Egg-cellence

Our chickens were rock stars yesterday. From 10 chickens we got 10 eggs. That's the first time that has happened since they started laying in mid-November. But it made up for the fact that earlier in the week, on a day when the temperature was a high of -13C, there were only 5 eggs. It's funny the things I can get excited about. 

Olive

In his spare time, Orrin enjoys scanning Kijiji want ads for various things, including livestock. We've collected quite a menagerie here now, in part through his Kijiji addiction, so when he said to me a few days ago, “What do you think about getting another sheep?” I immediately dismissed the idea. We don't need to spend the money, and we've already got three of them, so no need. But then, because he knows me so well (and clearly wanted another sheep), he appealed to the knitty side of me, the part of me that can't wait to learn how to card and spin wool so that I can use the wool off of our own sheep to spin into yarn and knit myself, or sell as one of the products from our farm. He said, “This is a Shetland sheep. The wool is supposed to be pretty soft.” Oh, man. More wool options? And soft, fine Shetland wool? I was doomed. So what did we do today? Drove out past Digby to pick up Olive, a 4-year old Shetland ewe, who is bred and probably due in February. And she IS very soft. Time for me to learn how to spin wool!

Welcome to the farm, Olive!

What's Cookin'?

Happy New Year! So much has happened for us – and we have done so much - in the past year, that I can't imagine what might be in store for us this year.

In theory it's winter around here, but there is no snow on the ground and we have had some gorgeous days lately. Orrin almost always spends the day outside, rain or shine, but I finally braved it too because it was such a glorious day. It was only about 2C but the sun was shining and there was no wind, so it felt warmer. Orrin has been spending a lot of time cutting trees down in preparation for a barn, cutting firewood from the unusable parts of the trees (the non-straight sections of trunks), and making huge piles of rotting logs and branches all over the areas that are to be pasture. It's a 7 or 8 acre area, so it's not insignificant. His thought is that by piling up the rotting wood, it'll make it easier for us and the cows to walk around, as well as promoting grass growth. And we sure need some more grass for those cows! So Oliver and I joined in today, helping to pile wood. Sometimes Oliver was on my back, sometimes on the ground throwing pieces of wood around. It was nice to feel like I was helping out, as I tend to stay inside more with Oliver as it's gotten colder outside. It looks pretty funny though, like there are hundreds of beaver dams across the hillside!

It has now been more than two months since we finished harvesting food out of the garden, and processing it for winter. I thought I would take some time to write out what we are eating these days from the farm, for myself to look back on, as well as for those of you following along who might be interested.

Chicken: We roast a chicken about once every two weeks. We usually roast some potatoes along with it, although they are not from the farm as our own potato crop was not very successful this year. We bought 50 lb of unsprayed potatoes from the farmers market in the fall to supplement our supply. After the first roast chicken meal, we usually have 3 or 4 more meals of chicken (our average chicken was 7.5 lb I think, so these birds have a lot of meat on them!), which we tend to make stir-fries with rice, carrots and kale, or fry up the leftover baked potatoes chopped up with chicken and gravy. Then we'll make broth from the carcass and freeze it. We use the broth to then cook lentils or beans. The broth is not only tasty but very healthy, as it is full of minerals that are extracted from the bones during the cooking process.

Pork: Two weeks ago we had pig #2 butchered, so with two pigs' worth of pork in the freezer, we are feeling pretty rich in the meat department. We eat a lot of pork chops, some ribs (cooked slowly with our canned tomatoes and spices in the crock pot all day), some roasts (either just as roasts or turned into carnitas), and ground pork. The ground pork we like to use in Thai curries or stir-fries, cooked up with onions, garlic, carrots, finely chopped greens and eaten with rice.

Eggs: The chickens have been laying since about mid-November, and we are now getting 6 or 7 eggs on most days. It is a wonderful thing not to have to buy eggs anymore, but to be eating our own. As a result, eggs have become a bigger part of our diet and are one of our main protein sources. We'll eat them fried for breakfast, in baked goods, and sometimes for lunch in a hash with chopped potatoes and onion. Then we'll throw some of our salsa on top to spice it up a bit.

Orrin has built the chickens a coop inside the basement of the other building, using hay bales as walls, branches as roosts, and wooden boxes that he made for them to lay their eggs in. On a warm-ish day like today, we let them outside, so they get to peck at the grass and look for bugs. When they can't be outside, we do a little weeding in the greenhouse and give them the weeds. Giving them leafy greens makes both them and their eggs healthier, and we can see the difference because the yolks go from pale yellow to a rich orange color. That makes them healthier for us, too, giving us extra omega-3 fats.

Squash and pumpkins: Since October, we've been eating a lot of pumpkin, as those are the winter squash with the shortest shelf-life. We've been eating pumpkin pies, various types of pumpkin soup, pumpkin cookies, pumpkin pancakes and of course, roasted pumpkin seeds. We cooked up the last pumpkin at Christmas-time to make a soup, but have a couple large ziploc bags in the freezer filled with pumpkin, so we'll have a few more pumpkin delicacies before the winter is over.

Our most abundant squash, spaghetti, has made for a number of basic but tasty spaghetti meals. We bake the squash (instead of boiling noodles) and make a sauce with our canned tomatoes, our frozen basil, fresh carrots out of the greenhouse, and onion. We also add ground beef, which we have been eating from a quarter of a cow that we bought in late summer before we had pork. We still have quite a few of those types of squash left, so that will continue to be a staple for awhile.

Other squash that we have been eating are buttercup, butternut and acorn. The buttercup are so sweet they remind me of sweet potatoes. I like to bake them, then mash them up with a little butter, and then they really do seem like sweet potatoes. Butternut squash I like to peel and cube, and then throw into a soup with lentils, carrots and onions, and a little bit of Thai curry paste. Acorns are good just baked with a little butter and maple syrup.

Appley items: We've been eating our apple butter and apple syrup on pancakes, although we still use some maple syrup as it is just soooo good. Apple syrup has been a decent substitute for a pancake topping because it came from here, but it still doesn't hold a candle to maple syrup. We also enjoy the occasional apple crisp made from the fresh apples stored in the basement.

Greens: We pick a salad to eat almost every day, out of the greenhouse. Mostly it's arugula, with small amounts of spinach, baby bok choy, mizuna and a little lettuce. We also pick chard and/or kale to eat every day as well. I make a breakfast smoothie of water, kale, apple, blackberries and peaches. The peaches were picked at a friends house, but the other fruit came from here. Greens are so packed with nutrients that we chop them up in the food processor and try to throw them in as many other dishes as we can – stir-fries, scrambled eggs, spaghetti sauce, you name it.

That covers the bulk of the food we are eating, and I'm pretty excited that most of it is from here. Some of the things we eat that we didn't grow this year (or can't grow) are grains (rice, millet, amaranth, sorghum, quinoa), beans (lentils, black, garbanzo – we grew some, but only ended up with a few cups of each), onions (we planted them but they didn't grow in our poor soil), maple syrup, lemons, olive oil, apple cider vinegar (hopefully we can make some another year), breakfast cereal, and of course, chocolate. I'm sure there are other things I am forgetting.

Due to food intolerances to wheat/gluten that all three of us seem to have, we are gluten-free at home (and try to be when we're not at home, too), so that makes baking a challenge. We use a variety of flours with extra's like xanthan gum and tapioca flour to make bread and other baked goods rise like wheat flour does, but I don't think those things are particularly healthy for us. We recently were told about and read a book called “The Resilient Gardener” by Carol Deppe, who has celiac disease (ie she gets very sick if she eats any food that has gluten in it), and she has come up with a variety of different types of traditional corn that can be grown and used for flour to make great breads, without using any fillers. It is inspiring to us, and gives us hope that we can not only grow the grains ourselves to make a decent loaf of bread, but also that we can save money by not having to buy the extra fillers that we thought were just the way it was going to be if we wanted to bake. 

November was a blur

This past month seems like a blur. I am working lots at the tea shop, 4 to 5 days a week; that level of busy-ness will last probably until Christmas. Doing that, I'm not home as much, which means Orrin has a harder time getting things done on the farm, as he is also taking care of Oliver. Oliver has his days when he can be more independent, but much of the time he needs to be in the backpack on Orrin. And now that it's getting colder, he doesn't want to be out as much as he did. But still, Orrin is getting things done, bit by bit.

In the last month or so, he has put a lot of time and energy into fixing up the cow shed for winter, improving it from last years make-shift state. He created better walls to protect the animals from the weather, and he also added a protected area for the sheep as well as a protected alleyway that allows access for getting the hay into the two feeders. He's got the sheep enclosed in their side of the shed now, with an outdoor fenced area. He's put additional posts in the ground to expand the cows outside fenced area, as there are three cows this year instead of two, but he's still working on setting the railings in the place. The cows are using their side of it, but are contained by electric fence for the moment, except that Daisy the calf can still duck under it. She wanders around the house and greenhouse still looking for grass to eat, as she doesn't seem quite ready to settle on hay. Gigi doesn't seem to mind too much that Daisy wanders off, but every once in a while she calls out to her to remind her to come home once in a while.

We'd put a bunch of apples down in the basement hoping to store them for a couple of months, but with the warm fall the apples have continued to ripen and are no longer crisp. So we've made more apple butter and dried lots and lots more in the dehydrator. We will probably dry more, as we haven't used up all the apples yet from the bunch that are overripe. There is another bag of apples that we put down in the basement more recently, which have not gotten overly ripe yet, so we hope the average daytime temperatures have dropped enough to allow us to keep one bag of apples. It's so nice to munch on a good, crisp apple!

We have eggs! About two weeks ago, our laying hens started laying. These chickens were born around mid-May, and we had heard that it usually takes 5 to 7 months for chickens to start laying. We have 10 laying hens, but I think only one or two have started laying as we are just getting one new egg a day, sometimes two. The eggs are so cute – they are about half the size of a regular egg that you'd buy at the store. We find that these new eggs have stronger shells than the eggs that we occasionally get from our two old hens (who may be around 3 years old). We'd been wondering if the weak shells were a sign of not enough high-quality food in their diet (we feed them organic grain specifically for chickens, but they aren't getting any greens right now), but now that we are getting eggs from the younger chickens, it seems to be just because they are from old hens. Interestingly, the yolks in the baby eggs are just about the same size as the yolks from the larger eggs.

A wee egg next to a regular-sized one.

I'm starting to realize that my dear husband is a collector. When we lived in Sacramento, Orrin collected English roses. When we lived in BC and he was landscape gardening, he collected plants that he found unusual or interesting (not to mention that they were generally deer-resistant, as that is what was called for in Nanaimo). Now, on our farm in Nova Scotia, he is collecting livestock. Today, for instance, he brought home a Saanen dairy goat. We now have three cows, three sheep, two pigs, twelve chickens and a rooster, a dog, two cats, and now a goat! The nice thing about adding a goat is that this is one particular type of animal that Orrin has first-hand knowledge in raising, as he raised show goats in California when he first moved down there years ago.

We recently stumbled across a website that led us to realize that the reason our pigs weren't fattening up very quickly was because we were giving them all carbohydrates (apples and grain) and not enough protein. A great protein source for pigs is milk or whey. At first we thought we needed to run out and buy a milk cow, but that would be pretty expensive as well as giving us way more milk than we are prepared to deal with. We thought that maybe a goat would be a better choice to start - we could get comfortable with milking, it would be less expensive than a cow, and it would produce a small enough amount of milk that it could all go to the pigs. So that's why we now have a goat! I definitely want a dairy cow at some point, so we can learn how to make our own butter and cheese, but that will require much more time and energy than we have right now.

We found a new home for Charlie the black lab, and Orrin took him there today. His presence here seemed to keep the deer away from the garden over the summer, but when he slept right through a weasel attacking and killing four of our chickens, we realized he wasn't quite the guard dog we needed. That's when we got Zoe the maremma, who has shown already that she is very bright and alert to animals moving around nearby. We were a bit torn about it, but the reality is that we can't afford to feed two dogs if they aren't both working dogs, so decided we'd try to find a new place for Charlie. Sounds like his new place will be a better fit for him, as Orrin said his new owner let him right into the house (he was an outside dog at our place), and immediately gave him some treats (we gave him bones from our food, but didn't buy special treats for him). So long, Charlie!

And last but not least, I have started teaching a second weekly yoga class in Mahone Bay. I've only been doing it for a couple of weeks, so I will see if I get enough interest to continue, but I decided I was ready for a second class. I really look forward to having my own studio here someday, hopefully in the coming year, but for now I am glad to teach in town and continue to build up a base of students who enjoy my classes.

One of the other many things we have been doing - collecting firewood.
Here Oliver and I are hard at work,  he with his very own brand new wheelbarrow.

A Pig Becomes Pork, Part 2

In raising the pigs, our goal had been to get the biggest pig to 200 lbs, because that's a pretty standard weight to aim for prior to butchering. A local farmer had told us the way to estimate a pigs weight is to measure their torso right behind the front legs. When the tape measures 36”, the pig weighs about 100 lbs. Every inch beyond that is a gain of about 10 lbs. We only ever measured the largest pig, because we knew he would be the first to go. When we measured him at the end, we figured the pig was around 180 lbs because he measured about 44”. Not exactly accurate, when you're trying to measure a large, moving animal, but it is the only way we know of to get an estimate. And I'm glad it was even that big. We seemed challenged in finding enough food for them (and still are, I guess, since there are two left), but with grain and 45 lbs of apples going to the three of them each day, we didn't think it would still be so hard to get them to gain weight.

This morning we went over to the butchers house to wrap the pig as he cut it. He had skinned it, gutted it, and taken the head off, and the two sides were hanging on hooks. Each side weighed 60 lbs, for a total hanging weight of 120 lbs. Since we had estimated the pigs live weight at 180 lbs before he was killed, there was a loss of about 1/3. The butcher cut the sides with Orrin (holding Oliver) directing him as to which cuts we wanted and how thick. I put the cuts into plastic bags, and then we labeled them. We had it cut into bacon, chops, roasts and a little bit of ground. We know we have another pig to butcher, so we will probably get more ground pork then. The meat filled a little more than half of a large garbage can.

It is a bit of a transition to go from thinking about that animal as a pig, and now to think of it as meat. We had called him Whitey, because he had two white splotches on one side of his black hide. We had heard that it isn't generally a good idea to name your food, but we found it easier to call them each something different so that we could differentiate them when we talked about them. The other male pig we just called #2, because he was always smaller than Whitey (as well as the obvious Austin Powers reference...). And we had named the girl Isabel, thinking we'd keep her to breed her, although we still haven't decided about that, because she's probably barely over 100 lbs and can't be bred unless she's around 200 lbs.

We had pork chops for lunch, to see how they were. I think we were a little nervous beforehand, because we weren't sure what to expect. I mean, this was our first go at raising pigs, what if somehow we'd missed some important aspect of raising them, and the meat turned out terribly? Fortunately, that was not the case. The chops were very good, and we were relieved. Beforehand, we acknowledged and thanked the pig for providing us with that meat, and also acknowledged the part that we all played in bringing that food to the table. Orrin mostly feeds the animals (grain, and picking buckets of apples), as well as sets up the electric fencing and moves them to new areas once they've cleared an area of food – roots, plants, grass, etc., so he plays the largest role of the three of us. Oliver is with Orrin frequently for the feeding chores, either walking along or in the backpack, and he occasionally likes throwing apples in the pigs paddock for them. I feed them occasionally too, sometimes taking the kitchen compost to them, or helping to pick apples for them.

And now, we have loads of pork in the freezer, and our bellies will be happy.

A Pig Becomes Pork, Part 1

This morning, a neighborhood butcher came over to our farm and killed our largest pig. Orrin fed the pigs their grain, and while they were eating, the butcher shot the pig in the head to stun him, and then his son stepped in and immediately slit his throat. Pretty shocking. The pig lay there on the ground twitching for several minutes before he stopped moving, and then they loaded him up on their trailer and left. It was probably over in less than 10 minutes. The pig will hang for a few days, then we'll go over on Sunday to help wrap the pieces as the butcher carves the pig into the specific cuts of meat that we want.

We had explained to Oliver beforehand about what was to happen, and asked him if he wanted to be there. He said he did, so Oliver and I stood a little ways away to watch. It is really amazing to see the difference in a child's reaction in this situation, who is growing up around killing and butchering animals, versus me as a 37-year old watching it for the first time, with all the cultural stigma that I, and most of us, was raised with (mainly that you buy your meat from a grocery store wrapped in saran wrap on a styrofoam plate and don't need to know where it comes from, and that killing is done by “someone else”, or that you don't even have to think about something dying for you to eat). Growing up in Alaska, my dad did go out and hunt the occasional moose, but I was never with him when he killed them. I remember skinned moose hanging from the beams in the garage to cure (and thinking “ewwww, gross”), but that is the closest I got to participating in seeing where meat came from.

Oliver took it completely in stride, didn't seem grossed out at all, but asked questions throughout the day about it, as he processed what happened. I was definitely processing it too. My first thought was thinking about the pig being in pain. I'm sure he was, and that's hard to think about. I can console myself by thinking that it was only for a few minutes. I suppose that's better than the idea of an animal being in pain for hours or days, but pain for a few minutes is still pain. I can't really rationalize it away, and make it better. For a second I thought, “maybe I should be a vegetarian or vegan”, but I can't honestly do that. First of all, because it's important to me to be as local as possible in my food choices (and if I'm not eating meat than I'd have to eat faraway things like avocados for healthy fats, and soy for protein), and second of all because, well, I like to eat meat. We can – and are – raising pigs (and other animals) for meat in a compassionate way, giving them free range to root around in large paddocks, not crowding them in to small spaces or keeping them cooped up in a barn for most of their lives. We feed them organic grain and don't use any hormones or antibiotics. They are healthy during their lives, and as a result we are eating healthy meat. 

So at the end of the day, I am thankful for that pig, for he helped clear land here to start creating pasture, and he will put food on our table. That is honest, and I can live with that.

Harvest Tally 2011

Because you can take the girl out of the nerdy environment, but you can't take the nerd out of the girl, I made a spreadsheet of the harvest for the year.

And the big question is: how long through the winter/spring will this last us? I'll keep you posted.

Food made	Ingredients from Garden	Preservation technique	How many	Units	Comments
Deli Dills	Cucumbers, garlic	canning	3	quarts
Deli Dills	Cucumbers, garlic	canning	6	pints
Apple butter	Apples	canning	4	½ pints
Charred Tomato & Chile Salsa	Tomatoes, chilies, garlic	canning	9	pints	A total of 170 lb of tomatoes picked (not including what we picked and ate directly)
Crushed tomatoes	tomatoes	canning	12	quarts
Crushed tomatoes	tomatoes	canning	12	pints
Tomatoes, dried	tomatoes	dehydrator	5	large jars
Apples, dried	Apples	dehydrator	2.5	large jars
blackberries	blackberries	frozen	33	lbs
blueberries	purchased	frozen	30	lbs
peaches	a friends garden	frozen	17	lbs
ketchup	tomatoes, garlic	canning	2	pints
ketchup	tomatoes, garlic	canning	5	½ pints
garlic scape pesto	kale, garlic scapes	frozen	28	ice cube blocks
basil pesto	kale, basil, garlic	frozen	50	ice cube blocks
Garlic	garlic	storing	2	lbs	8 lbs was kept for seed
winter squash/pumpkins	winter squash/pumpkins	storing	220	lbs
	Black turtle beans	storing	4	cups
	yellow kinearly beans	storing			Still in the shell
	light red kidney beans	storing	2	cups
	basil leaves	frozen	1	large ziploc
Salsa verde	green tomatoes, chilies, garlic	frozen	28	cups
Salsa verde	green tomatoes, chilies, garlic	canning	10	pints	From 35 or 40 lbs of unripe tomatoes