happy meal

Thus concludes our first experiment with raising broiler chickens! I can finally say that all things considered, it was quite a success. We suffered some heavy losses in the beginning, but ultimately I'm not at all unhappy with the outcome.

These are Freedom Ranger broilers from JM Hatchery. Because we got two shipments and processed them in two batches, their age at processing time varied between 10 and 12 weeks. Their dressed weights appear to be mostly between four and a half and five pounds, and they had a nice amount of fat on them. They started out in a brooder, of course, and we moved them outside to a pasture shelter after a few weeks. They got moved onto fresh grass every one to two days and therefore had some forage to supplement their grain ration. We also supplemented them with goat's milk during their last few weeks. We ran some numbers and concluded that it cost us approximately $1.50/lb to raise these birds. When you consider that I've been paying $4.29/lb for comparable pastured chicken, that wound up being quite a good deal! It took four people of varying experience levels about ten hours to process thirty-one birds, and that's without the aid of a large drum plucker. All these facts and figures didn't mean much, however, without knowing how they'd taste...

The verdict is in - they taste AMAZING!

The fact that the expense was quite manageable and the extra work was minimal makes this an endeavor worth repeating! For a few minutes a day and one or two long days of processing, we can have delicious, healthy, humanely raised chicken right from our own backyard, for less than the price of supermarket chicken. Few things we've undertaken here have made me more proud than this.

*Update*

If you're curious about the butchering process, there is an excellent tutorial here. We do it essentially the same way, with a few minor changes to suit our particular circumstances. Be sure to follow that by checking out this post.

As for the way I cooked this bird, I brined it for a couple of hours in a simple brine of water, kosher salt and sugar, and then roasted it according to this recipe (scroll down past the mushroom soup recipe). Again, I make a few small changes, but this is a wonderful and pretty much fool proof way to roast a bird.

how things are coming along

It has been a couple of years since I started this blog, and in that time we've gotten married, moved to the farm and taken on quite a few new projects and challenges. We've had some fairly lofty goals for ourselves all along and I thought it might be a good time to take a look back at our efforts and give an update on where we are now. If you're new to homesteading, or still just dreaming, understand that it isn't a race, and that it will take time. Don't beat yourself up if it's your third year of gardening and you're still not getting a bumper crop, or your bread didn't rise, or your hens have stopped laying and you haven't the faintest idea why. Some of the things we've set out to do have gone pretty much just as expected, while others brought big surprises. Some things we assumed would be no-brainers have proved to be surprisingly difficult, while things we were sure we'd screw up have been remarkably problem-free. Here is a brief synopsis of the things we've aced and the things we've buggered up over our first three years:

1. Vegetable Gardening: the obvious place to start for most homesteaders
The Goal: to grow (almost) all of our own vegetables
We've now planted three spring gardens and one fall garden (at two locations). While the results have been very mixed, our overall yields are gradually improving. I've learned a lot about growing veggies in general and about the nuances of gardening in Texas. We've had great success with greens regardless of season but still haven't managed to grow tomatoes or potatoes despite their reputation for being easy. They have become the holy grail of our gardening efforts - not because we even like them that much, but because we hate being denied. We also live on a long-neglected cattle pasture and have had to struggle quite a bit to build any sort of workable soil. As it stands now in our third year, we're probably growing about a quarter of our own produce, and expanding each season. We knew this would take time, and I'm not unhappy with our progress so far.
Biggest Success: homegrown greens on our table at Thanksgiving
Biggest Failure: those pesky potatoes
Biggest Surprise: digging under our HUGE potato plants at harvest time to find not. one. spud.

2. Rabbits: our first foray into livestock
The Goal: meat for ourselves and the dogs (with extra to sell), fertilizer
What a ride this has been. Rabbits were the first animals we ever bred and butchered. They were billed as easy keepers, which they mostly are - quiet, low space requirements, low feed requirements, low upfront investment. They do make copious amounts of wonderful fertilizer as promised. What they do not reliably make are babies. After three years, six breeding animals and countless litters, we have successfully raised only four baby rabbits, and have only eaten one animal in all that time - an adult that we had to cull early (the four babies were passed on to other people in barter arrangements). We also learned that they do very poorly in our extreme summer heat. They are, however, easy to keep around and easy to process. We really want to make rabbits work for us, so with some tweaking, we continue to persevere. This year they will be moved outdoors and we're transitioning them to a mostly foraged diet with supplemental hay and very little pellet feed. If things don't improve this year, we may be scrapping rabbits.
Biggest Success: loads of fertilizer
Biggest Failure: loads of babies that haven't survived
Biggest Surprise: rabbits just don't breed like, well...rabbits...in captivity, apparently

3. Laying Hens: the golden egg
The Goal: all the eggs we can eat, plus extra to sell and the occasional chicken dinner
This project has gone extremely well. Chickens are very hardy, unfussy and generally dependable. They are also wonderfully scalable, in that it's no more work to take care of thirty chickens than three, so if you have the space you really might as well go bigger. The return on the extra eggs is more than enough to pay for the cost of keeping them, so we actually do make a little bit of a profit here, which is nice. We get all the eggs we want, plus lots of extras for the dogs. A retired laying hen or extra rooster makes the best chicken soup we've ever eaten, and the dogs win here too - they get necks, organs and other throwaway bits. The fact that we can generate our own replacement stock makes this an all-around win. This project hasn't been without its setbacks, but they've been comparatively few.
Biggest Success: turning a (tiny) profit
Biggest Failure: unknowingly sending a batch of new chicks to bed (and to their demise) with a rat snake - boy, do we feel bad about that one, still
Biggest Surprise: the books don't tell you all the things that will cause them to STOP laying

4. Other Poultry: ducks and broilers
The Goal: meat supply for ourselves and the dogs, with extras to sell
(You may have begun to notice a theme here - our goals tend to center around food production. Our over-arching aim, the one that all other goals tie into, is to be totally or nearly self sufficient in as many areas as possible. That means fulfilling most of our needs ourselves with as few external inputs as possible, and in a way that still allows us to live fairly well. We've started with our food, since that seems to be the easiest place to start and the area where we can make the biggest impact right away.)
We acquired our ducks as a breeding pair, free of charge, from a friend. They were reported to be quite prolific and it seemed like a good way to add extra meat to our freezer. Much like the rabbits, we have yet to eat a single duck, but that's not got much to do with their performance. They do perform as advertised, and are extremely low maintenance. They lay and set large clutches of eggs, eat very little feed and prefer to sleep out in the open. In short, they require virtually no care. We've had some failed hatches due to things such as cold weather and egg-thieving predators, and the ducklings that have hatched have so far all been sold or traded away before they met the chopping block. They're unexpectedly charming, and as easy as they are to keep around, we'll keep them whether they ever do anything productive or not. Raising chickens strictly for meat is a project that's still in its infancy here, so it's a bit too soon for a progress report. Our first batch was a group of heritage breed roosters, which turned out bland, small and a bit tough, without much to recommend them. We're almost to harvest time with a batch of proper broiler-type birds, but as they're still on the wing, the jury is still out on them.
Biggest Success: too soon to declare
Biggest Failure: losing over half of a batch of about sixty-five broiler chicks (although this wasn't technically our fault)
Biggest Surprise: duck eggs make world class egg salad

5. Goats: the sweetest milk trucks on earth
The Goal: keep dairy goats for milk, cheese and soap, for our own use and to sell
Keeping goats was probably the undertaking we most feared - it involved LARGE LIVESTOCK, a considerable upfront investment, a significant learning curve, and holy crap we'll have to birth babies! We've only had goats for one year, which is really a short time in the scheme of things, but honestly this one has been far easier than we imagined. Books, websites and other goat raisers filled our heads with all sorts of fears and conflicting advice, and in the end we just had to get zen about it and go with our gut. We've adapted our methods to suit our individual circumstances, and keep our goats in good flesh largely through attentiveness and good management. We've brought forth three babies to two first-time fresheners, learned to disbud and give shots and are milking about a gallon a day. I'm making good chevre, feta and ricotta, with other cheeses and dairy products in development. Other goat milk products such as soap and cajeta are in development right now as well. They also provide us with good fertilizer, good company and loads of entertainment.
Biggest Success: killer feta whenever we want it!
Biggest Failure: umm, none really
Biggest Surprise: how much we adore them

6. Bees: the littlest army
The Goal: honey, beeswax and related products (with extra to sell), plant pollination
Even though we've been trying to establish some honeybees for a couple of years, this one still feels too early to call. Our first attempt was a swarm that just never would play ball, and the following year we ordered some package bees that arrived dead. Not to be deterred, I ordered and received another package this year, only to have them FLY OFF just three days after moving them in. I've finally got two colonies going that are looking good, but since they've only been around for a few days, it's just impossible to rate this one yet. I will say that I find them intensely fascinating, and apparently enjoy them enough to keep throwing money at this hobby even though it has so far yielded nada.
Biggest Success: finally getting some colonies established (so far, fingers crossed)
Biggest Failure: watching our third attempt at bees fly away right before my eyes
Biggest Surprise: how much I'm willing to invest in this before giving up

7. DIY: not buying it
The Goal: to supply many of our own needs, such as pet and animal feed, household products, repairs and maintenance, construction, etc.
We're doing rather well here so far, although it's a long road. We're making compost, we've built a combined chicken coop and shed and I've begun making our soap. we're supplying more and more of our animals' diet from on-property - between wild edibles, kitchen scraps, butchering waste and excess eggs, milk and whey from cheesemaking, our overall feed bill continues to decline and almost nothing goes to waste. With the exception of onion skins and orange rinds, pretty much everything gets eaten by someone, and if not, it goes to the compost. We do still have a long way to go in this area, though, and we realize we will always have certain needs we can't fulfill on our own. It's a process.

8. Financial Independence: freedom, in a nutshell
The Goal: to need as little actual cash as possible, so we can work as little as possible
This ties in closely with DIY, and again, is a lengthy process. We've made some significant steps forward - paying off the car, paying off the mortgage, dramatically reducing our debt and finding some non-conventional income streams. The downside here is that we still have some debt to whittle away at, a brand new mortgage, and we still need hard cash for quite a lot of things, although we're closing the gap more and more all the time. Each new endeavor requires an upfront cash investment, but eventually translates to one less thing we have to buy on a continuing basis. We'd like to reduce our needs to the point where we can comfortably live on roughly half of what we earn today (or even less) and take back a large chunk of our time.

Well, there you have it - the biggies. There have been other small victories and disappointments, too numerous to mention, but these are the things that have made us elated, made us cry, kept us up nights, brought us peace and made our bones ache. For all the times you haven't seen us, or we haven't called, or we just couldn't make it...this is what we have to show for it. We've come an awfully long way in two years and yet have so much more ahead of us.

graduation day

The broilers got moved to their outdoor shelter on Monday! I think everyone is a lot happier now. They outgrew the brooder much more quickly than we anticipated, and it was becoming quite cramped and dirty in there. But now they have nice fresh grass, which they seem to enjoy.

They're still pretty small, but check out the size of the breasts on these guys!



I love them when they're this size. They're just starting to learn how to use their wings. Lots of uncontrolled flapping = comedy.

some time for projects

This may be one of the best weekends I've spent in a long time. We had a warm, sunny day yesterday so we took care of quite a few small projects that were nagging at us. We set up some compost bins near the garden, built two more garden beds and fenced in a new area for the goats to hang out in during the day. Here they are, not enjoying it. Goats hate change.



Just a quick word of advice - when fencing in a yard for goats, don't put it next to your dogs' yard. One or both of the parties are likely to object to this arrangement.

The rain moved in today and stayed, keeping us indoors all day. I took the opportunity to tackle some projects I've been meaning to get to. We had an excess of goat milk that needed to be dealt with*, and I've been ready to try something new, so I started my first batch of feta. The curds are draining now, and then it will be salted and left to sit for a couple of days before we get to eat it. I don't know what I'll do when I start making pressed hard cheeses that need to be aged. I adore cheese, and I don't want to wait for months to find out how it turns out - I want cheese NOW! Perhaps I will learn discipline...

And since I'm already waiting anyway, I made a batch of soap too. I made a soap of beef tallow, olive oil and coconut oil and scented it with a blend of cedarwood, bergamot and grapefruit oils. It's hardening in the mold now, and it will be several weeks before we get to try that out. It looks wonderful, though. It came out exactly the way I expected it would, so that was encouraging. I'm sorry I don't have any pictures to post of the soapmaking process. It's somewhat dangerous business and requires one's full attention, so I just didn't feel like I could make the soap AND photograph it. I'd have asked hubby to take pictures, but he was graciously keeping the (needy) dogs out of my business. Plus, he has his own things to do. Perhaps next time.

The drama of the broiler chicks seems to be over - we have a final headcount (after many, many losses) of thirty-one, and the survivors are quite robust and getting LARGE. Having never raised broilers before, I'm amazed at how much bigger they were after just one week. This image illustrates it perfectly - these two chicks are one week apart in age!



The next couple of weekends should bring a full-on gardening blitz (weather permitting) so it was nice to have a little time for some pet projects. Next up - a cheese press!

* We're only milking one goat right now and already have a whopping amount of milk to find ways to use up. I don't know what we'll do when our other doe kids and we're milking two. I'd best get that cheese press together and fast!

UPDATE

The missing chicks arrived this morning (at MY post office this time). As expected, there were a few dead in the box, and several more that looked extremely weak. About half of them still look quite vigorous. They're all under the heat lamps with food and water now. We'll know in the next 24 hours which ones will rebound and which ones will tank. The survivors from the first shipment look great, and are already nearly twice as big as the newcomers after only a week! I'll post pictures once the dust settles.

losing faith

When you sign up for this kind of life, you know it's going to be hard. There are huge rewards, to be sure, but they are always balanced by difficulty, tragedy. It's been an especially rough week here. We've lost about twenty-five animals in the past seven days. I wish I was kidding. Due to a postal service screw-up, we lost well over half of the broiler chicks we ordered last week. The replacements that the hatchery was kind enough to send me are now at large too. They've been in transit since Wednesday and no sign of them so far. I fear the worst. We also discovered a hen dead in the nest earlier in the week - a fairly young one at that. My guess is that the poor thing must have been egg-bound. Our broody hen keeps moving around to different egg piles, so I'm pretty sure the eggs I gave her are no longer viable. One of our new rabbits kindled yesterday but failed to make a nest, so all eight of the babies were completely exposed and died in the cold.*

It's times like these that really make me feel discouraged. I know this is part and parcel of the life I've chosen, and I know it won't always be this bad, but right now we really, desperately need for something to go right around here. (Mama duck - I'm looking at YOU. Fix this! Give me babies!) These kinds of weeks weigh heavily on my heart.

*This is actually fairly common for first-time rabbit mothers, and we sort of expected it, but it's heart-wrenching just the same.

guess who's feeling motherly?

That's right, everyone's favorite broody is back. Only this time, she's not sitting on a phony. Nope, this time it's the real deal. She's got five full-sized eggs under there. (Interestingly, she can cover five eggs, but five eggs plus a golf ball is just that much too much. The "decoy" had to be removed!) Just look at the spread of those wings. You'd never guess to look at her here, but she's really quite a tiny thing. Now that we have ample nest space and nice secure housing, we've decided that she can raise as many babies as she likes, whenever she likes. No more wooden eggs and golf balls for this girl. Besides, with all the variety we have in the poultry yard, it will be fun to see what sort of mixed breeds we end up with! Given our luck, though, they will ALL be Barred Rocks, and they will ALL be roosters, since that seems to be how we roll around here.

This time of year is a time for babies on the farm. We'll soon be awash in them. The first goat kid was only the beginning of a long spell of new life emerging. Between now and May, it will be an almost constant influx of offspring - a hostile takeover by the next generation. There are twenty-five chicks coming tomorrow, in addition to these five eggs being incubated in-house. Mother duck is building a clutch as we speak - it grows larger by the day and more deeply feathered. We're still awaiting the rest of the kids to make their appearance, and we know we have some buns in the oven, thanks to our new Californian does. Another crate of honeybees will join us in early April, and the gardens, trees and pasture will be offering up new leaves and shoots before we can say boo. The old will stand down. Youth will reign supreme. They are coming.

While I generally don't get emotionally attached to my livestock, I must admit to a certain fondness for the mothers around here. They're so earnest and work so hard. Their whole being is distilled and dedicated to a singular purpose. They really put heart, soul and unwavering determination into their efforts, and for that I adore (and applaud) them.

the votes are in

Thanks to everyone for voting in the Battle of the Cockerels! Thanks to you, we were spared the difficult decision of who would stay and who would fade away. Our man Elvis came out on top, with Little A handily taking second place. It was a close battle between Winston and Roscoe for third place, but in the end Winston staged a breakaway to prevail by four votes. Unfortunately for Winston, his only prize will be the thrill of victory. We have decided to only keep two roosters rather than three. Sorry Winston, you'll be missed.

Roscoe, good showing! I'm sorry to be the one to tell you this, but you were always destined for the stew pot, so really you should be grateful for even getting a shot at the title.

Phil and Not Winston, how can I put this? Tough break kids, now shove off. And don't let the barn door hit you...

last man standing

You may recall Roscoe, from the Battle of the Cockerels post...



Roscoe wasn't always a loner. He was once part of a posse. He ran with four other roosters that he'd grown up with - a Red, two Buffs and a Wyandotte - they were a little gang. They hung out together in the garden and were generally shunned by the rest of the flock. In their tender youth, they were as timid as any other youngsters. They stayed close to one another and always made curfew. Boys will be boys, however, and once in their teens they adopted some rather devil-may-care behavior. They took to...(gasp!)...staying out all night.

They risked disaster for the thrill of it and even got away with it for ahwile, until one night, tragedy struck. Late one night, coyotes moved through the yard. The boys were sitting ducks. It must have been quite a scene - trails of different colored feathers wound all over the yard. One of the buffs made the rather misguided decision to flee into the goat yard, where it was met by Caspian, the night watchman (who loves chicken - sorry Buff). In the morning, I went out to the yard to find not five roosters, but one. Roscoe was wandering around the yard alone, looking confused, disoriented and yes, lonely. He looked around for his compadres but found no one. He managed to save himself, we later discovered, by hiding in a tiny space under a piece of sheet metal that leans up against the barn. He still sleeps there every night.

Eventually he got over his grief and resigned himself to a life alone. He survives on the mean streets, getting by on his wits. He's even got a little girlfriend these days. Too bad for Roscoe that he's drawn the short straw and will soon fall victim to another round of downsizing. Such is the tenuous life of a cockerel.

moving the girls in

The chickens got some new, much more civilized digs today! I think they rather like it in the new house.



There's plenty of roosting space...





Nest boxes for everyone...



They liked it so much that they turned in a record number of eggs today! Thanks, girls!

the lesser of the evils

I find myself needing to make a rather unpleasant decision. I have too many roosters - six in all, and the size of my flock can really only support two. Three at the most. This decision is difficult not because I'm reluctant to send them to the stew pot, but rather the opposite: I'd like to send them ALL to the stew pot and start over. Much like a political election, I'm faced with having to decide which ones I dislike the least, and that is truly unfortunate. Let's take a look at the candidates, shall we?

Elvis, a two-year-old Barred Rock, and Senior Rooster:



Elvis is pretty much a shoo-in. Even though we've shared some ill will in the past, he's a good rooster and takes his job seriously. He does a good job of protecting his ladies, and they seem to like him. Besides, he's become something of an institution around here.

Roscoe, a 10-month-old Barred Rock:



Roscoe has proved himself on the mean streets, and is a survivor (more on this in a later post). He's a bit of a loner, but has found himself a rather devoted little girlfriend. He's been well-behaved and nice (so far), but the hens aren't too sure about him and the other roosters only barely tolerate him. He's sort of the "dark, mysterious stranger with a past" that no one quite trusts. The fact that he's ALSO a Barred Rock (like Elvis) is an unfortunate strike against him - I'm shooting for some diversity here.

Phil, another 10-month-old Barred Rock:



Phil is automatically disqualified. He has a deformed beak, NO ONE likes him, and again, he's another Barred Rock. Sorry, Phil.

Winston, a 10-month-old Black Australorp:



I adore Winston. He was my number one pick for a keeper back in the earlier days. In the intervening months, however, he suffered an injury that has left him with a permanent limp. He's kind to the girls and to me, but they're a bit wary of him with his lame leg (not good breeding material, after all), and I'm not certain how effective he'll be with a limp. He's done alright so far, but he's been working as part of a team of six. The jury is still out on Winston.

"Not" Winston, another 10-month-old Australorp:



He had a shot at the title, but has recently started showing aggression toward me. He's disqualified.

Little A, a 6-month-old Ameraucana:



"A" stands for a-hole. He went through a really rough patch during puberty during which he was exceptionally hard on the girls. This got him disqualified, however in recent weeks he seems to have mellowed out considerably. He's a beautiful rooster, and hasn't shown any aggression toward me (yet) but he's still very young and unproven. He's a bit of a wild card, and I can't decide if he's worth taking a chance on, or if I'm better off sticking with a sure thing.

What would you do? I've added a poll to the sidebar - let us know who should prevail in the Battle of the Cockerels!

Chicken Fu!

every day is a mixed bag

I'm learning that there's no such thing as a good day or a bad day on the farm. Well, they're rare, in any case. Every day seems to bring with it a (mostly) balanced mix of little successes and failures, catastrophes and strokes of brilliance, pleasures and annoyances.

We've started letting the Margenes out to free range. They're about four months old now, and nearly as big as the big girls. It was time for them to taste freedom, to make their own way in the world. Time to kick them out of the nest, as it were. When I opened the door for them for the first time, it was quite a show. A couple of them tentatively stuck their heads out to peck at the green grass just across the threshold. Suddenly there was a rumbling from the back of the house...a few over-eager girls started flapping their wings madly, annoyed by the slow progression forward. Finally their pent-up enthusiasm could no longer be contained, and they all came bursting out through the door in twos and threes, semi-airborne, wings fluttering, as if shot from a cannon. They looked like Fourth of July artilery shells with feathers and beaks.

When you first let young pullets out to free range, you can expect some losses early on. They're novices at this, you see. No street smarts. It takes some time and a few misfortunes for them to get the hang of things. We lost one overnight last night*. It seems she didn't make it back in before we closed the door, and went unnoticed behind the house in the waning daylight. I discovered a sad pile of feathers up against the back wall, where she must have tried to settle for the night. This is what I mean. You can expect some of this in the beginning. At least one or two will unwittingly venture into the dogs' yard and not make it out. Another will wander off alone, never to be seen again. As badly as I feel for these poor early casualties, they serve as a warning to the others. Chickens aren't stupid. They learn what to do and what not to do.

My dismay over this finding was tempered by another. This:



I swear I looked at these plants yesterday, and...nothing. But today...today we have broccoli! Well, we have itty bitty broccoli, but...still. Broccoli seeds are incredibly tiny. Broccoli plants are enormous. This never ceases to amaze me. It's just incredible that something so small can contain so much. I've never attempted to grow broccoli before, so this discovery thrills me. Such are the endless tiny dramas of farm life.

See? Mixed bag.

* Tara's Law of Poultry Attrition : Whichever breed of chicken you own the fewest of, or whichever is most rare will be the first to perish, virtually without exception. If you have 50 Barred Rocks and ONE Silver Spangled Hamburg, guess which one will be the first to meet an untimely end? This rule also applies to whichever particular bird is your favorite. The one I lost last night was a Buff Orpington, and while they are not rare, I had only two (out of 50-some-odd total chickens). Now I have one.

the chicken coop is started!

Finally after many weeks of rain and mud, we were able to start the coop! We got the concrete poured and with the help of my brother and his girlfriend, the floor is in place. Once we were able to get started, this part went rather quickly. We got this far in just a couple of hours, and it was a huge relief to just finally get started - to have something to point to.



I asked the goats if they would mind giving us a hand, but they declined.



I suspect they're annoyed that the chickens (!) will have nicer digs than theirs.

Construction continues this weekend, so stay tuned.

reincarnation

See, we have this...structure...that we built. Or rather, that my husband built. It's been around for a couple of years now. It's nothing fancy, and in fact you might say it's rather crude, but it is a chameleon of a thing. It seems to have an uncanny knack for serving whatever purpose we need it to serve in the moment. Here it is at its birth, when it was a rabbit hutch:



After awhile, we moved the rabbit cages into the barn, and when the ducks arrived, we converted this into a house for them. We cut the legs off, knocked out the solid sides, extended the front by several feet, hung a door and enclosed the whole thing with welded wire. Here they are, not enjoying it:



Shortly thereafter, the ducks turned up their bills at the accommodations and moved out. Conveniently, we had new tenants waiting to take up residence:



All it took was the addition of some roosts and some smaller-weave poultry netting to transform it from DuxHostel to Casa de Pollo. The chickens like it just fine, thank you very much.

Ah, but they'll be moving out soon too. Pretty soon their dee-luxe accommodations will be complete, and they will all be moving into the poultry penthouse, leaving the structure empty once more. Around that time, the goat barn will no longer be co-ed. The boys will be needing their own dorm. As we sat on the porch over the weekend, planning their shelter, we looked over at the rabbit-duck-chicken-hutch-coop...


"I think the goats' shelter could be about that size. The height is fine. It's plenty deep and wide enough too."'

"Okay, then. I'll use that as a guide and build their shelter more or less to those dimensions."

"Wait...why don't we just use that?"

"Hmmm...yeah...the chickens will be moved out. I'll need to fortify it a bit."

"...and put a roof over the whole thing, and pull off the wire and add on some solid walls."

"Done."


Ouila! Maison de Chevres! I can't wait to see what it turns into next.

going for broke

I now have a thorough understanding of the expression "make hay while the sun shines". We've been hit hard by rain for so many weeks that it has crippled any effort we might have made in the name of progress. So when the sky cleared and the forecast called for sun all week long (!) it became an all-out push to get as much done as humanly possible.

We got the concrete poured (finally) for the chicken coop we're building. Now we can actually start the construction in earnest. I made a huge trip to the feed store, and got stocked up on everything. We cleaned a pickup-load of trash out of the barn and hung new fly traps (the previous ones filled up in a matter of DAYS - we have mega-flies). I gathered dry kindling and installed solar outdoor lights around the barn and yard. I planted more veggies in the garden and we set up a makeshift greenhouse in the hopes of getting a little more out of our tomatoes and peppers. I mucked all the wet straw and hay out of the goat barn and put down dry. The goats had to spend the better part of the day shut out in the yard while I did it, but since they've been holed up inside the barn for weeks, I don't think they minded too much. They even played with that dog. That's how happy they were to be outside.

And then there were other things. Some things the rain forced us to do - having all the water pumped out of our septic tank, for instance. Other things the rain is still preventing me from doing. I have winter rye to plant, but the ground is still too wet to till. I only hope it will stay dry long enough for me to get that seed in the ground. There was even a little time to do some indoor things as well. I planned meals for the next couple of weeks, ordered my honeybees for spring and got my birthday present set up for use - a Country Living grain mill to grind my own fresh flour for baking.

And even after all the work, in honor of Halloween, we spent our evenings watching a long string of scary movies, with a bowl full of popcorn and a jack-o-lantern providing our only light.

This may have been the most satisfying weekend ever. There's something wonderful about checking loads of things off your to do list in a short time, and without exhausting yourself. It makes you feel unstoppable.

Fancy says:

"Hey thanks, lady. That's better."



"My babies need privacy. Plus, all that sideways rain was really starting to bring me down. It's still coming in from the top a bit, though. Maybe you could send someone 'round to look into that?"

Poor Fancy. She's so determined. So devoted. How can I tell her that she's sitting on a wooden egg?

bad dogs and the suckers who love them

Big Stan is a Bad Dog.

No, strike that. He's a good dog, with a Bad Habit. When he sees a chicken, he becomes The Terminator. He is a four-pawed, furry killing machine. Something deep in his brain clicks, and he will hunt down poultry wherever it hides and DESTROY IT.

You can imagine the conflict of interest.

After a particularly stressful day involving a lengthy plumber visit, and being shuffled back and forth between the bedroom and the backyard, Stan needed to blow off some steam. On one of my trips outside, he pushed past me out the door and went straight for the meat and potatoes - fifteen of our feathered finest, who were strutting their stuff all over the yard. Chaos ensued. He bore down on those birds and they scattered in every direction. I broke into a sprint and tried to head him off around the ccop, around the tree, around the patio - anywhere I could try to cut him off - but I'm out of shape, and he's a young, spry German Shepherd. I just couldn't catch him, and ultimately he chased a pullet into the underbrush and had her in his jaws, feathers flying.

Did I mention that he is a German Shepherd? The Achilles heel of every German Shepherd is his desire to be as close to his human as possible (he would be up your nose if he could find a way to fit). This effectively prevents them from running off. Once they have Destroyed The Threat, they will snap out of it, and look around for you, as if to say, "Look! Look what I did! Aren't you proud of me?" I seized this opportunity to take him to the ground and pry the pullet from his mouth. She fled - thankfully I got to her in time. I rewarded my most dedicated servant with the...ahem...most stern reprimand he's ever received in his life* and dragged him by the collar into the house.

I caught my breath. I took a headcount. I assessed the damage. One, two...six, seven... Slowly they reappeared in pairs and trios. After some time had passed, it was apparent that Winston, the rooster had a limp and two birds were still at large. The violated pullet turned up later, seemingly unharmed. The "rooster who is not Winston" was discovered in a tight corner outside the back door, behind a derelict refrigerator, literally playing dead. I myself was quite convinced. So much so that I cursed, went inside for some gloves and returned to remove his carcass but when I reached for him he bolted as if shot from a cannon, very much alive and in good health.

With everyone accounted for in the poultry yard, I went inside and implemented The Shaming. Stan was (temporarily) dead to me. He was not to be spoken to. He was not even to be looked at, except in a menacing manner. He became quite distressed by my attitude and slinked off to his fenced yard to make himself scarce. As I cooked dinner, every few minutes, he would poke just his face through the flap of the dog door...just a nose, and an eye looking at me tentatively. I'd flash him the biggest stinkeye I could muster. His big nose would disappear back out into the yard.

Repentant German Shepherds Who Know They Are In Deep S*** are adorable.

I finally had to relent and tell him it was okay to come inside. He's a smart boy. He was inside in a flash and found a place to take a nice, non-troublemaking nap.

* This is a nice way of saying that I pretty much threatened to beat him within an inch of his life. (Threats only - I don't beat my dogs.)

Winston

Meet Winston.



Winston bears the honorable distinction of having survived two rounds of layoffs. He has, in fact, been promoted, and is carefully supervising his future underlings here.

When you find yourself with excess cockerels (and who doesn't, from time to time?), the process of choosing one to keep around is...interesting, and far from scientific. There are all sorts of considerations. You consider his looks - is he handsome? Big and Beefy? Tall and Slender? Short and Stocky? You consider the attractiveness of his feathering, and the overall robustness of his stature. Good health and longevity are important, after all. Being easy on the eyes also doesn't hurt.

You pay close attention to his behavior, too. Does he have a bad-to-the-bone attitude, or is he a gentle giant? Is he attentive to the ladies? Does he force himself on the poor girls? Does he keep a watchful eye over them and offer them the best tidbits? You want a caring rooster, don't you?

You'll find yourself studying all aspects of his personality, real and imagined. You'd swear that one seems to have a sense of humor. One thinks he's cock of the walk. Another is shy, and defers to the rest. You consider what sort of offspring they'd make, too. You think about whether they'd be a good match and if they'd give you a beautiful flock of purebreds, or a yard full of mongrels.

In the end, however, you wind up choosing the one that just fits. The one that gives you a warm fuzzy feeling. The one you feel most attached to, even if the reasons are illogical and hard to justify. You choose the one you love best.

Hmmm.

Bobcat - DECEASED!!!

Hubby got a lucky break this evening, and a certain bobcat will not be bothering our flock anymore. He was a formidable foe, having taken roughly eight or nine of our birds (that we can confirm)*. Which makes his elimination all the more satisfying.

* The deaths mentioned here have all occurred within the past week. We now suspect that the bobcat was responsible for at least some of the earlier malfeasance that we attributed to raccoons and coyote.