Hammy is NOT Pregnant

Well, Hammy's due date has come and gone.  We were really hoping that she was just not showing because she is a first time mommy and had a small litter brewing.  No luck.  Even with J's words of encouragement, "Babies or Bacon, Hammy.  You're choice," she has not produced.

Her due date was on Saturday.  I wanted to give her a few extra days just in case I miscalculated.  But with absolutely no signs of impending labor, we have to assume that she is without child.  A big faker, as J says.

One of the challenges about living on a working farm is that we really have to look at our animals as livestock, not pets.  As much as we love Hammy - her personality, her body conformation, her belly rubs - she is a pig and she eats like a pig.  Maintaining Hammy at her current weight means six pounds of feed a day plus at least one flake of hay.  In monetary terms, Hammy costs us about $1.50 a day or $45 a month to keep.  She needs to earn her living.  Literally.

Now I see the hypocracy in letting the horses live.  They easily eat as much as Hammy and have yet to produce anything that we can sell or eat.  But I guess until horse meat is accepted again in the US, the horses are safe.

So this week, we will be putting Hammy back in with her love, Jaws.  Jaws will surely be thrilled to have some female contact as he has been snorting away at the girls through the fence for the past two months.  I think we will actually leave the two lovebirds together for the next two months, just to make sure that the job gets done.  And if we're lucky, we might even end up with Fair pigs - pigs that are born in December or January and can be sold to 4-H kids for Fair.

It will actually work well.  Ruby is due somewhere around the 10th of September, so having Hammy out of the pen that Ruby is in will give her some alone time to prepare for birth.  Of course, Zeus (our stinky Boer buck) is sharing the pen with Ruby, but that is different than another pig.  And by the time we're ready to give Hammy her own space, we should have a shelter built and a fence divider in.

And if Hammy doesn't "take" this next time, we will be taking her to town.  It will be hard if it comes to that, but we're not a petting zoo and unless we can find a way to keep her for free, she'll end up in the freezer.  Maybe we should start a website "Save Hammy Fae" just in case.

Butchering Chickens

Today I planned to butcher all 25 of our broiler chickens.  I borrowed a wonderful machine from a friend...a chicken plucker.  So awesome.

I had set up to be butchering by 10am, but the scalder took forever to warm up.  So, we eventually got started around eleven.  I had a friend who wanted to learn how to butcher and came over to help me.  I am an experiential learner and teacher, so she had her hands on the chickens as quickly as I felt comfortable with her ability.

The first chicken was a bit of a trial.  I guess the first chicken is often a bit harder than the others, mainly because the act is foreign.  I see this as a good thing because I would never want the killing of an animal to seem routine.  But, for the sake of the bird, I wish that it were easier to jump back in the saddle.

I had decided to try the "nail in the chopping block" method today.  I nailed two nails into our chopping block, about 1.5" apart.  I then placed the chicken's head between the nails and pulled back a bit.  I told T that she needed to hold the wings down.  She wrapped her hands around the bird and prepared herself.  I had sharpened the hatchet, but even so, it was very hard to get the head off in a single blow.  And after the first swing, T let the wings slip.  So not only was I trying desparately to kill this chicken swiftly, I had wings spattering blood everywhere.  It was not pleasant for anyone involved, especially the chicken.

We finally got the head off and drained the blood into a bucket.  I then headed to the scalder.  It wasn't as hot as I remembered, but we had waited a long time so I figured it must be ready.  I dunked the bird in the water, moving up and down soas to get the water into all of the pores.  I thought I heard the chicken make a noise, but brushed it off.  Remember, the chicken was without a head.

The incredible chicken plucker.

I then put the chicken into the miraculous chicken plucker and turned it on.  The chicken began bouncing around in the tub, slowly losing feathers as it went.  But it wasn't coming as clean as I wanted to see.  I think the water was just too cold still.  After about a minute, I turned off the machine and removed the bird.  It was disappointing.  It still had most of its wing feathers and tail feathers.  It also had lots of patches of feathers along it's back and legs.

Without a choice, I began to pluck the remaining feathers from the bird.  All of a sudden, we heard this forlorn sound...sort of like the sound that an old baby doll would make as you turned it on its side.  I looked at T.  She looked at me.  "Did you hear that?" I asked.  Yes, she had.  And she admitted that she thought she heard something earlier as well.  I moved the bird between my hands.  A low cry eminated from the headless carcass.  Well, once we realized it wasn't a zombie chicken, it became a toy.  In fact, we had K videotape the "Dead Whistling Chicken" and he posted it on youtube.  Probably not the most PC thing to do, but humor changes when you are butchering chickens.

After the first chicken, we went back to wringing their necks...much more successfully, I might add.  We processed nine birds before breaking to vacuum-seal them.  However, as I was sealing them, I took the opportunity to weigh them.  Most of the birds were coming in around two and a half pounds...not big enough.  I can live with a smaller bird because we don't force feed our broilers, but two pounds barely warrants the butchering process.  I decided to wait on the rest of the birds for another few weeks and try to fatten them up.  We'll see.  I'm not very impressed with this batch of birds.  I'm not sure if it's the breed (although they are supposed to be cornish cross) or the hatchery.  I probably won't order these again.

Canning Bean Soup

It seems a little warm today to be canning, but since peaches and pears aren't quite ready around here, I had to find something to satisfy the craving to can.  I decided on bean soup...mainly because I had all of the ingredients already.

I followed the recipe in the Ball Blue Book (as usual).  It was pretty simple.  I started by boiling the beans and then soaking them for an hour.  After that, I added onion and ham hocks (one of the ingredients that I was trying to use up in my freezer - yay me).  I brought it back to a boil and cooked it for quite awhile.  I added salt and pepper, removed the ham bones and chopped up the meat, adding it back to the soup.  I then ladled the hot soup into my clean quart jars...six in all.

I started the pressure canning process on the electric stove.  This was not something that I thought much about, but it would become an important point in a few minutes.  I started the stove timer and went back to housework.  Every once in awhile I checked to make sure that I was still at the right pressure - although I never seem to get the canner to back off to 10 pounds...I generally can at about 15 pounds all the time.

Well, the weather became interesting, as it often does in the late spring and early fall.  Thunderheads came rolling in and with them came LOTS of lightening.  The power flickered a couple of times and then it went out.  Immediately, I thought of my bean soup happily cooking, unaware that it was without electricity to keep it going.

 

BBQ Canning - git-r-dun.

Not knowing how long the power would be out, I moved the pressure canner outside to the side burner on the barbeque.  Luckily, we had gas.  I really hadn't been keeping close tabs on how long the canner had been processing, just glancing at the pressure guage as I walked in and out of the kitchen.  So I had to assume the least.  I decided to continue canning for another hour (the total time was one and a half hours and I probably had done at least 45 minutes before the storm hit).

The storm passed.  The canner finished it's job.  And I was greeted with six wonderful jars of bean soup ready to put up for some day in winter when I don't want to cook.  One of the jars didn't seal properly so we will be eating it.  Yum.

George Goes to Town

This posting starts last night, when we spent at least two hours trying to load George the pig into the trailer.

J had to work this morning, so it was going to be up to me to get George to the butcher before 8am today.  We decided to load him into the trailer last night so that I was sure to get him there on time without any trouble.  Good call.

I borrowed our friend's trailer (the one we always borrow) and backed it up to the pig pen gate.  J shoved a couple of tires up against the trailer and put a plywood ramp on them so that the pig would be able to simply walk up and into the trailer without a large step.  It looked good.

I got some grain for the pigs and began shaking it in the trailer.  Hammy began her normal snorting and slowly made her way up the ramp and into the trailer.  I shook a little out onto the floor for her, but we really needed George.  He was almost into the trailer when J tried to shut the gate and he spooked and took off into the pen.

We tried awhile with a carrot stick (stick and rope, not vegetable).  But that didn't seem to do anything but get both George and Ruby (our very pregnant sow) very upset.  J went out to make some pig boards for us to use while I tried to make a trail of food into the trailer for George to follow.  Of course, Ruby thought that she deserved all of the food, so every time George went anywhere near the entrance of the trailer, Ruby would bark and chase him away.  Great.  Hammy is in the trailer, eating her fill.  Ruby is blocking the entrance to the trailer, eating her fill.  George has given up and is lying in the corner of the pen, looking forlorn.

So we get the two pig boards made (about 2x3 sheets of plywood with handles cut in them).  J and I start to push George toward the trailer, but Ruby is in the way.  Every time we get him over there, she scares him off.  Once we get her out of the way, we can't seem to get him over to the entrance.  Time and time again, we get him within feet of the trailer and he turns and runs (usually over me).

J decided to try the snare.  This is a mean tool that you use to control a pig when you have to.  It is a metal braided rope loop that is attached to a pole.  You pull the handle to retract the loop around the snout of the pig, thus snaring him.  We used this snare when we needed to trim Jaws' tusks.  And he bent the thing quite a bit.

George was panting, so it wasn't hard to get the snare around the top of his snout, but for some reason, no matter how precise we were, the snare wouldn't hold when J tightened it.  Over and over again, we would catch him by the snout.  Over and over again, the snare would release and George would run.  Finally, we got the snare over his snout and J, determined by now not to let a pig get the best of him, didn't let any slack out on his grip.  He just started dragging the pig to the trailer.  I began pushing from behind, although I'm not sure the pushing helped much more than him just knowing there was someone behind him.  We dragged and pushed him up the ramp and into the trailer, shutting the door with a finality that even he could understand.  He was quiet all the way to the butcher in the morning.  So quiet, I actually feared that he may be dead from exhaustion when we opened the trailer to unload.  But he was fine.

The butcher called in the afternoon with his hanging weight...222lbs.  We won't know what his live weight was, but you can guess it was close to 75lbs of insides...so somewhere around 300 pounds.  Not a bad pig!  We will get the meat back in about a month, after the hams and bacon have had time to cure.  Can't wait.

Freezer Camp for Abraham

We sold one of our two hogs and today was the day that the sold hog was butchered.  The purchaser chose to use a butcher that kills the hog on the farm and then takes it back to the shop to cut and wrap.  It was a new experience for me and one that I will not soon forget.

They started by shooting the pig in the pig pen.  The butcher went into the pen and was trying to get a perfect shot, kneeling down in front of Abraham.  Of course, Hammy thought that this was an invitation to get pets so she ambled over and started nosing him.  This was not condusive to a simple, quick kill, so I went into the pen to distract Hammy.  Once she was happily rubbing on me, the butcher took the shot.  It was true in the center of his forehead and Abraham was dead.

The butcher immediately went for his knife and cut a large gash down the length of his neck, soas to bleed him out quickly.  The body was quivvering at this point, which seemed pretty normal to me.  But within an instant, the entire body went into huge convulsions, flipping and thrashing in the mud and blood.  I had a hard time getting out of the pen without getting dirty.  It was kindof disturbing, but I just kept telling my wide-eyed boys that Abraham was already gone and this was just the energy left in his body leaving.

Once the pig was quiet, the butcher dragged him out of the pen and began the process of cleaning the carcass.  He washed it down with a hose...probably the cleanest I've ever seen that pig...then began at the feet.  He removed the feet and started slipping the skin away from the legs.  Once at the shoulder, he made a shallow incision down the center of the pig, and began to open it, peeling the skin back like a jacket.

After all of the skin was removed from the front, the butcher hung the carcass with large metal hooks through the hind legs.  He then lifted it with a hydralic lift attached to the back of his truck.  As the body lifted, he slowly pulled the skin down the back toward the head.  Once it reached the head, he severed the neck and the skin and head came off together.

He then gutted the pig, saving out the heart and liver for the buyer.  Once the pig was evicerated, he washed it out with water and grabbed his saw.  This saw resembled a large sawsall, the blade was about four inches tall and at least fourteen inches long.  He used this saw to cut through the center of the spine, all the way from the base of the tail to just before the shoulder blades.  At that point, he picked up his knife and cut through the remaining meat.  The carcass fell apart into two halves and he lifted them into the truck and onto the rack in the cooler.

All in all, the whole process took about an hour and a half.  We were able to take lots of interesting pictures and ask all sorts of questions.  The butcher praised our farming skills, noting that the meat was exactly the way that he would want his pig to look.  Sounds like we're doing something right.  Maybe $1.75 on the hoof is too cheap...we ended up with a total live weight of 263lbs and 185lbs of hanging weight (meat and bones).  Not bad for a pig!

Abandoned Goat

We were driving home from the river today, when I saw a boer buck wandering along the side of the road.  With our recent issues surrounding the escaping of certain goats and the yahoos who call the cops (even in farming country) when livestock get out, we decided to stop and see if we could find the owner and/or round up the goat.

We learned quickly that this goat had been abandoned by the previous renter and had escaped his pen almost immediately (which he would need to do in order to survive).  For the past three months, the goat had been free ranging it in the yard.

We asked the property owner - a lady from southern California with absolutely no interest in or knowledge of goats - if we could catch the goat and take him home.  J seemed particularly fond of this goat and really wanted to keep him.  The lady said sure, but mentioned that others had tried before us and had not succeeded.

Ahhh, but they did not have our secret weapon.  Girls.  We borrowed a friend's trailer, loaded up two of our beautiful does, and went over to the house.  We chose to do this at night because my husband had his mind set on getting this goat home...I probably would've been happy waiting till morning, but I didn't have the goat connection.  So, in the dark, we wandered the property, catching glipses of the buck and coaxing the girls to call out to him from the open trailer.

We did this for about an hour before I called it quits.  We decided to come back in a few days (we have a planned camping trip for the next three days).  We may have to earn his trust before we can get him into the trailer and home.  All for the love of a goat.

*UPDATE*  We've gone by the property several times since the trip and have seen hide nor hair of him.  My guess is that the owner called animal control and had him removed.  Hope they had better luck than we did.

Argh...GOATS!!!

After spending a day "lacing" hot wire tape through the five strands of hot wire already up, creating a hot wire net to keep the goats in, AND running a metal hot wire around each post at the bottom to act as a secondary grounding point, we watched them walk under and out into the field.  I cursed the girls all the way to the pig pen where Lilo and Asha (the escapees) were contained for the night.  The next day, J and I went into the extra pen next to the pigs and ran two strands of hot wire (one on top, one on bottom) around the whole thing, thus setting it up like a pig pen.  We knew from experience that the goats could NOT get out of this.  We put Asha and Lilo into this "Goat Prison" and felt pretty confident that the problem was over.

I drove in the driveway this morning and was greeted by the sheriff holding Zeus on a leash.  ARGH!  After a very brief discussion with the sheriff, I understood that if the goats got out again (and the sheriff was called again), I would be facing a substantial fine.  I told the sheriff that if he was called out here again, we would be having a BBQ and he was invited.

I walked Zeus up the driveway and put him directly into the pig pen.  I could not have him in the "Goat Prison" next to the pigs because Zeus has become somewhat sexually mature (although I have a hard time using the word "mature" to describe an animal that pees into his own mouth and onto his head on purpose).  While the goats don't mind being in with the pigs, it's not their favorite environment, and they are certainly at the bottom of the food chain.  Zeus has always been a bit of a loner and didn't seem to be worried about his new digs, although he did avoid the mud puddle as much as possible.

Later this afternoon, I saw Stitch and Sox wandering around in the yard.  They were both immediately sent to the Goat Prison.  The only two goats left in the large pasture with the horses are Neptune and Tumbleweed.  They don't seem to want out and are happy to be the only two goats in the group.  As long as I don't see them wandering the streets, they will be left in the pen.  Ahhh...the life of a goat farmer.

Butchering a Rooster

I helped a friend butcher her rooster today. Well, actually, I butchered the rooster for her...but she helped. The rooster was supposed to be a hen and when he started to crow, the city told her she could not keep him.  She has always taught her daughter to understand where food comes from and wanted to share in this experience.  One of her friends joined us with her little girl.  So, in all, there were three women and two girls (both 6) involved in the process.

I tried to explain the process before I did it.  I also tried to explain what each step would entail just before we did it together.  This way, nobody was surprised, scared, upset, hurt.  It worked pretty well.

We started by saying goodbye to "Fluffy."  It was much easier for me since I hadn't known him from a chick.  But after everyone had pet him and loved on him, I picked him up by the head and cranked as hard as I could until his neck snapped.

We went through the entire process together, beheading, skinning, gutting, and cleaning.  I used the process described in the article "How to Butcher a Chicken in Under 20 Minutes" on backwoodshome.com.  The girls were facinated (as were the moms).  In the end, both girls left with several feathers, a wing tip and a foot each.  They were dancing around with these morbid prizes as if they were the next great barbie.  It was awesome to see kids accepting death as part of life and not fearing it.

In the end, the whole group went home with a new understanding of what it takes to butcher a chicken.  It was a great experience for all.

Down to Two Ducklings

Well, life is certainly cruel sometimes.  We have lost two of the four ducklings to the elements.   I'm not sure what happened, but this is my best guess...

The momma ducks walked up from the pond to the barn.  To do this, they have to cross the foot-deep ditch that J dug this weekend for irrigation (I TOLD him not to do this).  Sometimes, the ducklings get caught in the ditch and cannot find their way out to the side with momma.  I think that two babies got stuck.  The mommas must've kept going. 

One of the babies made it out on the other side and either wandered back to the pond on its own, or followed another group of ducks down to the pond.  It died beside the water.

The other baby was still in the ditch when we found it.  It was very "sleepy" and hot.  I think it must've been there for most of the morning.  It didn't have much motor control.  We tried to cool it down and get it to drink some water, but it was too far gone.  It died in the house.

So, we now have two mommas and two babies.  Cross your fingers that they make it.

Yesterday Was Just a Prelude...

Yesterday was just a prelude to the insane breakouts we had here today.  In addition to the goats, which are by now almost a given to be out of their pen, we had three horses and 25 broiler chickens. 

I knew that the goats were out this morning.  In fact, I don't think we bothered to put them away last night, noting the futility of the act.  I didn't, however, know that the horses were gone.  My bedroom looks out over the pig pen and on to the horse pasture, but there are lots of trees out there and I figured they were in the shade.  I thought this until the neighbor called and asked me if I was missing three horses.  He then proceeded to describe them to me.  As he was talking, I took a long look at the pasture and noted that the back gate was wide open.

He told me that the police had arrived at his place around midnight last night asking about the free-range horses.  He told them that they weren't his and asked if they needed help rounding them up.  The officers thought they could handle it, but after about 45 minutes, our neighbor went back out to help.  He said that the horses were getting pretty riled up and he was afraid one of the officers would get hurt.  He caught all three horses and put them in his pasture.  The officers admitted that they weren't too useful as cowboys.

I thanked him and asked if I could come get the horses this afternoon when J gets home from work.  Our neighbor is in view, but the horses need to be led individually (except for Honey - I can ride her), and rather than make three trips, I could make two with J.  He said that was fine.  I think I'll bring him a box of produce as a thank you.

After talking with the neighbor, I went out to feed.  The goats were nowhere in sight.  Honestly, I was thankful as they make feeding the pigs a challenge.  But I noticed that I had a whole lot more chickens than normal gathering at my feet.  The goats (I'm sure) had gone over to the chain link fence surrounding the broiler chickens and rubbed it open.  They were probably just scratching their bellies, but the fence moved enough and the chickens got out.  I thought about catching them, but in the end, decided to just embrace their freedom and feed all of the chickens in the big pen.  So now I had horses and chickens to gather.

But since the goats didn't want to be outdone, they decided to up the anty and take a walk down the street.  A neighbor caught them with a bucket of grain but didn't know who they belonged to, so she called the police.  My mom-in-law saw them as she drove to our place and alerted me.  I emptied the back of the Expedition and went out to collect them.  By then, the police were there with their goat wagon.  Between the two of us, we wrangled everyone into the two vehicles and drove them home.  I half-heartedly put them back in their pen (knowing that they would probably be out in a few minutes) and hoped that the officer left before he saw them walk through the fence.

I spent the afternoon running a fifth strand of hot wire along the back part of the pasture and re-running a strand of braided wire through the other strands of tape to give it a little more zing.  I haven't seen the goats walk up the driveway from the pasture yet, but it's still pretty early.

We'll go pick up the horses tonight.  And we may or may not collect up the broilers.  The only real deficits to letting them run free are these:  1. They aren't as quick as your typical chicken so they are more likely to be picked off by a hawk.  And 2. The won't be as fat if they are allowed to run around the whole yard...as opposed to the 8x10 pen we keep them in.  We'll see what the motivation level is this evening.

Breach!

We have had many problems with containment of animals.  Abraham has been sold for butcher due to the sour taste he left in our mouths after his continuous escapes to the shed for a snack.  The chickens haven't ever been confined, and while they may be in a pen with the gate closed, they come and go as they please.  The goats are a constant challenge as you cannot keep a goat in a pen that they do not want to be in (unless it is a concrete cell).

Today, the goats not only left their pen (as the word "escape" implies that we are trying to keep them in still - we have, in fact resigned ourselves to their ability to walk through hot wire fences), but they found their way into my garden.  Only by the grace of God (and the good eyes of one of my boys) did we notice them relatively early. 

Amidst screaming and running (mostly me), we made our way to the garden, turning off the hot wire that "protects" it along the way, and forced the goats out.  It wasn't as easy as just pushing them out, I had to make a way out for them by lowering the fence that was all of a sudden something they feared.  But I managed to get it down quickly and the boys pushed and pulled the goats out of the veggies.

Now, I have to admit that the garden fence was set up as an illusion.  It does not fully enclose the garden, as the pivot runs through it and we have to allow for the wheel tracks.  But I created a long line of hot wire that stretched far beyond the garden and curved away from the field.  My hope was that the goats would never venture to the far end, away from the barn and the other animals.  But it didn't take into account that they would be escaping their pen on the far end, away from the barn and close to where my fence ended.  I'm sure that they just wandered out into the field and happened to find themselves on the garden side of the fence with nothing better to do than pillage.

We surveyed the damage.  As Lilo was leaving, she grabbed a mouthful of snow peas, so I knew that they had been hit.  But with almost 100 feet of peas, it was hard to see a difference.  Not the case with the carrots.  The goats had obviously walked up and down each row of carrots and ate the greens down to the earth.  The carrots were intact in the ground, but the were effectively picked as without tops they would not be growing any more.

The beets had been eaten too, but not as bad as the carrots.  And it looked like a couple of potato plants had been browsed to death.  One yukon and one red.  There were a few potatoes lying in the dirt, unaware that their leaves had been eaten.  I easily picked them up and added them to the forced harvest.

The boys helped to pull all of the carrots and beets out of the ground and we took them all inside.  I topped and tailed the larger carrots and bagged them in bunches of nine.  They should still be good by Thursday when I am supposed to fill my Locavore order.  The smaller carrots were topped, tailed, and cut into smaller pieces.  I then blanched them for three minutes and threw them in a baking dish in the freezer.  Once they have frozen individually, I will bag them up and vacuum seal them for the freezer.

I suppose it isn't a complete loss, but I will be dedicating all resources to making sure the goats cannot get out of their pen again.  If I cannot get it figured out tomorrow, they may be bunking with the pigs.  But I really don't want to punish the pigs for something they didn't do.  As a small deterrent, I will be running the oscillating sprinkler along the side of the garden that the goats entered...hopefully they will think twice about crossing the stream.

More Beets, Less Radishes

I keep meaning to make a note of this...I want to plant more beets and less radishes next year.  Actually, the radishes don't need to be less overall, just fewer and further between.  But I definitely want more beets.

The optimal row length for radishes (in my humble opinion) is about 12 feet.  And you need to plant them at least five days apart in a bunch.  It seems like one row of radishes is ready before we are finished with the last row.  I don't mind a little bit of overlap, but too much means too many radishes at once.  And there aren't a lot of options for storage.

So I have come up with several useage options for radishes.  We can eat them of course, raw, in salad, or braised.  We can also pickle radishes.  I haven't tried roasting them yet, but I think that it might be another preparation option.  We also donated radishes to Common Table (a non-profit restaurant downtown).  But in the end, how many radishes can one family eat?  Even pickled.  And there isn't a huge market for radishes.  You either love them or hate them.

As for beets, bring 'em on.  Not only are beets easy for me to eat, they are great canned, pickled, or even frozen.  And I can steam them or use them in soups.  I can cook them and then eat them cold in my salad or butter them in a pan.  They are SO good.  I could eat them all day.  And the market for beets seems to be pretty good.  Everyone likes fresh beets.  I don't have enough to keep up with demand.

With the beets, I think at least 24 feet in a planting...maybe even more like 50 feet per planting.  And no more than ten days between plantings.  I want the last batch of beets just fading out as my next batch is coming on.  Any "extras" are easily canned for later.

And a note about quantity...I planted a LOT of snow peas this year.  Partly because they are easy to grow.  Partly because I remember the boys raiding my garden and never seeing a pea make it to the house.  But the 75 feet of peas that I planted is a bit overkill.  I have been picking and picking and picking...and eating and eating and eating...and I cannot keep up.  It wouldn't be so bad if there were a storage solution, but so far I haven't found a great way to keep them.  I think freezing is about the only choice.  And they just aren't as good when I thaw them later.  The demand for snow peas is pretty good, but I may have to lower the price just to get them out of the house quickly.

Spinach needs to be planted in 24 foot batches but with about a two week interval so that you really get the most out of the row before the next one gets going.  Same thing with lettuce.  I think two weeks is a good interval for lettuce...but maybe only a 12 foot row at a time.  And bunch onions should only be a 12 foot row every two weeks as well.  Carrots could easily be planted in larger batches - maybe 50 foot rows - because any that aren't eaten can be blanched and frozen.  With lettuce and green onions, you need plan to use all of what is available.  So shorter rows and larger intervals works well.  The spinach and carrots can be frozen, but are much better fresh.

Turkeys



Our rafter of turkeys.

 Last year, I tried to raise our own Thanksgiving turkeys.  We made it through the brooder box and out into the pen.  But Grandpa's dog got in the coop and killed all of them in one "fowl" game (sorry, I couldn't help myself).

So I decided to try it again this year.  Grandpa still has his dog, but I made sure that my pen was much more secure and I let those turkeys grow pretty big before I let them anywhere that a dog might be able to get to them.  A tough dog might go after these turkeys still, but not Grandpa's.  The turkeys are as tall as he is.

Bob (I think).

We haven't named any of the turkeys.  Except for one.  Bob.  Now I'm not sure that I call the same turkey Bob every time, but Bob is an aggressive little cuss.  He zeros in on your fingers and boy, you'd better be quick or it's gonna pinch.  Even when he was smaller, he had a thing for hands.  I always made sure to put the waterer in quickly while distracting the turkeys with food in another area of the pen.  They have pretty sharp beaks.

Well, the boys wanted me to let the turkeys free range.  I guess since almost all of the animals on our farm are allowed to roam around, the kids figure that's the way it should be.  I had been in the pen with the turkeys lots of times and while they are strangely curious about everything you do, they never (not even Bob) seemed to truly "attack."  So today I let them out.  Technically, I just opened the door to their pen.  It took them about two hours to actually come out.  I know people say that chickens aren't very smart, but turkeys make them look like scholars.

Maybe this one is Bob
* note the sharp beak *

 We have five Broad-Breasted Bronze turkeys.  I think it may end up that we only have one female, which works fine for me as these are all destined for freezer camp and the males grow larger than the females.  Once the turkeys had figured out how to get out of their pen, they spent awhile roaming up and down the fence-line of their former digs.  The only time that they varied from this, was when I would come over to check on them.  Then I had a posse that would gather around my legs.  I kept my hands in my pockets, but even so, they were a little menacing as a group.

Eventually, the turkey gang made it around the whole barnyard.  They even followed me all the way out to the horse pasture at feeding time.  They never attacked, but Bob went after my hand a couple of times.  I picked him up by his feet and talked to him about his inappropriate behavior.  I don't think it was the most effective course of discipline for a turkey, but it felt good.  The turkeys spent all of the time that they could hovering around me.  They ignored the goats and the other birds, but when I would walk out, I was instantly surrounded. 

This is a full grown bronze...ours are
not this large (yet).

I'm not sure if I will keep them out through the summer.  It is somewhat unnerving to be encircled by turkeys while you're trying to do your evening chores.  And while they are surprisingly heavy (I'd guess at least 10 pounds a piece), they won't be hard to catch to put back.  All I have to do is pull my hands out of my pockets and reach down (quickly).

Make Way for Duckling

We have had two female Indian Runner ducks sitting on a shared nest for awhile now.  Last week, while the girls were swimming in the pond, I snuck out to their nest and counted 21 eggs in their possession.  We knew that some of the eggs were fertile (we have a male Runner who really likes his girls), but it was anyone's guess how many ducklings would hatch.

Well, two days ago we got our answer.  Our proud momma ducks came marching out of the brush with three babies.  Yep, that's it.  Just three.  I cannot say that we were too disappointed, as 21 ducklings would overwhelm any farm.  But I was a bit surprised that there weren't more.

So, while the mommas paraded their babies around the barnyard, I went up to check the nest.  Sure enough, most of the eggs were infertile.  I could tell this by holding each egg up to the sun.  If it was just a thick liquid, I knew it had never grown.  I tossed those further out into the brush.  There were two eggs that had developed all the way, but had not hatched.

I know the rule about never helping a baby hatch, but I couldn't help myself.  What if the mommas had just given up a little too soon?  What if these two babies were just a few hours from hatching and were going to wake up to the world alone?  I had to try to help.

The first baby was already dead.  It looked like it had pipped (broken the shell) but then must've run out of energy and died in the shell.  I said a little prayer and tossed it into the brush.  I then started to open the second one.  I didn't hold much hope, because this little one hadn't even pipped.  But when I opened the shell, it was breathing!

I quickly removed the remainder of the shell, probably a little too quickly as I detached a major vein in the shell and the baby began to bleed.  It looked like some of the yolk sac had yet to absorb completely into the baby's body as well.  Things didn't look good.

I yelled to M that I needed some help.  I had to climb through the barbed wire fence and didn't want to do it with the baby in my hands so I gave it to him (he ran inside and got rubber gloves first because he didn't want to touch the blood).  I climbed through the fence and we brought the baby inside.

First thing I did was wash her off in warm water.  Then I dried her quickly with the hair dryer.  I wanted to make sure she stayed warm.  I didn't completely dry her, but enough to give her a good start.  Then I set her up on a heating pad with a towel wrapped around her and a heat lamp above.  I eventually turned off the heating pad as the heat lamp seemed to be enough.

Baby duckling just after hatching.

For the first night, the baby flopped around every once in awhile.  But with no apparent control.  It peeped a lot.  I fed it sugar water through a pipette and it drank every bit.  I said a prayer before bed that God would take her peacefully if she needed to go.  I honestly didn't expect her to make it through the night.

In the morning, she was up and much more alert than the day before.  She could hold her head up and when I placed her beak in a dish of water, she cupped it up and swallowed like a big duck would.  She still didn't have a lot of motor control, but she was starting to move around.  She did, however, make it very clear that she would prefer to be held than left in a box.  I spent much of the morning with her tucked into my chest.

I thought I might try to reintroduce her to her mommas, but when we brought her outside, she just didn't have the stamina to keep up with the other ducklings.  She tried, but the other babies could run so much further and faster, she would eventually just sit down and wait.  We brought her back inside and figured we needed to give her more time to get strong.

By the evening, the box on the counter wasn't holding her in.  J was home with her for awhile and he found her at his feet in the office.  He picked her up, scolded her, and put her back in her box on the counter.   He walked back into the office and by the time he sat down, here comes the little duckling waddling and peeping its way into the office (this time followed by our dog...nosing it carefully).

J scolded her again, put her back in the box and built up the sides a little with a towel.  But by the time he was back in the office, sure enough, this little duckling was on her way to him.  This time, the cat was following her...and not in a "watch and wait" sort of manner...he was stalking).  J quickly picked her up, put her back in the box, and this time, covered the box with a towel.  The baby wasn't happy about this, but she couldn't escape.  When I got home, the duckling spent some quality time on my shoulder, but then went back in the box for the night.

This morning, the baby was even more alert and moving than ever.  She was completely upright and seemed in control of her movements.  She certainly knew that she wanted out of the box.  I held her for a bit, but I wanted my coffee and put her down on the floor in the kitchen.  She followed my feet everywhere I went, peeping madly the whole time.  I finally gave up and decided to take her outside.

Immediately, I was overrun with goats (they are having a hard time staying in their pen).  It is not particularly conducive to introducing a baby to its mommas for the first time, but I tried to ignore the goats.  When the momma ducks came up to me (thinking I would feed them), I set the baby down in front of them.  The baby didn't seem to want anything to do with it and ran in circles, peeping.  It didn't help that several of the goats had to nose her to see what she was.  Eventually, the mommas ran back down to the pond to get their other babies.

Two mommas and four babies.
Our preemie is the last in line.

I followed and tried to scare the goats off of my back.  I set the baby down again, this time near her siblings.  She still didn't seem to happy about it.  The mommas kept quacking quietly at her and tried to herd her into the group.  She didn't like it much, but she eventually accepted it.  I watched from quite a distance for at least ten mintues...trying to keep the goats from investigating.  The baby seemed to be able to keep up ok.  She rested a bit more than the others, but the mommas were encouraging and kept her with the group.  As I began to walk back to the house, I watched our little preemie duckling taking her first swim in the pond.  She took to it like a duck to water.  I think she'll do just fine.

Fair Time

We went to the county fair today.  And while I could tell you all about the rides, the games, the rodeo, and the exhibits, they don't really fit with this blog.  The one thing that does is the entries.

All three boys and I entered items in the non-livestock open class.  This isn't something that people do as often as they used to.  For us it was partly about the free wristbands for the kids, but also about the pride in sharing your work.

Blue Ribbon Winning Photo of Hammy Fae

K entered several photographs and he took home a first and a second place ribbon.  His first place photo was of Hammy Fae (our pig).  His second place winner was a close up of grass.  We were all very happy about it.

M entered a dozen duck eggs.  He spent a lot of time washing these eggs and then polishing them with some vegetable oil.  They were very good looking eggs.  He took second place in his division.

Z entered a couple of drawings.  He didn't place but we were thrilled to see him enter.

I entered four of my canning products - pickled radishes, pickled watermelon rind, orange marmalade, and blackberry/strawberry jam.  All four of my jars came away with red (second place) ribbons.

Not a bad haul for the Rogers family!

Weeding...Again

It seems that I find myself in serious weeding mode about every other week.  Today was one of those days. 

I started the day intending just to water the garden - something that is much more time consuming while the pivot is turned off in preparation for cutting the hay field.  I went out first thing to get it started, knowing that I have to set the sprinkler about nine different places to get the whole garden and at fifteen minutes a spot, we're talking several hours.

Well, I couldn't help pulling a few weeds once I set the sprinkler.  And a few weeds always leads to a few more.  I swear it's like a drug...or eating potato chips...only not as fun.  But seriously, I cannot just pull one weed.  I have to pull a "section."  It may have to do with a need to see some kind of progress each time, and honestly, pulling one weed is like folding one sock.

So, as the sprinkler made its way through the squash, I made my way through the pig weed.  Mind you, I was not dressed in long pants and muck boots for this.  I sometimes have a hard time choosing the proper clothing for the job.  I was in capris and tevas.  But it worked for me.

palmer amaranth - pig weed

Pig weed is a very tall weed (almost to your waist if you let it grow) and it has one strong center stalk.  It makes this weed pretty easy to pull.  Not easy, but "pretty" easy.  It still takes some muscle.  The only real benefit, is that you don't have to get too close to the ground to do it.  We had a row of pig weed that I wanted to clear, so I attacked that, laying down the weeds as I went.  It was sort of the way that a logger builds a road for himself with small trees, laying them down in front of the tractor as he drives over them.  By the end, I had a nice "path" of pig weed.

An aside about pig weed...I have been looking into weeds that are in fact, edible and pig weed is one of them.  It is called amaranth and it is eaten in many Asian and African cultures.  I knew that the leaves were edible (used in stir fry and steamed as a side dish like spinach), but I understand that the seeds are also used as a substitute for grains.  I haven't taken the leap yet, but I think I will have to harvest some of our volunteer veggies and try them out.  I may not tell the family before they taste it, though.

So after the pig weed row, I started into the potatoes.  The potatoes don't have a pig weed problem.  They have a creeping weed problem - one that I have yet to name.  And when I weed the potatoes, I get down on my hands and knees.

Well, by the time I had made it to the potatoes, so had the sprinkler.  So I was weeding in some pretty muddy conditions.  Initially, I tried to keep clean.  But within ten minutes, I was down in the mud.  I don't know...it was kind of fun.  I managed to weed most of the potatoes before the kids wanted me to come inside to make some lunch.

I'll be out in the garden again tomorrow, I'm sure, cos no one can pick just one weed.