Chicken becomes Poultry

We spent the last two days butchering our meat birds, of which there were 35. We had originally started out with 40, but a few died along the way. A friend who sells organic vegetables at a local farmer's market came over yesterday morning to walk us through the process. She raises meat birds for herself and her family but does not sell them. She killed and butchered a bird, then walked Orrin through it while he did it a couple of times, and then she left it in our hands and went on her way. Zane and Alice came to help, as well as our friend Kim, who also wanted to learn the process so that he would be able to kill his own meat birds when the time comes.

Here's the process that we went through:

1. Get a chicken out of the coop, hold him or her calmly for a minute and then place them upside-down in the “killing cone”. For us, the killing cone was a large traffic cone hung upside-down so that the small hole was on the bottom. The bird's body was inside the cone and the head hung below the hole.
2. Cut the main artery in the neck and let the bird bleed out. The bird flaps around briefly, but is contained in the cone. The first time I saw it happen was probably the hardest, and I almost burst into tears. Supposedly they are dead very quickly, but it's still hard to watch.
3. Put a short length of twine around one of the chicken's legs, then after the bird is dead and the blood has stopped draining, pull it out of the cone and into a large pot of water that is 150 to 155F. Hold the legs and dunk the bird in and out of the water for about 1 minute, pulling it out completely every time you come up. This scalds the skin enough to loosen the feathers.
4. Hang the bird by the length of twine at a height where the bird is right in front of you, and then pull the feathers off. This is truly one of the worst parts – Orrin claims it is THE worst part, but I think the butchering is just as bad – because the feather's stink and you have to get ALL the feathers, including the ones on their belly that have poop on them. Those were the hardest for me to pull off emotionally. Physically, the hardest to pull off were the wing feathers and the pin feathers. Yesterday I found myself grimacing every time I plucked. I had to consciously relax my face every time I realized what I was doing, because I was pretty grossed out by it. Today was a little easier.
5. After plucking, take the chicken to the table and butcher it, which involves cutting off the head, feet, neck, and oil glands, and removing all the organs very carefully so as not to burst anything. The last thing you want to do is get digestive juices or poop all over the food you plan to eat. The trickiest part was pulling out the crop, which is the first stage of digestion after the chicken has eaten. It's recommended that you not feed a chicken for 24 hours prior to butchering, because then the crop will be empty and less difficult to remove. We followed that plan the first night, but since we weren't able to get all of the birds butchered yesterday we fed them last night. We didn't start again until noon today, to try to let the crop's empty as much as possible, but still the crop's were very full of the grain that they had eaten, and they had all been empty in the birds yesterday.
6. After butchering, rinse the bird off inside and out to get as much of the gunk and blood off as possible, and then put it in a tub or cooler of cold water.
7. Weigh it, take it into the house and do a second, finer plucking job. For this part, tweezers were helpful for getting any stubborn pin feathers out that couldn't be removed with fingers alone.
8. Rinse it one more time to get any last little bits of tissue, organs and feathers off, and let it drain for a few minutes on a drying rack. We used a cooling rack for this part, which normally gets used to cool bread or cookies.
9. While one bird is draining, go outside to get another one, weigh it and bring it in to the house.
10. Pat the first bird dry and put it into a large plastic bag. Use a vacuum cleaner with hose attachment to suck the air out of the bag, then tie it with a twist-tie.
11. Write the weight on it and put it in the freezer.
12. Repeat this process 34 more times.

This was really hard for me yesterday, emotionally. I had a tension headache most of the day, and felt really overwhelmed by what we were doing. Orrin said he felt nauseous most of the day from the smell. We started at 9am yesterday and finished bagging the last bird at about 6:30pm, and had completed 18 of them. We were totally exhausted and were not really looking forward to having 17 more birds to butcher. Towards the end of the day yesterday I asked Orrin, how on earth will we butcher a pig if we are having a hard time with chickens? He said that a pig will be easier – one kill, one butchering. The butchering will take longer, but you only have to do it once. That sounded a lot more reasonable than having to do it 35 times.

Today was much better than yesterday, so I'm really glad that we didn't get them all done yesterday. If it had only been yesterday that we butchered, I might not be so keen to do this again. Fortunately, both Orrin and I felt a little more comfortable with the process today and neither one of us felt sick. Today it was Orrin, Zane and I, and we started at noon and finished bagging the last bird at 5:45, which was 17 birds. With one day of butchering under our belts, we were able to accomplish the same amount of work in almost 4 hours less time.

Over the course of the two days, I did some plucking, some scalding, and a little bit of the butchering, but mostly my job was weighing them and taking them in the house to do the final processing and bagging. I did not end up actually killing any birds myself. At first I wanted to do it, so that I could say I had, and so I could know what it was like to feel the life drain out of an animal that I had killed. And also because this is a big part of why we are here in this beautiful place, on this land. We want to know our food personally. But I think Orrin realized how hard it was for me to go through all this for the first time (he and Zane had butchered chickens growing up, so he had a little sense of what it would be like), and told me it wasn't necessary. I know it's not necessary, but I think I will want to do it at some point. And there will be chances in the future, probably in the not-too-distant future, too, since our heritage chicks will soon be big enough for us to kill the roosters.

We learned a whole heck of a lot raising meat birds and killing them. One thing we learned is that meat birds are pretty disgusting. They are bred to be meat, and are really only meant to live about 8 weeks. We let ours go to 10 weeks so that they would be bigger, but we lost a few to heart attacks, which can happen with this type of bird, because they are growing so fast. Plus, they are really dopey compared to the heritage birds that we are raising to be laying hens. They don't move much, and just seemed really zoned out. Orrin pulled their pen over fresh grass twice a day, but we don't think they actually ate that much of it. Mostly they gorged themselves on the organic feed that we gave them, going through a 50 lb bag every 2 ½ days.

We also learned that it will be crucial to make a mechanical plucker, especially if we want to butcher large amounts of birds again. That would make the whole process quicker (plucking took the longest time of anything), plus we wouldn't have to get so up-close-and-personal with the poopy, stinky feathers.

Now I'm going to get all geeky and get in touch with what's left of my old engineering self. Yesterday we butchered mostly roosters, and a few hens. Today was mostly hens and just a couple of roosters. At the end of yesterday, we had butchered 18 birds, totaling 144 lbs of meat. The largest weighed 9.9 lbs (this is the dressed weight, ie. no head, feet, feathers or organs), and the smallest weighed 6.5 lbs, with an average weight of 8 lbs. We thought today would be more like 70% of that average because we knew there were mostly hens left, which would have been around 5.6 lbs/bird. Amazingly, the hens were not appreciably smaller than the roosters, and the average weight today was 7.0 lbs. The largest bird today was 8.0 lbs and the smallest was 5.9 lbs. So we ended up with a total of about 262 lbs of chicken, averaging 7.5 lbs/bird. These are big birds!

That's all the energy I've got for tonight. It's late and I need to get to bed. I'll post a few pictures tomorrow.

What is there to eat in July?

Earlier in the year I had this fantasy that we would be eating much of our own food by July. Sadly, it appears that a fantasy is all that it was. I think that there are a few reasons why we don't have much to eat yet. First, plain and simple, our soil is crap. I wish I wasn't exaggerating, but that's a big part of it. There is very little organic matter present. Second, some of the seed we've been planting we've had for a few years, and the older it gets the lower the chance for germination, generally speaking. Third, we are used to west coast summers where things warm up a little earlier, so we didn't realize that there is a bit of a lag in the soil heating up to give seeds the germination temperatures that they prefer. And fourth, we also got started late in planting. Since we had to build garden beds from scratch, that took time to set up, so we got our seeds in the ground later than some other folks around here. So based on those reasons (and possibly reasons we haven't even thought of), some things are growing very slowly, and some things just didn't come up at all. And fortunately, despite those reasons, some things are doing very well.

I'll do a bit of a summary here of where things are at in the main garden, as of the middle of July. Veggies that are doing really well right now are kale, chard, some of the salad greens, turnips, a few varieties of pumpkin plants, one area (out of 3) planted in shallots, a few summer squash plants, beans (bush and dry), forage turnips (for the pigs), and about half of the potatoes. We are eating the greens daily from outside now that they are big enough, and some of the bean plants are starting to flower.

In the “so-so” category I'd put our garlic (it's there, but not particularly tall or vibrant), about half of our potatoes and peas, and possibly the carrots. The carrots have been slow to get going, but recently have started to look a little stronger.

Veggies that didn't come up at all, or maybe a couple came up but are tiny and struggling, are most of the summer squash and a couple varieties of winter squash, beets, cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli, a couple sets of shallots and onions and spinach. We noticed that one set of dry beans were getting pretty munched, which was located near a pile of wood that had been milled in the spring. We thought that maybe a critter was living under the wood and helping themselves to bean plants at night. Orrin took the time to move the whole pile further away from the garden and sure enough, those beans are no longer getting eaten, and are also starting to grow back. Small victories!

In the greenhouse, we are having better success. We have 3 watermelon plants that are healthy and big, as well as one honeydew. Out of about 70 tomato plants, most of them are 3 or 4' tall now, and a number of them have tomatoes on the vine. The cucumber plants are doing very well, as well as eggplants and some of the peppers. Tomatillos don't seem to have done anything, even though we planted them twice. I'm pretty bummed about that because I was particularly looking forward to preserving some tomatillo salsa. The garlic that we planted in the greenhouse we had hoped would give us some early garlic. We just pulled it today, and see that it will give us some garlic to eat now, but most of the bulbs aren't very big. Same with the potatoes that we planted in the greenhouse – the one's that we have picked have given us a few early potato meals, but are pretty low yield.

We have some compost now, and have been using it to supplement our initial plantings, where the plants have come up, as well as adding it to the soil prior to our more recent re-plantings. Tonight, for instance, we re-planted beets in an area where the spinach didn't come up.

This is such a learning experience! I keep hoping that the things that seem healthy now will continue to be healthy, and maybe August will be the month we have lots to eat...

Tomorrow is our first chicken kill on the farm, and that will be another learning experience. We have a friend coming to show us how to do it, and family and other friends who are coming to help. It's nice to have community to share these kinds of events with. 

Buried Treasure

The area where the laying hens are located is on a bit of a hillside covered in oregano, planted who knows when, which has gone horribly out of control. The hens dig around for bugs, but unfortunately don't seem interested in helping us pull out the oregano. Then yesterday Orrin went into their enclosure and noticed a patch of what looked like garlic scapes. He dug some of them up, and sure enough it was garlic. Like the oregano, we have no idea how long it's been there, but there is a pretty decent little patch of garlic that may have been just one or two, but that now has split into probably 20 or 30 small cloves of garlic. We've been wondering how well our own planted garlic will do this year, so this bit of extra garlic is like finding buried treasure. We can eat some of it, but also it can contribute to next year's garlic seed, so that we will hopefully need to save less of some of our other varietals.

Everyday it seems we find another reason to be grateful for the greenhouse. We have about 40 tomato plants, of which most are about a foot tall now, and a few are around 2' tall. The biggest ones are now flowering. There are a handful that are still tiny, but they were planted later, and are a later variety, so hopefully they will get big as the season progresses. The heat in the greenhouse is pretty amazing, how the sun's energy can be harnessed into this space and help veggies grow. I'm so glad we invested the time and money in it, as I think it will significantly lengthen our growing season, both in the spring and fall. We found that out already, with being able to have greens over the winter, and now we are seeing a similar effect with the warm weather vegetables. 

The first birth on the farm

This morning, around 2am, Galloping Gertie the Cow, known as Gigi to her friends, gave birth to a healthy, approximately 50 lb girl. We missed the labor and birth - as you might expect, we were sleeping at that hour - but Gigi woke us around 3am to let us know about it. We went out to her paddock and found the baby calf, and found that the baby had staggered to the other side of the electric fence from Gigi, who was distraught because she couldn't get to her. Orrin brought the calf back to her, but she continued to wander out of Gigi's reach for the rest of the night. The resulting mooing kept me from getting much more sleep, and kept Orrin from getting anymore sleep, as he went out to check on them from time to time. The calf figured out how to nurse around 8 or 8:30 this morning, which is fabulous. It is pretty amazing to witness this little creature, walking, jumping and playing within 12 hours of life!

We were very glad that Gigi was able to give birth without needing any assistance (this was her third baby, by the way, so really she's an old pro). We're also pretty thrilled that she had a little girl, because 1) that mean's we now have a herd of 2 whole cows, and 2) we don't have to figure out how to castrate just yet. However, it does also mean that we will probably have to buy another male for beef at some point in the fall, as Gigi's calf that came with her (named “Beef” to be clear about what's what) won't be big enough to slaughter until the fall of 2012.

Seeing a brand new calf, an hour or so into it's life, not to mention continuing to be around it during the day, is yet another first in the long list of “first's” for me, and for the farm.

The adorable little girl, 7 hours or so into life.

Mom and baby

Oliver provides a little perspective, although they are about 30' away.

Peppers!

We have been watching the soil in the greenhouse and gardens expectantly, hoping to see all our seeds come up. Some things came up quickly (beans, kale), but some things haven't come up in the 3 or 4 weeks since we planted them. Some of the winter squash, and none of zucchini's had come up – until today. And the peppers had been the most disappointing, as I had tried starting some from seed at the beginning of May in a tray, along with tomatoes and eggplants, and not a single pepper germinated. And again, we planted some in the greenhouse at the beginning of June, and none germinated – until today! The very first peppers, red cayenne, finally made an appearance. We had gotten so desperate that we actually purchased starts from a farmer at the farmer's market last week, just to try to improve our chances of having some this year. Maybe they're just really, really slow. So glad to see them all starting to come up now.

A Day In the Life

On this, the longest day of the year, I thought I'd walk through what we did today, so you get an idea of what we're up to.

We all had breakfast and headed outside around 8:15am. I was surprised when I looked at the clock, as that's probably an hour earlier than we're usually ready.

Oliver and I let the 2 laying hens out of their coop, and picked up the morning's egg, still warm.

We pulled and pushed the meat birds coop to fresh grass, and got fresh food and water for both them and the heritage chicks. The meat birds are now 6 weeks old, and are almost as big as the laying hens.

We had a half-full wheelbarrow of rocks, so picked some more rocks out of the garden, to fill it up, and then Orrin and Oliver went down the lane to fill some potholes. I went into the house for a minute to fill a pitcher with water and a couple of tea bags. I set it outside in a sunny spot, to make sun tea on this beautiful, warm, sunny day.

We wandered through the garden, looking expectantly over the beds to see if anything new had come up. Quite a few things are up now, but we've re-seeded some things that didn't come up within a few weeks of planting.

Next we headed up to the cow shed, and literally shoveled shit – cow manure - into our two wheelbarrow's, countless times, trucking back and forth to the compost pile. I admit that I was a bit whiny through the shoveling portion, although it's amazing how much has broken down since they were last in there (a few months ago now),. We've been throwing the pig feed in there so that they've helped to rotate it as well, breaking it down a little quicker. Orrin tells me that now I really am a farmer, since I finally did that job! I figured it's the hazing ritual for farmers.

We went down below the greenhouse and started weeding the sea of oregano that has taken over part of the hillside. I finally had to quit when my hay fever reached an upper limit and I had a huge sneezing fit. Between the cow manure and oregano, we built our compost pile up significantly, which we need. That will be the fertility for the garden.

Oliver and I took a peek at the asparagus patch – 5 plants planted earlier this spring – and saw that they are all looking good. If we're lucky, we'll be able to eat some of it in a few years. It's not a vegetable for those looking for instant gratification!

Moving on to the greenhouse, we watered, admired the tomato, eggplant, cucumber, basil and watermelon plants, and then picked some kale and peas to contribute to lunch.

I went in to make lunch and Oliver and Orrin stayed outside watering and exploring.

After lunch, I blogged the first half of the day, we relaxed a bit on the couch, and then headed back out.

Orrin went to the workroom to try to fix his chainsaw, and Oliver and I hung out for a bit. Oliver went down for a nap shortly after that, and I went back to tackle more of the oregano.

After I filled another couple tubfuls of oregano, I went to work in the greenhouse, periodically checking in on Oliver. In the greenhouse, I picked a few last edible kale leaves off of last year's plants that had gone to seed and were now 4 to 5' tall. They'd been going to seed for a while, and we were still eating them, but finally the heat in the greenhouse started to turn the leaves purple, showing that they were losing their chlorophyll. Plus, they were getting eaten more as they got weaker. Then I cut down all those kale plants, right down to the base, leaving the roots to decompose back into the soil. I fed the plants to the pigs, who scarfed down every last leaf they could find. With those plants gone, there is more room now for the watermelon seeds that had been planted to grow and spread.

In the meantime, Orrin was creating the next cow paddock, which moved the cows right next to the house, along the lane and two sides of the house.

Oliver woke up, and once Orrin finished moving the cows, he and Oliver made some popcorn, and we sat at the table on the back deck, with the cows munching their fresh grass just 3 or 4' away from us.

A friend dropped by to pick up some things that he'd been storing at our place, and we walked around the garden for a bit to show him what was growing. Then Orrin helped him pack up some of this things.

I went and grabbed some of the twine we'd kept from the hay bales that had fed the cows over the winter, and took them to the greenhouse. I tied them between the bracing of the greenhouse, along the length of one of the tomato rows, and then hung twine down to each tomato. As they get bigger, we'll tie the twine to the plant and twist it around the main stem to keep the plant upright.

When I had finished one row, I picked some peas and cut down one of the chard plants that had also gone to seed and was now about 4' tall. Then Oliver and I went into the house to start dinner, while Orrin went to feed the pigs.

When Orrin came back, I directed Oliver his way, and they sat on the porch to watch the cows, while I continued making dinner.

After dinner, I took Oliver to bed while Orrin cleaned up the kitchen. By that time it was about 9pm. We stayed up a little longer and then went to bed. It was a full day and I was tired!

1000 words

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then this is my attempt at catching you up with all that we have been doing over the past couple of months - with a picture montage. 

Here's Orrin hoeing up weeds around our newly planted raspberry plants.
This is in the center of the garden, roughly.

This is what the ground looked like prior to picking rocks and making garden beds.

And then the lovely garden bed, post-rock removal, hoeing, raking, and sweating.

One of the movable chicken pens Orrin has made recently. This one houses the meat birds.
And at the time of the picture, Gigi the Cow had been rotated into the same paddock area as the chickens.

Taken from the middle of the garden, a view of the downhill garden beds and our new rhubarb patch.

From the downhill edge of the garden, looking upwards towards all the beds.
Garlic in the foreground.

Lovely Caribe potatoes, our second harvest of the year. We'd have let them percolate a little longer, but we wanted to clear them out of the greenhouse to make more room for the tomatoes to grow.
 

Our 15 heritage chicks; about 4 weeks old. They will start laying in 5 months or so.
This is the brooder that Orrin built. It's the intermediary between the very fresh chicks and getting them out onto green grass.

Oliver catches one of the heritage chicks to pet. We just moved them into their outdoor grass coop today.

Oliver and the 3 pigs. Hard to tell that they're getting big, but they are! The first one will likely become pork around the end of the month.

The biggest pig, and so he'll be the first to go.

The A-frame coop we built for our two full-size laying hens.

And during all this busy-ness, Oliver and I had a birthday. Here we are, after licking the bowl of frosting clean, from the cake that Orrin made us.