Burning the Fence Line

Burning the fence line is an old tradition...sort of like burning the field before the growing season starts.  It is a symbol of preparing for the summer.  It signifies to the owner and to those who drive by that this property is ready.  We have seen lots of people burning their fields and fence lines, scortching the dry stubble and duff black. 

They, like us, watch the weather and the wind when they burn.  We look for the perfect day when the wind will carry the fire in the direction we want it to go.  We look for a day when the weather will hold dry during the light and then cloud over (and even rain) in the dark.  Sometimes, if you time it just right, you can light one side of the field and the wind will push the flames across the property in smoking waves - catching nearly all of the dead grass in its wake.  Sometimes, you spend the entire day re-igniting crest after crest of dry grass and watch as it travels a few feet and disappears.

Yesterday, J decided to burn the remainder of the southern fence line...well, actually, he asked me if I would like to burn the remainder of the southern fence line.  I hesitated, but he reminded me that we had a plow line on one side of the fence and the paved road on the other - two natural fire breaks.  Of course, my hesitation was warranted.  Let me explain...

I have an uncanny knack for starting fires.  Even though I went through fire academy like all of the other firefighters, my education in stopping fires from burning hasn't hampered my ability to burn.  When we lived in the coast range and were burning slash piles, J could spend days trying to start a pile.  He would throw all sorts of flammable things in them to get the pile going - tires, gasoline, boots full of diesel - to no avail.  When he was finished trying, I would go out with a piece of paper and a match.  I would light the match, light the paper, and light the pile.  In fact, I was so good at it, there were a couple of times that the fire got bigger than planned and the fire department was called.  I always had it well under control - but that didn't save me from getting in trouble.

So, when J asked me to burn the fence line, I hesitated.  And after his insistence on the safety level, I agreed.  In my defense, I did tell him that I would probably burn the whole place down.

It was going just fine.  I was driving down the side of the road in the golf cart with the propane torch.  I would drive slowly and fire up the torch at the base of the fence.  Occasionally, I would catch a tumbleweed or a bit of sage, but mostly it was just the twenty years of duff sitting under the juniper trees.  There were a couple of limbs that were sagging (either old or broken) and caught fire in a poof of flames and smoke, but they didn't climb the trees.  No ladder fuel here.

Unfortunately, we didn't need a ladder fuel to reach the trees.  Although I avoided tree bases and fence posts, the duff allowed the fire to crawl quietly around everything.  Soon enough I had coals eating away the bottoms of the fence and smoke licking the ring of bark at the bottoms of the trees.  And then, I noticed that several trees had smoke coming out of them at three and four feet off the ground.  You see, when juniper trees die, they often rot from the inside out leaving a hollow space through the trunk.  The fire had seen a familiar face - a chimney - in those rotting trees and decided to make itself at home.

I drove back up to J and told him what was happening.  He and I went back with the backpack sprayer and drenched much of the smoldering trees.  We did this several times...each time soaking the inside of the trees.  Several of the "chimneys" went out.  But there was one that just didn't want to stop burning.  J went back down and vented the tree by cutting a hole in the center to allow the flame out and not up.  We would've just cut the tree down, but it runs under powerlines and is technically on the easement.

In between waterings, the phone company showed up.  Did I mention that some of the duff had burned around a phone box?  J had doused it quite well, but it was hot enough to melt the phone lines inside.  Lucky for us, the phone guys were old friends of ours.  A few weeks back they had spent the better part of a day with us moving our phone line into a conduit J installed.  They thanked us for finding a previously unknown phone box and noted that it just might solve all of their service calls in this area.  Phew.  We were off the hook.

This morning we awoke to the neighbor knocking on our door at 5:45am.  The fire department had knocked on her door and she was passing it on.  Apparently, the chimney tree had not gone out over night and someone had called it in this morning.  J went down (he's better at talking with fire guys than I am) and talked with the crew.  He explained to them what was going on.  Their first question was if we had an ag permit.  Uh, no.  We didn't know we needed one.  They explained that it was obvious we had done all that we could to make sure this didn't happen and that an ag permit would not have kept this problem from happening...but they did let us know that it's something we're "supposed" to have.

They talked about how some of the trees obviously needed to come down.  J explained that the county wouldn't remove them and that we weren't allowed to.  The captain told him that they would cut it down.  J offered to go get the crane truck and chain saw to help.  They agreed.  He brought the crane truck down, attached it to the tree (just to make sure that it wouldn't hit any lines) and then limbed and fell the tree.  The firefighters helped swamp out the limbs and make a nice burn pile.  About that time, the county showed up.  They offered to chip the wood, but J told them that he'd rather take the logs up for firewood and would just burn the rest in a brush pile.  I'm sure they were thrilled to hear about that.

Moral of this story?  Don't let your wife (a known pyromancer) burn the fence line...even if it's supposed to snow that night.

Milking Lilo

Lilo, my Nubian milker, enjoying some pasture.

Lilo and I are slowly getting into a rhythm with milking.  But it was a long first month.

When we started out, I would coax Lilo onto the milking stand with grain.  I would lock her head in the stanchion and then start to wash her udder.  She would immediately begin to kick.  First one foot, then the other.  Her feet would deftly come down on my wrist, effectively scraping me away from her udder.  She would finish with the most amazing front hand stand, as she would attempt to lift her entire rear end front my reach.  And this was just while cleaning her.

I took a piece of baling twine (thank God for baling twine!), made a slip knot, slipped it around her ankle, and then tied it to the leg of the stand.  This helped, but she would continue to kick...dropping her foot off the back of the stand or lifting the twine under my leg which hurt.

Once secured, I would slowly begin to milk.  I started by squirting a few times off the stand (not into the bucket).  This is because most of the bacteria you find will be in the first few squirts.  But I wasn't very adept at using my left hand, so the milk would more often than not go straight up my sleeve.  It was cold outside, but I would often concede and milk in short sleeves just to save my shirt.  For awhile I would milk single-handed, squirting with my right hand and holding the bucket with my left.  This gave me the ability to pull the bucket out from under Lilo at the first sign of kicking.

Well, Lilo figured out pretty quickly that she couldn't kick to get me to stop.  So she statred using other tactics.  I had begun to practice with both hands and as I would just get into a rhythm that actually got the milk into the bucket, Lilo would let out her belly like an old man after a big dinner and rest it on my arms.  Actually, she wouldn't just rest it, she would PUSH with her belly until my arms were so tired I had to stop.

This strategy went on for awhile.  The only thing I could do was stop milking, pull the bucket - because inevitably she would drop a bunch of dirt as she scraped her belly along my arms - and wait.  She would eventually go back to eating and I would start again.  She would let me milk a little, unsuccessfully kick, then drop the belly and I would stop.  I never let her decide when we were finished, though.  No matter what, I would always insist on being the one to stop milking...not the other way around.  I suspect that she was able to withhold some of her milk for the babies so to a certain extent she still had some say in the matter.

This pattern was getting pretty old.  Mind you, she had already gotten me out of bed at 6am and I wasn't particularly interested in being outside in the cold.  So I started to smack her butt when she would do this.  It wasn't very effective...but it made me feel a little better.  Realizing that I was probably never going to get her to stop, I began a quest to milk faster.  I worked hard at getting a quick, successful rhythm between teats.  Sometimes, I would feel the milk squeeze back into the udder as I milked (meaning I had not pinched off the teat), but more and more, the milk would release swiftly into the bucket in short steaming streams of white.  I learned to try to hit the side of the bucket, allowing the milk to slide into the pool instead of creating a foam on the top (sort of like pouring a beer into the side of a glass).  Eventually, I was able to finish milking Lilo before she was finished with her grain.

At the end of the milking, I would unlock Lilo and then quickly unlock the baby pen next to us.  All of the babies would file out.  Lilo would call to her two and I would lead them into the big pen...a goat parade at the crack of dawn.

Once everyone was out in the big pen, I would bring the milk inside, wash a filter, put it into the funnel and pour the fresh milk into a glass container.  Immediately, it would go into the back of the fridge to cool.  I would wash the bucket and funnel, hang up the bucket, and pour my coffee.

Everything is TILLED!

We rented the three-point tiller for the weekend (with our last hundred bucks, sigh).  We had my family here so my dad took a turn running the tractor and the trencher...but mostly J did the work.

We tilled the entire garden.  We tilled the berry patch next to the cold frame.  We tilled the side and corner along the whole fence-line so that J's dad can plant a dry crop.  We tilled the "front yard" where we're going to plant grass.  J went crazy, tilling into the late evening.  But we wanted to make it worth our money and we had the threat of rain for Sunday, so Saturday was it.

Of course, we're not sure when we will be able to plant as most of the seeds say to wait until "after the last frost" and they're predicting several inches of snow for tonight.  We need to build the cold frame and start constructing hoops for the row covers so that when it does freeze after we've planted, our seedlings will be cold-hardy and protected.

Looking out the window, watching the snow fall sideways on the garden plot, I wonder if we will be ready to plant anything before May.  The big goats are out eating grass on the hillside, but I'm not sitting out there with them today.  My pastoral view is too stormy to enjoy from anywhere but inside.  Hopefully, the next few weeks will start to warm up and we'll see hints of spring...before my indoor starts take over the living room as well as the dining room that they already dominate.

Trimming a Boar's Tusks

Today we decided to tackle Jaws' tusks.  We had called the vet yesterday to see if he could come out to help us by sedating the pig, and he recommended we use a squeeze chute instead of sedation.  Ok...only one problem...we don't have a squeeze chute.

J being the incredible builder that he is, and our property being a treasure-trove of scrap, we began to construct a steel squeeze chute for the pig.  J took a ramp that already had bars on both ends and welded several more bars down the sides.  We didn't have time to make the "squeeze" part as the vet was coming this afternoon, so we improvised.

The infamous tusks from Jaws.

When the vet got here, we moved the boar into the chute with pig boards.  I was waiting at the far end of the chute with some food, hoping to coax him in.  Once he moved into the chute, I ran around to the back and put two bars through to block his exit.  The vet also slid the pig board down in front of the pipes to make it a better wall in back.  But...we misjudged Jaws ability to squeeze through small spaces and within a few seconds, he had shimmied through the hole in the front, crawled over my casserole dish (I was using it for scraps), and was on the loose - tusks and all.

Ok.  Don't panic.  We just need to catch a 300 pound pig with two inch long razor sharp tusks who has just been irritated.  We weren't worried.  While J and the vet followed Jaws with pig boards, I grabbed a bucket of grain.  They managed to keep him from heading down the driveway too far and turn him back toward the pen.  I ran to the front and shook the grain bucket at the pen.  He hesitantly returned to his pen.  Back to square one.

We took another pipe and tied it across the front of the chute with baling twine (thank God for baling twine!).  I put the bucket at the front of the chute and the guys started to "push" Jaws toward the chute with their pig boards (J was actually using a door).  Amazingly, Jaws went in.  As we secured the rear, I had a horrible vision of Jaws climbing out the top, so J threw the door on top of the chute and just as Jaws bucked, he jumped onto the door and held him down.

We took the metal snare and the vet looped it down around the boar's top jaw.  Holding it tightly out the side of the chute, he passed it off to me.  With J sitting on top of the pig (on a door) and me holding the snare attached to the pig's snout, the vet began sawing through the tusks with a wire cutting tool.  The teeth cut quickly and Jaws didn't squeal much at all.  I noticed the vet had earplugs in, so it must be more common to have horrible noises (like when Jaws was caught in the fence).  Each of the four tusks flipped off as they were cut.  The vet then went in with a pair of nippers and made sure that the sharp edges were gone.

While Jaws was escaping the first time, he broke my casserole dish and cut his leg on it.  So I grabbed the betadine and flushed out his cut before we released him from the chute.  He slowly backed into his pen (we had the chute up against the gate opening to his pen).  I have to say that it was fun...maybe not "fun," but definitely an adrenaline rush!

The vet said that we can expect to have to do this about every six months to a year.  I think as long as we have a couple of extra hands around, we will be able to handle this ourselves the next time.  Since all three of us were busy during the ordeal, I couldn't photo-document.  But the guys posed for a picture after we were done.  I guess it's better than nothing.

Naturally Tenderized Pork

Stitch is tenderizing Hammy.

We, at Rogers Roost Ranch, believe in creating a great product in the most natural way possible.  To this end, we use our goats to tenderize our pork prior to butcher.  While this process is challenging to manage, we find that naturally tenderized pork is superior in flavor and texture.

Bringing Home the Bacon (and the chops and the ribs and the...)

We picked up Kevin from the butcher today.  He seemed a little quieter on the ride home than the ride over.  Of course, he was in two coolers in nicely wrapped packages of pork so that may account for his somber mood.

It was interesting to talk with the butcher.  He showed us the difference between pigs that were finished well and those that weren't.  We saw cuts of meat that had an inch of hard white fat along the rim of the cut...a little too fat.  We saw cuts that had little to no fat on them at all...a little too lean.  We saw cuts (like ours, thank you very much beginner's luck) that were just perfect. 

We also talked with him about the difference between grain-fed and grass-fed pork.  He said that grass-fed pork makes a wonderful meat.  The fat is different.  Instead of hard and white, it becomes a buttery yellow color and much softer.  He said that the meat itself will have a much "richer" flavor of pork.  All in all, he said it is a great way to feed your pigs.  He said that the same happens with other meats...the fat turns yellow and soft and the meat has a "richer" taste.

So, here's the break-down of cuts.  We had choices with regard to thickness of cut and sometimes a choice between one type of cut or another (tenderloin versus chops), but I think that much of it was just the standard set.

Bacon:  13 x 1 pound packages
Ham:  5 cured hams - one 6.5 pound ham and four 7+ pound hams
Ham Hocks: 2 x 2 pound packages
Regular Sausage:  8 x 1 pound packages and 1 x 1.5 pound package
Spicy Sausage:  10 x 1 pound packages
Shoulder Steaks:  11 x 3 pound packages
Spare Ribs:  one 2 pound, one 2.5 pound, and one 1.5 pound package
Chops:  2 x 1lb 12oz packages
Pocket Chops (2 inch thick):  five 3 pound, one 2.5 pound, one 2.75 pound, two 3.25 pound, one 3.5 pound, and one 4 pound package
Chop Stuffers:  one 1.5 pound and one 3 pound package

We're having pocket chops for dinner tonight.  Will let everyone know the verdict.

New Boar (not Boer)

We brought Major (the BIG boar pig) back over for another try with Hammy.  But it just wasn't working.  He is so big that she cannot support his weight when he mounts her.  So, we started looking for other options.

A new friend in Alfalfa offered to sell us her young Hampshire boar.  We took a look at him and he is just about the same size as Hammy.  He has sired at least one litter of 15 beautiful piglets, so we know he works.  This gal picked him up out of a bad situation where he was being fed only bread and citrus.  He looks very nice now.

J and I looked at the cost of keeping a boar and feeding the grain that we have been would make it impossible to make any money with a boar on site.  But I started researching pasture-raised pork and found that there were several farms out there raising their pigs very successfully on pasture with a dairy supplement.  Hmmmm....we have pasture and dairy.  More research proved that a full grown (500+ pound) pig eats about 4 pounds of hay a day and 1 pound of dairy.  We have that.  Lilo gives us a quart a day (2 pounds).  So rather than paying about $3.00 a day for grain-fed pork, we figured out that we can do hay and dairy for less than $1.00 a day.  Much more manageable!

So, we had our friend bring the boar out to our house.  We did some fancy maneuvering and got Major loaded up and this new guy out.  But Hammy kept pushing him around...I think she was trying to protect her home.  He got fed up with her and pushed her away with his head.  Unfortunately, we didn't notice that he has some serious (not trimmed) tusks.  She walked away from him with about a 5 inch long laceration on her side.  It didn't seem to bleed much and she didn't seem to notice it, but we sure did.  We moved her quickly in with the goats and flushed the cut with betadine.

Next, Hammy and the boar started sniffing snouts through the fence.  We turned on the hot wire, cause we didn't want this guy testing the fence too much.  Well, he put his snout through the fence and must have bit it because the next thing I heard was the most horrendous screaming coming from his pen.  I looked over and he had both tusks hooked on the field fence and he was pulling back with all his might.

I yelled for J as I ran around the the fence.  I tried to lift the fence off of his tusks, but they hook back and he was stuck.  Adding insult to injury, he was grounding the fence to the hot wire, thus shocking both of us in the process.  J came running, unplugged the fence and handed me the fence pliers.  I then cut the wire on both sides of his jaw.  He slowly pulled himself off the fence.  Phew!

We named him at this moment...."Jaws."  J is worried that if people use him for stud service they will be afraid of his name, so his breeding name will be "Jaws of Life."  He stuck his nose through a few more times and kind of nipped at Hammy, but he also got shocked a few more times and didn't seem as interested in the fence by the end.

After we fed him some more (happy belly, happy pig), J went out with a carrot stick (stick and string, not veggie) and started to scratch his back.  Jaws was shy at first, but relaxed into it slowly.  J talked with him the whole time and it seemed to help.  So we'll work on loving him a bit, giving him a chance to meet Hammy through the fence, and get used to his surroundings.  We're also going to contact the vet about trimming his tusks.  At this point, we have told the kids that absolutely NO bodies or body parts go into the pen with Jaws.  Daddy and I will feed him until we get his tusks taken care of and we get to know him better.

When we came in tonight, J told me that he was really tired of how boring our lives had become.  I told him I'd try harder...and reminded him that we could pick up our new doeling tomorrow - bringing the total of goat kids on the property to five!  As much craziness as we have going on here, I wouldn't trade it for the world.

Now, I have to get to sleep because my goat alarm clock will be yelling at me at the crack of dawn "Miiiiilk me, miiiiiiilk me."  And who knows what excitement tomorrow will bring.

Tons of Sh!t and Disbudding Goats

Today was very productive.  It started off with some bad news.  Hammy Fae's boyfriend, Major, is going to be at his other girlfriend's house for the next two weeks and Hammy is coming into heat now.  That means we will not be able to breed her this cycle unless we find another boar...and pay for his services.

But, while we were talking to Major's owner, J asked if we could rent his dump trailer for the day to haul manure.  The guy was fine with it and we asked if maybe we could just trade out the $100 we paid to have Major's services for the rental of the trailer instead.  He agreed.  So now we have a dump trailer for the day but will have to find stud service elsewhere.

We picked up the trailer and headed out to a horse boarding facility that needed to unload some of their manure.  The owner was able to use his bobcat to load us up.  Within the three hours he was going to be available, we were able to pick up, bring home and spread three full loads - about 10 yards of sh!t in all.  In addition to that, we got to talking with the owner and he may end up purchasing 40 ton of hay from us this season.  He also said that we are welcome to come back for manure anytime.  We would like to return monthly and use it on the field, in the garden, and for our own compost.

After we unloaded the manure...a tricky manuever including me driving and J pushing the controls then yelling at me to go forward when the manure started to slide out...J took the ditch witch and spread it out over the entire garden.  It was enough to give a nice light coating to the whole thing.  He then used the spring harrow to drag it in a little bit.  Tomorrow we will disc it in.  Then this weekend, we will rent the tiller and till it in.  Hopefully, this will add just enough nitrogen to the dirt to make it healthy to grow in.  Most of the manure pile was almost a year old, but it was mixed with some newer stuff too.  I think that as long as we don't spread too much over the garden (keep the ratio of dirt to manure heavier on the dirt side) we should be fine.  A lot of the pile had already turned to a nice mulch.

Toward the end of the day, a friend of mine came over with her de-horning iron.  The nubian cross babies are just two weeks old and we really needed to get their horn buds taken care of.  She was nice enough to be willing to show us how and coach us on the second kid.  She did the doeling, Stitch.  It really wasn't as bad as I remembered.  Then I did the buckling, Max.

The process for disbudding a goat kid is an evil one.  There are NO nice ways to do this, with maybe the exception of sedating the kid through the entire process. 

1.  First, you shave away the fur around the horn bud.  This helps to alleviate the smell of burning fur as well as make it easier to see the horn bud.  You can usually hold the kid in your arms to do this part.  They don't like it, but it doesn't really hurt.

2.  We found that placing the kid between your legs and then kind of sitting on them with their head sticking out in front makes the most sense when holding.  If you have three people, a second person can hold the head still while the third uses the iron.  If not, the person sitting on the kid can hold the head still on their own.

A sketch of a disbudding iron.

3.  Making sure that the iron is super hot (test it on some wood), you place the ring of the iron around the horn bud (the tip of the bud going into the hole in the iron).  Slowly rolling pressure in a clockwise motion, you burn a ring around the horn bud.  Have the person who is holding count to five slowly.  If you are using the iron and you count, you will go too fast.

4.  Remove the iron and check to make sure that there is a solid copper ring around the horn bud.  If there are spots that have not turned copper, reapply the iron to those places for 2-3 seconds more.

Copper rings mean you're done.

5.  You may be able to pick the center of the horn bud off at this point.  If not, use the side of the iron to burn the center for a couple of seconds and try to remove it again.  When the center peels off, you should see a white circle.  Ours had a little bit of goo and blood.  We just cauterized it with the iron for a second and it was fine.  Once we were done, we placed the babies back in with mommy and within an hour they were bouncing around like nothing ever happened.  The resilience of a child.

There's no need to blu-kote the wound.  I guess it's sterile without medicine.  We noticed this evening that the little girl had a bit of hay stuck to one spot.  I'll watch it and may end up spraying it just to make sure it doesn't get infected.

Honestly, it was a bit like going to the dentist.  You dread it all the way up until the moment you have to do it.  Then once it's over, you cannot remember why you had gotten so worked up about it in the first place.  I'm sure that by the time we have to disbud again next year, we will be dreading it again.  No fun for anyone, but a necessary evil to keep a horn-free herd.

Plowing and Digging

We have had a couple of reasonably nice days...over 35 degrees...so J and I have been outside working the garden plot.  Actually J started raking and discing the garden a few days ago but yesterday and today we really focused on it.

Hole for the cold frame.



Before we tackled the garden, J started to dig out next to the cistern for the cold frame.  Our goal is to use some of the radiant heat from the cistern to keep the cold frame warm.  We (I mean J) dug about two feet down with the ditch witch.  We will then line the three remaining sides with pummy block - we hear you can buy cheap ones that have blemishes from the concrete store.  For the top, we'll use the greenhouse hard plastic.  The whole thing will be about 20'x8' so we'll have more than enough space for the plants.  Initially

this will be used to harden off our seedlings...but we may end up using it as a secondary greenhouse for the winter to grow things like lettuce.  I'm not sure how warm it will keep.  We'll have to see.

Looking northeast.

Looking southwest.

At this point, the garden looks to be about an acre.  Smaller than what J planned, but it seems big enough to me.  It stretches from the rock piles to the irrigation pipes.  Most of it will be hit by the end gun on the pivot, but we are planning to run a mainline down the side of it and send drip lines across it to water most plants.  The end gun will water too much and isn't really the best way to water since it will be spraying down from the top.  This might be a nice option if we need to protect the entire crop from a freeze.  Otherwise, I guess there's a way to turn it off and back on again when it hits a certain part of the rotation.



Pond is to the left of where the old
pump house used to sit.



Looking into the pond.

In addition to discing and dragging the garden, we've been building up a small pond.  There used to be a run-off creek from the irrigation overflow.  Instead of just piping it out of the way, we decided to collect it in a small pond first.  This will give the kids and the ducks a place to play in the summer.  It won't be super deep so it will stay fairly warm.  We don't have the money to line it with clay the way that most people do here, so we will use bentonite (something that we have about six bags of already) to firm up the sides.

Our goal is to get a bunch of manure spread next week and then rent a tiller implement for the tractor over the weekend, till everything under, and be ready to plow and plant the following week.

Transplanting Seedlings



"Stretchy" tomatoes...light too far away.

 The learning curve is steep when it comes to gardening.  And it seems that you pay for each step up on the curve with the death of more plants.  But hopefully, after the trials of this season, we will have a better grasp on what works and what doesn't.

Take the seedlings for instance.  I've had a pretty good germination rate so I think I get the water/heat/light thing pretty well.  But once the seedlings sprouted, I ran into the same problem that has led me to buy starts from the store after 6 unsuccessful weeks of growing my own seeds.  The seedlings are growing too tall before they set their true leaves.  In particular, the tomato plants.

So, after a bit of research, I figured out that the problem is light.  My plants are spending energy growing taller to reach for a light that is too far away.  While they do this, they neglect spending energy on leafing out.  It makes sense.  They want to make sure that they have a stable source of energy before really committing themselves to developing.  Isn't that what most of us do?

I can transplant the tomatoes so that the long stems that they have created will help develop more roots.  I do this by burying the seedling all the way to their seed leaves.  But if I don't correct the lighting issue, they may just grow up and not out yet again.


Transplanted tomato babies.



We moved the plant table to a south facing window.  That should help some.  But I'm quickly running out of space as I transplant from 1" pots to 4" pots.  I'm not sure where we will put everyone.

I also started using a fertilizer today.  It's called Grow Big by FoxFarms.  It's not organic, but I need something that will really get these babies going before I lose them all.  It's not a lot of money to lose, but it's a lot of time.  If I have to replant everyone I will be two weeks behind schedule.  So we're feeding these babies and crossing our fingers that they transplant well.

Big Piece of the Grape

I've been reading The Omnivore's Dilemma and came across a part that discussed the biological relationships on a small-scale sustainable farm.  The owner was talking about how there was certainly a high demand for chickens and eggs, and that he could increase production by adding to his flock, but at a certain point he would destroy the quality of his product. 

This is the flaw of the industrialized farm.  Everyone is working for a little piece of the watermelon and forget that sometimes it's better to have a big piece of the grape.  If you grow too large to support your ecosystem within the confines of your farm, you become a part of the "system" that everyone came to you to escape from in the first place.  So you have to accept that you will not make billions of dollars - unless you want to become part of that which you were avoiding to begin with.

We are already running into this balance on our ranch.  I have a HUGE demand for chicken and duck eggs.  I can fill most of the chicken egg orders, if not with my own chickens, with our neighbors.  But the duck eggs are another story.  I get two dozen a month, if that.  And I have a demand for at least four dozen.  So we added ducklings this year.  They won't be able to lay until the fall, but at some point they will add to the duck egg collection.  In addition, we will have a total of 36 layers by the end of the summer.  That way we can wean ourselves off of the neighbor's eggs and sell our own completely instead.

We see this with the pork as well.  We could've sold our first butcher pig four times over...and we really didn't plan to sell any at all.  So we've added a couple more weaners to the farm.  These two will be sold by the pound.

But the issue comes with space.  We have the space to house all of these new creatures, but we want to make sure that we are not crowding them.  We need to make sure that the chickens are happy, that the ducks have enough water to swim and play, and that the pigs can run and wallow without bumping into each other all the time.  Not only that, but we want to be able to recycle their waste products into our garden.  If we have too many animals on the farm, we create a problem instead of a -self-contained solution.  Our farm ecosystem needs to stay balanced.

So we won't add more ducks.  We won't add more chickens.  We won't add more pigs.  We will feel out the balance we have now and see what the farm can handle.  If we find that our ecosystem can support more, we will look at what kind of animal will fill that niche.

Are we going to lose sales?  Probably.  I can't sell eggs I don't have.  But the point of being a small local farm isn't to supply everyone in the country with eggs.  It's to help the local community by supplying a portion with local harvest.  And we cannot do it alone.  So maybe more people will start to look at a big piece of the grape as something they could be happy with...and they can quit worrying about the watermelon.

Tractor Drivers

All three of the boys have taken their turn on the tractor now.  K, the 10 year old, can start it up alone and run the whole show - with the exception of changing out implements.  M, the 8 year old, has now taken several solo trips around the perimeter of the field - both with the harrow and the disc.  And Z, the 7 year old, has gone around the field several times with only a tailman riding in case of emergency...but he did it all himself.

It's wonderful to see the boys engaged in the farm.  As the weather warms up and they start to see things happening, they grow more and more interested.  Most days, the younger boys run straight out to the goats after school and play.  Sometimes they play tag with the kids - those kids love to run.  Sometimes they play cops and robbers, shooting the "bad guys" as they jump around in the pen.  Most sunny days, the boys are outside.

The tractor is a newly introduced tool/toy.  We have had some good weather and are preparing the field.  That means lots of runs on the tractor.  The boys love to drive it.  What kid wouldn't?  I remember bucking hay at my friend's house just so that we could drive the tractor.  Our boys enjoy the golf cart just as much and will spend hours driving around picking up trash just so that they can drive it.

Chicken Shanty

Front of "The Shanty"

I built an intermediate chicken coop for my teen chickens.  It's really more of a shanty than a coop...thus the title.  And it is probably the least well thought out building I have ever made - although you'd have to ask J if he agrees.  But, like he said, people will be impressed with my ability to create something out of nothing.

I started with a couple of rectangles from the sides of pallets.  These rectangles aren't usually nailed together, they're bound together with a metal strap.  Because of this, they are pretty wobbly.  But that didn't stop me.  I used two as the "legs" for my shanty.

On top of the legs, I secured a traditional pallet.  Then I took two more larger rectangle things and attached them to opposite sides.  This created the frame for my shanty.  I then started to add plywood walls - we scavenged the plywood from an old shed.  This is where J came in to help.

I needed to make the structure a little more structurally sound, so we put a sheer wall out of plywood on the bottom - between the two rectangular legs.  Then we cut struts at a 45 degree angle and put them into the middle of the rectangles.  That just about got rid of all the wiggles.

Side of "The Shanty"

We had some 1/2 inch pvc that we had cut before.  By adding an angle to the ends, we could attach these pipes to span the back corners of the shanty - thus creating a few perches for the young birds.

We cut some flat sheet metal into the size of the roof, and using an extra piece of plywood for a center strut, we screwed the metal roof on.
Finally, I made a ramp for the girls out of a piece of 1x4 and some 1/2 inch dowel pieces we had left over from another project.  We left the front open so that it would be easier to clean.  It may also be used for turkeys down the road so having a nice wide opening is a good thing.

Skeptical teenage bird giving me "the look."

The chicks haven't figured out how to get up and down in the box yet, but even if they end up outside at night, they can snuggle up under the shanty.  I put straw down inside the box and under it.  We'll see how long it takes for them to figure it out.
In addition to moving the teens out of their outside brooder, we moved the butterball babies into the outside brooder from in the house.  Then we moved the ducklings into the inside chicken brooder and out of the playpen - which really needs to be hosed down at this point. 

This won't be the last shift for the birds.  In a couple of weeks, I'd like to move the teens in with the adult chickens, the broiler chicks into the intermediate chicken shanty, and the ducklings into the outside brooder.  That will make room for the dozen chicks we have ordered to come the first week of May.  By the time we're done, I will have a total of 36 layers, 12 meat birds, 6 ducks, and 2 geese.  I'm going to HAVE to work on a bigger coop.

Goat Milk Yogurt

Well, I made my first attempt at yogurt today.  I followed a recipe from my favorite crockpot recipe website - actually a great blog called "Crockpot 365."  I didn't want to have to figure out how to create a double boiler with the limited number of pots that I own.  So this crockpot idea seemed good.

I used 8 cups of goat milk, a half cup of organic plain yogurt (starter), and a packet of knox gelatin.  I messed up almost immediately.  I was supposed to warm the milk up on low for two and a half hours.  Then, turn off the crockpot and wait three more hours before I added the yogurt.  But I added the yogurt immediately...thus (most likely) killing the live bacteria that I needed to cultivate.  Sooooo, I cursed, then I waited the appropriate three hours and added a second half cup of yogurt to the mix, along with the gelatin.  The gelatin glopped up even though I used a wisk to add it.  I'm not sure how to avoid that next time.  Maybe mixing it into just the milk and then adding the yogurt would work better.

After adding the yogurt at the right time, I unplugged the crockpot and wrapped it up in a thick towel.  After eight hours of waiting, I checked on it.  The yogurt had congeled to a "drinkable yogurt" consistency...but it tasted GREAT!  I couldn't wait to cool it, so I poured a little into a bowl, added sugar and vanilla, stirred and then went around the house forcing everyone to taste it.  The verdict was wonderful.  Everyone liked it (even Z, my yogurt snob).

I placed the whole pot in the fridge and hoped it might thicken a bit more.  It did a little bit, but nothing like the yogurt you buy at the store.  Someone suggested I put it through cheesecloth and let some of the moisture drip off.  I guess I could try that.  But honestly, I could easily use this for smoothies (something my kids eat almost every day) and nobody would care.

I did blend up a quart of yogurt with strawberries and bananas, a quart with vanilla, and left a quart plain in the fridge.  For each flavored quart, I added a half cup of sugar - probably a little more than necessary, but I wanted to make sure it tasted good for the kids (and I'm sure that's a lot less than what the store-bought varieties have in them).  I made smoothies with it for the kids this morning and they all drank them happily (of course they didn't know I used the goat yogurt).

Preparing for the Garden

I spent much of the morning trying to figure out what we need to order from the seed company NOW in order to have a crop LATER.  It's hard to guess how much a "packet" of seeds will hold - how many feet of plants will we get.  And how do I know what number of stalks I will have with a 1/4 pound of corn seeds?  I don't know.  So I'm guessing.

I planned out something - some amount - for each type of plant we want to try to grow.  And we will just have to see.  It's going to cost about $300 total.  But if we don't buy it now, we won't be able to get the garden started in time to see anything grow to maturity.

As I was planning the seeds, J asked how we were planning to plant these seeds.  By hand seemed like the only way we can at this point.  But then, we started thinking about how to create rows.  We don't have an actual plow for the tractor.  We have a disc that tills the ground.  I suggested we could drag a trowel through, but we're talking about two acres.  That's a lot of dragging.  I also thought about whether or not we really NEED distinctly higher rows to plant into or if it might be enough to simply plant in a row.  The only plants that really need a mound in their rows is potatoes.  The squash will be planted in hills, not rows, so we will make those ourselves too.  It's all an educated guess at this point.

In addition to the new products we need, I have been working on the seedlings in the house.  I have thinned everyone back to a single plant in each container.  I have begun rotating the flats so that the seedlings don't lean on direction too much.  I have also started "brushing" the seedlings every night before I go to bed.  "Brushing" means to run your hand across the seedlings so that they bend almost all the way over, then let them spring back.  It is supposed to help encourage root development and create a stalkier, stronger plant.  We'll see.  They seem to be doing well so far, although a few of the seedlings are taller than I would like to see.  Nobody has their true first leaves yet, and the peppers haven't really sprouted yet at all, so we'll just have to wait.

Chocolate Goat's Milk

No, just because our milk goat is chocolate in color, she does not give chocolate milk.  BUT, we are drinking her milk as chocolate milk.

When I first began to milk Lilo this week, we were giving the milk to Zeus because it still had a strange flavor to it.  The colostrum can make the milk taste funky.  But quickly, it turned into nice, creamy, mild-flavored milk.  Everyone liked the initial flavor, but nobody liked the aftertaste.  I saw that if I didn't try something drastic, I would be drowning in an over-abundance of goat's milk that nobody would drink.

So, I added chocolate.  Lilo's milk is so creamy already that with the addition of Hershey, we had ourselves some of the best velvety chocolate goodness ever known to man.  And NOBODY noticed an aftertaste.  Just a good chocolate taste.  I made a deal with the kids.  They can have chocolate milk whenever they like...but they have to use goat milk to make it.  They agreed.

I would like to try making yogurt and ice cream with it as well.  I think that as long as the aftertaste doesn't linger, we will be happily using our new addition to the fridge on a daily basis.  Lilo is giving me about a quart a day, so I better find something to do with it.  I'm certainly not going to waste it.

Maiden Voyage of the Pressure Canner

Well, my dad gave me a pressure canner for my birthday and I couldn't wait to try it out.  This is an important tool to have on the farm because it will extend our harvest into the winter and beyond through canning.

Five jars of stock with some potatoes and chicken.

I decided to try canning some chicken stock that I had made a couple of days earlier.  It was easier to do than water bath canning because I didn't have to try to lower the jars into and out of boiling water.  It was harder to figure out how to get the stove to stay at a consistent temperature above the required pressure without being way higher.  But in the end, I figured it was better to be at 14 pounds the whole time when I needed only 12, than to accidentally slip below 12 and risk contamination.

Five quarts of chicken stock and about an hour later...I am a confident pressure canning fool, ready for my next experiment.