bright yellow flower really stands out against the new green grass.  I saw wood bees and wasps drinking nectar from these tiny flowers.  

I read that the leaves of the winter cress plant are edible, but when I offered some to this young rooster, he wasn't even interested enough to taste it.  Eat your vegetables!

Did I tell you that we got a zip line?!  We gave it to our nephew as a gift, with the understanding that we would install it out at our place.  The instructions said it was for kids at least eight years old, but I was pretty sure even my younger niece would be able to handle it as long as we didn't hang it too high.   It was harder than I thought it would be to find two tress the correct distance apart that didn't have something in the way.  Once we settled on a location, Brandon used a chainsaw on a long pole to trim some branches from the trees.  

The zip line is a long metal cable that runs about seventy-five feet between two trees.  The instructions explained how to hang it so that the rider slows before they arrive at the end tree, which keeps them from having a crash landing.  

Over time, the kids are supposed to build up their arm muscles so they can zip between the trees without using the detachable seat.  

It works!  Weeeee..... It starts out high enough that the kids are above our heads, but by the time they slow down at the other end they have to raise their feet so they don't drag the ground.   Now, if only I will get brave enough to try it too!

Brandon's Birthday Turkey

Last Saturday was Brandon's fortieth birthday, and when Jamie arrived at the farm to help us get started with a celebration, he asked when we got a giant turkey.  We have a turkey?! 

We do!  Sure enough, when we went outside to make sure Jamie could tell the difference between a chicken and turkey, we found this guy strutting his stuff for the chickens.  Good eye, Jamie, that's definitely not a chicken.  The turkey has white feathers with black stripes, a long black patch of feathery hair dangling from his chest, a light blue face, and loose wrinkly skin on his neck and head that changes color from white to red depending on his mood.    

A birthday surprise, right?  He stayed all day, greeting guests as they arrived, and impressed us all by puffing his feathers and spreading his tail.  He gobbles when someone laughs, which makes us laugh, which makes him gobble.  He's fun that way.  

The turkey spends the day hanging near the chickens and sleeps at night on a table near the barn.  The turkey belongs to the same neighbors that frequently lend us their pigs.  Apparently, if you call your little plot of land a farm, animals just appear to populate it!  Who knew.  We now have: 

1 dog

3 cats

4 guineas

1 turkey

2 pigs (day time custody only)

32 chickens

Our neighbor must have realized his turkey was at our place, because he stopped by to discuss the situation with Brandon today.  He used to own two turkeys, but a predator got one of them while it was caged up.  Brandon called me at work to tell me that he's pretty sure this turkey now belongs to me, unless I specifically tell the neighbor to come and get it.  Thank you neighbor.  I think...

I worry that the turkey will fall prey to a raccoon or coyote, but the neighbor thinks that if he's free to roost where he will, then he can fend for himself.  I guess I'll find out, unless I can figure out how to make a turkey coop and convince the turkey to use it.   

We lost one of the guineas to a predator, most likely a hawk.  It was the guinea with a hurt foot, so it probably couldn't escape as fast as the others.  Now we have two pairs, which is good since guineas pick a mate and stick with them.  Each night they come back to the coop to roost, so I knew they aren't sitting on a nest of eggs yet.  Even the guineas stay out of the turkey's way.  I have to spread the breakfast grains in a broad area so the chickens can get some even though the turkey is trying to keep it all for himself.  He pulls a beak full of feathers from any bird that doesn't respect his presence during meal time.  

Enjoy this short clip of the turkey trying to keep the chickens from eating their dinner. 

In other poultry news - I found a tiny egg in the chicken coop from one of the baby chickens!  Which goes to show that they are not babies any more.  We're making plans to thin the flock of extra roosters and make a nest box for the hens.  I can't wait to have too many eggs.  

Lolly Pops and Fruit Trees

The dandelions are going to seed.  Now that the grass has been mowed, the fuzzy white balls are more obvious as they poke above the level plane of cut green stems. 

The day after we mowed I looked over the expanse of green grass, and it was like someone stuck lolly pops in the grass while I was at work.  Fuzzy lolly pops everywhere.

They must be at just the right height for Puck to walk into with his face since he was wearing dandelion fluff in his eyebrows.  

The little cherry tree that I planted in the front yard has a handful of flowers right now.  Does this mean I could get a handful of cherries later?

The apple tree blossoms were a beautiful dark pink. I used the loppers to trim off as many of the little sprouts from the trunk as I could reach, but I find it hard to trim the big branches like I should since they are covered with pretty pink buds and flowers.  

I didn't get more than a handful of apples last year.  The poor performance isn't because the tree isn't tying though, because it's covered in sweet smelling flowers.  

The small peach tree that bloomed so early has lost it's flower petals, but retains these pink sepals and stamens.  Do you think I will get a peach?

The big pear tree only had flowers for a few days before a strong storm blew most the petals off.  There were so many white pear flower petals on our roof that the downspouts poured piles of petals when it rained.  

I was worried that the storm may have ruined the flowers before the bees were finished pollinating, but I think I see tiny pears developing all ready.  The mole that lives at the base of the tree has mounds and tunnels everywhere.  I've been told that moles are natures soil aerators, and they eat grubs, so it's probably good for the tree to have a resident mole.   When we mow the grass under the pear tree we make dirt clouds as the blades of the mower shave the tops off the giant mole mounds.