Chicken Herder

Finally, two floods and a date-change later, the chickens are ready to fulfill their destiny.  I and my faithful crew of volunteers (2 or 3 new ones this time) will be processing them this Saturday (7/3/10).  I am hopeful that we will have them ready for pickup around noon or one…but since this is the first processing we’ve done this year, it may be a bit later.  Feel free to call to find out if we are done, or just come on over and bring a lawn chair.  Depending on how much work is left and how many customers are here at the time, we may be able to do a bit of touring about the farm.  If you can’t this time, don’t fret…I’m planning on having a FarmerSam open house later this summer – after the pigs and turkeys are out and about.

The chickens will be cleaned, eviscerated and bagged.  I would recommend bringing an iced cooler in which to put your chickens.  I will have their temperature nice and low by pickup, but still, you want to keep them as cool as possible and get them in the refrigerator quickly.  For best taste and texture, you’ll want to store your chickens in the fridge for two days before eating or freezing.  Make sure to eat or freeze them within a week (I personally do this around day 4 or 5, just to be safe).

If you want feet, necks or liver, please let me know ahead of time, if possible, and I will do what I can to facilitate this.  They will be billed at the same rate as the chickens themselves ($3/lb).

Farmer’s log: earth date – 6/23/2010

This is what you call a narrow escape…or God taking pity on a slow learner.  I woke at 5 am, before the rain began.  It was still a little dark, and the meatbirds don’t like to be moved before the sun has been up for a bit, so back to bed.  By 6 am, when I woke again, the rain was coming down hard.  Lightning was dancing all around and I thought it was a bit foolish to go walking out in the wet field, so I drove my 4×4 out to them.  There was no water pooling within a hundred feet of them, so I went back in the house to do some of my online work for TEDS. 

Within a half hour, Celeste called to me from one of the rooms facing the field, “Hey, you ought to take a picture of this for a post and call it, ‘a near miss.’ “  This disturbed me, since I had just been outside and there had been nothing close about the miss.  When I got to the window, I saw that they were actually standing in water.  I rushed out and found them in water about 3 inches deep…deep enough that they didn’t want to move with the pen.  You’ll notice the trail of chickens in the second picture above…they just sat there and let the chicken tractor go over them.  In the end, I got them moved to higher ground, and I believe they’re safe for the night…though we have another flood advisory on.  I’ve gotta dig a pond….

It is with great sadness that I write this post. Starting on Wednesday night (May 12), sometime between 11 pm and 6 am, our field flooded. All the broilers are dead. There was no warning (or at least none that I was aware of), and our field has never flooded this much this late in the year (at least since we’ve been here). When I went out I was holpeful that one or two chickens might be alive. After pulling the first chicken tractor to land, I discovered I was wrong.

Celeste took some pictures of me trying to rescue the chickens. The white things in the water around me are the broilers. I picked a couple up (also pictured) to see if there were any vital signs. I later took a couple clearer pictures and one of Nora surveying the loss.

Our family garden also flooded. I do not yet know the extent of loss there. The next week will reveal more.

The bit of good news is that we just got our next round of broilers in as chicks. They are set to be processed on June 26, assuming fire doesn’t descend from Heaven and consume them.

The first round of broilers for 2010 will be available on May 24. They will be seven weeks old on that day, so I am anticipating an average weight around 4 pounds. The cost is $3 per pound. I am hoping to bring almost 90 to market, but I’m already getting orders in, so if you want some, be sure to reserve yours soon. I have already ordered the next set of chicks…they will be available on or around July 3 (just in time for Independence Day grilling).

Regarding processing: I am trying something different this time, namely, same-day-pickup. More details will be coming within the next couple days…stay tuned!

My mom is the family photo archivist (and bless her for doing it, because I would never get around to it!). She sends us old pictures from time to time. Most are interesting, but some are simply awesome…here are a pair from that category. Here are my grandmas, each on a cow. Both were born in the very early 1900s (I think 1907 and 1911), so these pictures are probably from the 1920s. They are doing what every one of us have always wanted to do…riding the cow.

I am not saying that we should boycott Whole Foods. I shop at WF for things I cannot produce myself or find locally…but we need to be careful that we don’t just assume everything we find within its doors is good for us.

For the last several years my wife and I have been finding local farmers who raise natural or organic meat and produce. When we buy from a local farmer, we actually go to the farm and see how the food is being raised. When you, the consumer, do this, you become the inspector, and the farmer who has integrity is proud to show you around his or her place.

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

I didn’t do a lot of cost research this time, but my guess is that it is about the same as onion in the store ($2-3).  I bought my garlic from Trader Joes in what were labled 3 ounce bags of organic garlic.  I bought four packs (at $1.8 each) and it turned out that they were actually 4 ounces , so I began with one pound of garlic.  After processing and drying I was left with 5.5 ounces.  This means that garlic is about 66% water, and that, in this case, I paid $1.3 per ounce for my final product.  This is higher than I had guessed, but not bad.  Again, I’m sure one can find less expensive organic garlic along the way.  In fact, last fall I took 16 square feet of my herb garden and commited it to garlic.  So right now I have 25 cloves of garlic just waiting for spring to usher them above ground.  If they all make it, that’s almost 140 ounces of garlic powder!

Farmers Note: This took way longer than the onions.  I thought I’d knock out the 8 heads in 10 or 15 minutes by myself, but after one, I begged the Farmer’s Wife to help.  Even with both of us working I think it took the better part of an hour to get them peeled, crushed and spread out in the dehydrator.  On the flip side, that gave us an hour to talk about our garden this summer.  Time well spent.

I love real food, both for flavor and for nutritional value.  Herbs and spices are among the most powerful and most tasty of all foods.  They are also among the most expensive by weight.  With these three statements in mind, I have begun to experiment, seeing how inexpensively I can make some of the things I would typically buy pre-made.  As I experiment, I will let you know what I find out, and offer any data or tips I think might help you on your way.

We did raise some herbs last summer, but I kept no records on those, so my first experiment for the blog was to make my own organic onion powder.  I went to Jewel and saw that their upper-shelf brand was about $3 per ounce.  Their cheapest one was about $1.4 per ounce.  Neither of these were organic, and I’ve not priced organic from Whole Foods or Trader Joes, but I assume it’s somewhere around the upper range.  So I scampered off to the produce section and found a 3 pound bag of organic onions for $3.5.  So, the pre-dried cost was about 7.3¢ per ounce. 

Apparently, onions are a lot of water held together by some very pungent fibers.  Before I dried them, I guessed that they were 90% water, and I was startlingly close, but I guessed low.  Each pound (16 ounces) yielded 1.5 ounces…so they’re actually about 91% water.  Anyway, that brought the dried cost to about 78¢.  In my book, that’s a victory.  Keep in mind that the onions were not on sale.  I’m sure I could find them cheaper, and over the summer I plan to grow my own.  If you planted just a small crop of onions, you could keep yourself in almost-free onion powder for the whole year. 

FarmersNote: It took very little time to process the onions; I peeled and quartered them, ran them through my food processor just a bit and then spread them out on parchment paper and put them in our dehydrator for 24 hours.  Once dry, I just cracked them off into a canning jar.  I haven’t actually whirred them up to make powder, as I’m only grinding it as we need it to keep it a peak freshness.  A quick tip is to wear safety glasses with the wrap-around sides when preparing the onions; they work wonders preventing teary-eye syndrome. 

Next up…garlic.  It is in the dehydrator as we speak.

The point of this series is to let you get some level of familiarity with the people who have made the FarmerSam experience a pleasurable reality.  I begin this series with Dave because I cannot imagine how I would have pulled this first year off if Dave had not been on board.

 Life is a triage.  That is one of Dave’s favorite sayings.  Well, I guess I don’t know if it is or not, but I’ve heard him say it several times, and it has stuck with me.  Triage is the part of the medical process where the cases are sorted according to urgency or survival odds, with the most urgent or promising cases being dealt with first.  It implies chaos and, to me, conjures up a battle-field setting.  Dave is very busy, and has a lot of important relationships that require his attention, but from my very first day here at the church, it has been clear that our family ranks high on whatever evaluative tool he has to determine where to invest his time.  I have often felt guilty for all that Dave does for me…but I know that’s not what he would want.

Dave is a master carpenter (at least that’s what I think of him as…you should see the kitchen cabinets he made for the parsonage).  As such, he is highly skilled with his hands and with the tools & supplies of his trade, and is generous with the use of all of them.  He made my killing cones, dropped off several piles of wood and fasteners, has been attempting to innovate a new tool for pulling my pens around, has spent serious hours keeping his tractors (and their various implements) in working order, taught me to use the bush hog, has talked through numerous design issues I’ve had, helped me solve my “I have my hens, but no hen house, and it’s getting cold” problem, and figured out how to use the tractor to dig the ditch for the electric cable which will power palace.  Dave has saved me so much time and money, it really is incalculable (by my means at least).  More importantly, Dave has supported me.  He has taken me and my endeavor seriously, and has spent a lot of himself on me.  He’s an amazing example of selflessness, and FarmerSam would definitely not be where he is without him.

Life is a triage, and more often than not, Dave is the medic.