TAL Presents: "A Farewell to Horns: Not Without My Sweet Feed"

Today the reign of terror ended. After months of bribery, violence, manipulation and attempts at disembowelment, Queen Patience has been ousted. Many thought of her as a bad goat - bossy...a bully, even. She pushed the others around (literally). It was her way or the highway. But she was simply misunderstood. It was life...life and the cruel, cruel world that made her what she was.


Just a plucky, curious youngster.

Things started off so well. She was a sweet kid - brave, outgoing, friendly. She hung out with her mother, carefree and happy. Soon however, her world was shattered. Her mother was taken away. Other goats came and she was forced to share her Eden. She wasn't much for sharing. She was forced to labor, day in and day out. Her life was one of endless toil and injustice. The degradation was simply unspeakable. She took control wherever she could find it. She ruled the barnyard with an iron hoof. Any man, woman, goat or dog who dared look askance at her paid for it with wails of pain. Soon everyone feared her. She was IN CHARGE. Her newly elevated status caused her to view her incarceration in a new light. Perhaps it wasn't so bad. "I have them all cowering in terror! I can do what I want" she thought. Her subjects tried to avoid her, but she sought them out to torment them. They tried to flatter her, but to no avail. They answered her every beck and call, but she was never satisfied.


"I am my own goat."

After a time her subjects, once fearful, became angry and rebellious. "The Queen has gone too far!" they cried. "She must be overthrown!" Tensions in the barnyard reached a tipping point...there was conspiracy...secret meetings...whispers. As a distraction, her subjects treated her to a fine morning at the spa. She had a nice breakfast and a mani-pedi. "What a lovely morning" she though to herself. She suspected nothing, until strangers tied her up and put her in a truck! She was taken away - banished to the outlands to live with an indigenous herd of meat goats ("MEAT GOATS?!") for the rest of her days.

What will be her fate in this new unknown territory? Will they break her? Will she find her place among them and fade into the obscurity of a normal life? Or will she rise again, claiming the power that she knows is rightfully hers?

Yeah, probably.

just do it.

While I always intended for this farm to provide for us, the question of whether or not it would ever provide an income was always a gray area. I thought it would be nice if our labors earned us a bit of pocket change, and to that end I started selling extra eggs just as soon as I had them to sell. But I didn't have any sort of grand vision beyond that. Nor was I certain what direction I might want to go. Honey? Cheese? Broilers and eggs? So many choices. I had to see what stuck, what felt natural to me, before I could hope to turn it into a business. Any business I wasn't 100% invested in emotionally would never fly. So I spent a solid year selling eggs to coworkers, trying out soap formulas, trying to grow nice vegetables, sharing homemade cheese with friends, doing research, raising broilers. Testing the waters.

It happened slowly and organically, as all good and proper things do. Every Saturday last summer I visited the farmers market in a neighboring town to pick up my CSA basket. I had become friends with Marilyn, my veggie grower (I always do this somehow) and had also gotten to know some of the other market vendors. The atmosphere at this particular market was better than most I'd seen - welcoming, laid back, cooperative - very much a farmer's farmers market. One day around mid-season, I decided I wanted in. This was the place for me. I became determined to get my affairs in order, get some product, and be there on opening day the following season in my very own booth. I spread the word. I let everyone know that I was interested, partly to keep me on track, but also for the foothold. When you put your intentions out there, somehow people rally to your cause. If you have a dream and a plan, tell everyone - friends, relatives, others in your field, anyone you can - they'll be ahead of you clearing the track so that you can forge ahead unhindered. I have no idea why this works, I just know that it does, and it never fails to humble me.

And six months later, here I am - an entrepreneur. I have a tax permit. In the next couple of weeks, I'll have an assumed name certificate and a bank account. Equipment is being procured, a website is in the works, and product development continues. I'm not getting in over my head. I'm keeping my day job (for now). All I want to start with is for the farm to support itself. I'd like my farm sales to cover things like hay, feed and seed. Would I like it to pay some of the bills? Of course. But that can be saved for another day. I figure I'm doing all these things anyway - why not let them pay for themselves? If I can reach a point where not a single dime of my paycheck goes to farm expenses, I'll consider it a success.

There is one thing I know for certain, though. This is what I'm meant to do, at least right now. And it will work. Because...well, because it just will.

* The title of this post has become my mantra, and my most-often-repeated piece of advice. It couldn't be more heartfelt.

guineas are creepy

big mama

Holy goat, y'all...



What's going on in there? I think she might be starting her own kindergarten class! This girl isn't due to kid for another two and a half months. She's right at the halfway point of gestation and already as big as a house. Hmmmm. We'll just have to wait and see, won't we?

happy holidays to you all!

The year is over, the work is done;
we dream of tasks not yet begun.
In cold and quiet we tell tales
of a year's worth of travails

We imagine days ahead
before this season's put to bed;
all the things we hope to see
life and growth, prosperity.

We settle into these dark days
and learn to live in honest ways.
To live wholly by our labors,
honor the kindness of our neighbors

We are not resigned to fate,
but what our hands can cultivate
on the land that keeps us whole,
feeds our bodies and our soul

Tonight we must enjoy the peace
when all activity has ceased,
for tomorrow we shall turn the soil
on a new year of noble toil.

hatchet (wo)man

Anytime a group of people engages in an activity involving multiple steps and levels of complexity, it will eventually become clear that different people are better suited to different aspects of the task. Take home construction, for example: one person might be better than the rest at framing, someone else might be the best roofer, and another may be a stellar painter. It has become apparent that with regard to the chore of chicken butchering, I am best at killing. It's something I do quite well, and while it's never something I relish, I am noticeably less squeamish about it than anyone else on the job. As a result, I am now the de facto executioner whenever there is executing to be done.

This is a strange thing to know about oneself.

Hey, I'm a practical type of gal, and most of the time I chalk this up to "well, it needs to be done". But I admit that it does give me pause. What is it in my character that allows me to perform such a distasteful task with such a minimal degree of loathing? I prefer to think that I became skilled at this task because I owe it to the animals I feed and care for to dispatch them with the least possible stress and pain. But I do wonder if there's something darker in me that simply appreciates the businesslike efficiency of a task performed perfectly, regardless of how gruesome the task may be. Baser natures, and all that. It doesn't help that there seems to be some measure of gender stigma surrounding butchering, and I'm often looked upon with a hint of scorn for doing this job myself rather than pushing it off on my husband. You know, because men like to kill things and all. Right.

At the end of the day, this kind of introspection has led me to certain conclusions:

It simply is what it is. I'm just good at it.
It is not indicative of moral flexibility.
It IS indicative of a willingness to do what needs doing, period.
It reflects a desire to do things the right way, and the best way.

And above all, it reminds me to never be too certain about the kind of person I believe myself to be.

something to chew on

Pardon the pun, but I'd like to share this video with you today. This is Sharon Astyk's excellent talk from the ASPO conference, regarding the future of food. Her points make a very strong case for why it's a good idea to consider growing some of your own food, or at least sourcing it close to home. The greater resilience we have in our local foodsheds, the greater our chances of weathering shortages, price spikes, supply disruptions and the suffering and unrest that accompanies these conditions. She also makes some interesting points about the current face of farming worldwide, points I suspect most people aren't aware of; namely that the average farmer worldwide is female, poor, not white, and operating on an extremely small land base (think five acres or less). This is also largely true here - independent female farmers are the fastest growing segment of American agriculture.*

So if you think that your three-acre parcel, your pair of laying hens, your suburban garden or the potted tomatoes on your porch aren't enough to make a difference, think again. You need not be a "farmer" in the sense that most people think of them - each bite of food you produce, no matter how small, is one more bite that will be there when other options may not.

* I know all you guys out there work really hard, but in light of this tidbit, I'd like to extend a special hat tip to the women today - keep up the GREAT work, ladies! Take the power back!

hard at work

This is pretty much the sort of day we had to day, and I must say, it was delightful. We did morning chores as usual, had a fairly leisurely morning and then had friends over in the afternoon. We sat in front of the warm wood stove, drank cold beers, and enjoyed the good company. See? Farm life isn't all drudgery.

the importance of goals, and an apology

If anyone is still here reading this, I'd like to apologize for being gone for so long. Late summer and early fall are always busy times around here, and I've also spent much time considering the purpose of this blog. I regret to say that for now, the proposed new website is off the table. After a great deal of soul searching, I had to admit that I'm actually a farmer by nature, and that what I need is less screen time, not more. This blog will continue on as it has. I'll keep sharing stories of our crazy, dirty, difficult and utterly satisfying life if you, dear readers, wish to keep reading them.

Now, since you're not here for my blathering, let's get to the meat and potatoes...

Early December here means the final stages of winter wrap-up. This is the time when we put the farm to bed and actually put our feet up for a short while (a very short while - we start the spring garden in early February). The goats are bred and we're done milking until they kid in the spring. The freezer is full of broiler chickens, milk and cheese. The larder is full of preserves, soups, spaghetti sauce, fruit, veggies, and dried herbs. We're stocked up on hay and firewood and there's nothing left to do in the garden. We are now in bare-bones maintenance mode. Until the first seed catalog arrives, we'll kick back, visit with friends, enjoy the holidays, and work on projects we can't seem to find time for during the rest of the year.

Each New Year's Day, we set goals for ourselves - we decide what we want to accomplish in the coming year, where we want to see ourselves. It is around this time that I like to revisit them to see how we've done. I'm bursting with pride to say that out of fifteen goals - some small, but many rather ambitious - we can check off eleven of them! This is tremendous, yet doesn't take into account all the everyday work we do, plus some things we undertook that weren't even on the list. I couldn't be more proud of our efforts. We've all heard that if you want to get somewhere, you must first know where you're going, and that couldn't be more true. Now we'd best enjoy our bit of respite, because it's almost time to make a new list.

gimme shelter

Surrey approves

There have been many times throughout our brief but lurid livestock keeping adventures that we have found ourselves woefully short on shelter. Call us irresponsible, but sometimes these things just...happen, despite one's best intentions. Animals arrive when you don't expect them, or must be separated or moved, sometimes quarantined. It's the way it goes. These predicaments, however, sometimes give birth to our best ideas.

We were hard up to devise a goat shelter for our yard of boys. It's not that they had NO shelter, but well, they're goats. They were, let's just say, a bit hard on every solution we had devised. Spring and the rainy season were upon us, and we had to act fast. We needed a shelter that was extremely quick to construct, could be made from materials on hand, and easily be moved around. It had to keep them reasonably dry and comfortable, and perhaps most importantly, it needed to be climb-proof. This last is no small task. Goats will climb on things you never imagined possible.

We devised the pup-tent shelter. It is essentially a large sawhorse - built with dimensional lumber to whatever size is suitable for the circumstances, then sided with whatever durable material is available; we used corrugated tin, as we have loads of it already.



This one is about four feet tall and eight feet long. It can be easily moved by two people, and one person could probably drag it without much trouble. It's large enough for our full-sized Nubian goats to stand fully upright in, and three of them can fit inside at once. It's not apparent from this picture, but we left an inch or two along the bottom uncovered for extra ventilation and to make moving it a bit easier. The grass covers the gap here - I think next time I'd leave a few more inches. We have more trouble with heat than anything else, so if you need more warmth, skip that part.



There are plenty of plans on the web for building a simple sawhorse. Any of those should work fine, as long as you adjust the size to suit your use. Many plans include extra wood about halfway down the sides - this is optional and we didn't bother with it. They also often include some plywood pieces on the ends (I'm not a woodworker, so I don't know the name of this bit). I recommend deliberately leaving that off, as it shortens the "entry" and limits the clearance. Our goats would have to duck to get in had we put those pieces on.

The tin is long-lasting and reasonably light, so it works great as a covering, but use whatever you have; painted plywood would do, or if you need more ventilation, it could be partly covered with chicken wire or similar. In a pinch I suppose you could cover it with a tarp or some tar paper, but this obviously wouldn't last as long.

It may seem small, but our boys really like it. They tend to huddle together in a pile, so the closeness of it seems to make them feel secure. It is also popular with the dog, and great for goat kids to hide in. The best part is that the steep pitch of the design makes it impossible for them to stand on, but it's heavy and wide enough at the base to not tip over. We've built two of these so far, and now consider them indispensable. If you need something cheap, fast and sturdy, these really are hard to beat.

just in the nick of time

It's August, and here in Texas that means no more garden. It's DONE. Pretty much everything has run its course and we're left with nothing but a few peppers hanging on. When you're trying to eat entirely from your garden, this certainly poses a challenge.

Just as we were wondering what we would do for veggies, I decided it was about time to check on the sweet potatoes. I dug my hands into the dirt and kept my expectations low. They had been extremely easy to grow up to this point, but I thought it was perhaps a bit early for them to be ready. What a relief it was to pull these beauties out of the ground!



We'll let them go a bit longer to let them get a little bigger, but I must say I'm pleased with this result. They were far easier to grow than white potatoes, and we're going to experiment with leaving one or two plants in the bed to see if they overwinter; we'll cut the tops back and mulch them heavily and see if they come back in the spring. It's comforting to know that we have something fresh from the garden to eat in the heat of August.

an update and an article

I apologize for the rather thin posting here lately. The truth is, I've been working on a project. A new website is under construction! I'm working on a new site devoted to all aspects of good homestead management. We'll discuss cooking, budgeting, DIY repairs, basic skills, gardening, animal husbandry - basically all the things that people should know, but don't anymore. The goal is to make a well-managed household that can provide at least partly for itself seem less intimidating. I plan to show that you don't need rural acreage, endless free time or lots of money - just know-how. I'm only just getting started, so it won't be up and running for a bit, but I'm ready to take the next step and make my stories and antics helpful to others.

I will begin posting sample articles from the new site here on this blog, starting today. In addition to articles, the new site will also offer demo videos, photos and resources, so these sample articles will be a bit more stripped-down here than they will be on the new site. I would LOVE feedback. Please let me know how you like the articles, if there are topics you'd like to see covered, etc. I want these things to feel feasible for the average person. Thanks for sticking with me, and enjoy the first article!

*This article will be part of a series on useful tools (not limited to the kitchen).


REAL Labor Savers: A Good Knife

The most important, most indispensable and most versatile tool in any well-equipped kitchen is a good knife. In fact, with one properly sharpened knife, you don't need much else. It will do almost anything you need it to do, and with a bit of care, should last a lifetime. Now, I'm not talking about the 100-piece knife set here, nor does your choice have to be expensive. You're better off picking out a small selection of knives you'll use most, rather than being stuck with a bunch you don't need, and very serviceable knives can be found at restaurant supply shops for reasonable prices. Certain types, such as paring, carving or fillet knives, are nice to have, and serve specific purposes. By all means, invest in them if you'll be performing these tasks. I also feel that every kitchen should have a long, serrated bread knife - there's simply no good substitute for those. If, however, you buy only one knife (or only one for now), the one you want is a chef's knife. It's your workhorse.

A chef's knife is a fairly large knife with a wide blade. They come in varying lengths, but a standard 8-inch length will be most useful for most people. When shopping for a chef's knife, don't get hung up too much on brand. Many high end brands are quite respectable, but lower-priced models can often do the job just as well. The important characteristics to look for are:

• Comfort - Handle as many knives as you can. The right one should feel comfortable to you. It should be weighty but not cumbersome, it should have good balance overall and the shape and material of the grip should feel good in your hand.
  
• Craftsmanship - A quality knife should last a long time with proper care. Spring for the best you can afford. Your knife shouldn't feel light, flimsy or prone to breaking - remember, you're going to put it through a lot. Look for knives with a full tang and a solid handle with no crevices that food particles could get stuck in. It should be easy to clean and maintain.
  
• Edge - Your knife should be SHARP. If possible, ask to test it on a sheet of paper, or better yet, food. It should pass easily through the material being cut without crushing or tearing it. You'll want a knife that takes an edge well, since YOU WILL BE SHARPENING IT. And no serrated edge, please - this simply isn't the best choice for most of your cutting needs (except for bread!). A knife that's kept properly sharp won't need teeth.

Once you've chosen a chef's knife you feel comfortable with, take the time to care for it properly. Invest in a sharpening stone and sharpen your knife when needed, keep it in a safe place where it won't be knocking around with other utensils (this will dull the edge) and avoid putting it in the dishwasher.

You may be wondering how a knife qualifies as a labor saver, when you'll be doing all of your chopping by hand. I can assure you that with a bit of practice, you can chop, mince, dice, fillet, carve and julienne just as easily with a good knife as with any specialty tool. It can (and should) be kept within easy reach - not on a high shelf somewhere. And you won't have to bother with all the setup and cleanup of gadgets such as food processors. Your knife will work hard for you every single day, and all it needs is a quick hand washing. It will be ready to go whenever you need it.

we get some press

Thanks and props to our friend Steve Watkins for this fun write up of us!

See the story of our move to the country here.

self sufficient in good cheer

A few months ago we found Mustang grapes on our property. This wasn't a big surprise, since they grow wild all over Texas and the surrounding states, but it was quite exciting for us. If you could see our annual wine bill, you'd understand why (I'll never tell). We went to check on their progress yesterday and found them just beginning to ripen. A few were turning color, but most were still green. As we walked in a big loop across the south pasture, however, our spirits lifted - we found a second area of grapevine that we didn't know about, and these were overflowing with dark, nearly black ripe grapes! Never mind that it was midday in July, and hot as Hades - it was time to gear up.

We set to work harvesting everything within our reach. These vines are wild and untended, and over the years have grown high into the trees, so a good portion of them are simply unavailable to us, I'm afraid. Even so, we filled a five gallon bucket about three quarters of the way full. We took our haul back to the house - tired, baked, and pouring with sweat. Due to some confusion over whether or not we could freeze them for later use, as well as some legitimate concern that they wouldn't fit in our freezer (it's packed right now), we concluded that we'd have to start our first batch of wine immediately. Did I mention we've never made wine before? We quickly scoured the internet for a brewing shop that was still open, and hauled butt into town for equipment.



I'd like to give a shout out to Foreman's General Store. This really might be the best place ever. They sell gardening supplies, service lawnmowers and sell home brewing and wine making supplies, among countless other things. It's like a brew shop, hardware store and feed store all in one. The proprietor was extremely helpful and was kind enough to shepherd us into our first foray in brewing. We came home with loads of equipment, ingredients, instructions and a sense of adventure.

Late into the night we sat together on the sofa, stemming and sorting the grapes while watching The Godfather (seemed fitting, no?). When we finally had a bucket full of nothing but good fruit, we washed, bagged and did, in fact fit them in the freezer. The wine will wait until we're able to harvest the rest of the fruit, but we'll be ready. Cheers!

they came back!

Last June, I posted about a brief but fascinating visit by a pair of Black Bellied Whistling Ducks. They decided to stop at our place for just a short time one morning - a rest stop, I suppose, on their journey to...wherever they go. I thought it somewhat funny that they chose to fraternize with our domestic ducks that day. This year, on the morning of July 4th, they were here again! Again, it was a pair (the same ones?) and again, they hung out with our barnyard ducks in the yard for just a little while before moving on. I came inside for the camera, but by the time I made it back out to the yard, they had left. It was a year and one month since we had last seen them.

Are these two regular travelers through these parts, and have they decided that this is a nice place to stop? Is it even the same two? Or perhaps they live around here, and are simply making the rounds. I will be watching for them next summer.

sorrel: this year's darling of the garden

Each season that we grow vegetables, something surprises us. Some variety always performs better, tastes better, is hardier or more abundant than we ever anticipated. This season it was sorrel (correction: IS sorrel).



Sorrel is a tangy, leafy green that can be cooked, eaten raw in salads or used as an herb for it's tart, lemony flavor. I put some in the garden this spring, expecting that it would mature along with my spring greens - my lettuces, spinach, arugula and the like. I had never tried to grow it before, and was a bit disappointed that it never really kept pace. Eventually, long after the last of the lettuce was gone and the extreme heat of summer was in full force, the sorrel sprang to vigorous life. We now have a thick carpet of it's pointed, emerald green leaves in our garden bed, and it is handily holding its own against heat, drought and wind. When cabbage loopers ravaged every single leafy plant I had, the sorrel was utterly unaffected. When I cut some in early June for a spring-inspired risotto, it suddenly shot up and filled the gaps, gaining inches overnight. We adore this fresh tasting green so many ways, and now that I know it will be a reliable hot weather performer for us, it has earned a permanent place in our garden. I urge you to give it a try too!

Sorrel Tabouleh



1 cup bulgur wheat
1 cup water
a pinch of salt
several large handfuls of sorrel leaves, washed and chopped
1/4 cup chopped fresh mint
1 fresh tomato, diced
2-3 ounces crumbled feta
olive oil
lemon juice
salt and freshly cracked pepper to taste

Heat water and salt to a boil. Stir in bulgur, remove from heat and cover. Let stand for thirty minutes. Fluff grains with a fork.

Transfer bulgur to a large bowl. Add sorrel, mint, feta, tomato, salt and pepper. Stir gently to combine. Add just a squeeze or two of lemon juice (not too much, as the sorrel has a tart flavor) and enough olive oil to make it as moist as you like it. Toss well and serve immediately or refrigerate and serve chilled.

u-pick

This was a great day. We got up on the last somewhat cool Saturday morning of the season with a mission: to drive to a neighboring town to meet our CSA lady at the farmers market and pick up our veggie share. With us was a cooler full of eggs and cheese to deliver. We were wheeling and dealing.

The farmers market was small, but one of the better ones I've seen. Most of the vendors were selling actual produce and preserves that they had actually produced themselves (a rarity around here, believe it or not). We had a nice chat with Marilyn and met some new people. We traded eggs, cheese and cash for compost tea, sweet potato slips and more cash. The cash from the eggs bought us some delicious apricot preserves, and some vegetables we'd been dying for - a few ripe tomatoes and sweet peppers. We left the market with a beautiful haul of fresh vegetables, herbs and preserves, two jugs of compost tea and sweet potato vines to plant in our own garden. Our total cash outlay was five dollars.

On the way home, we stopped at a u-pick orchard that Marilyn had told me about a few weeks before. Ken and Lara Halverson grow beautiful fruit as well as a nice selection of vegetables to pick yourself. If you're pressed for time, you can stop by and pick up items they've already harvested, but I recommend going for the full experience here. Trust me, those berries will taste sweeter if your hands are sticky from collecting them. We met Ken and Lara, and with nine dozen eggs still in our cooler, made an almost even swap - all of our eggs for about four pounds each of blackberries and peaches. Ken was gracious enough to give us some pointers about where to get blackberry canes of our own to start.

We ate a ridiculous amount of fresh fruit over the first three or four days, a little bit went into the freezer for later, and some of the berries went into a deep-dish blackberry pie (divine!). It was the most delicious fruit I think we've ever eaten. It was delicious in its own right, of course, but I think it was also satisfying because of the way it was obtained. We supported a small, local grower, picked the fruit ourselves, and made a connection with new people. If you live in Dallas-Fort Worth, pay them a visit, and be sure to eat a few berries in the car on your way home.

past, present and future

Living on a farm has a profound effect on the way you experience time. Respecting its importance is critical. After awhile, you fall in sync with its rhythms - you wake up one day and find that you know just what's supposed to happen and when.

I must at once look to the past, act in the present and plan for the future. Case in point, I have already planned my fall garden - in May. I know just what will go in, and where, and roughly how much. I've ordered seeds where necessary. This is important here, because seeds for fall transplanting must be started as early as June in some cases (hello, peppers!). Put it off, or get caught off guard, and you've missed the boat. How do I know this? I've done it before. I determine what to plant and when to plant it by looking back - recalling what has worked well in the past, what was a bust, and what may have been a missed opportunity. Time moves quickly around here, and stands still.

There will be some additional expansion of the garden this fall, and that's probably where it will stay for awhile. We've finally gotten a grip on things around here, and aren't anxious to over-extend ourselves right away. There is a temporary moratorium on new projects. As we head rapidly into the dog days of summer, the spring garden is going strong, also marching through its time-honored phases. The onions are done and curing. The Greens Age has passed. We've bid farewell to the lettuce and radishes - we barely remember salad. The legions of squash and beans are upon us now, and tomatoes and peppers are visible on the horizon. I sincerely hope that just behind them, just beyond my sight, are eggplant and melons. They would be most welcome.

We're still contending with a pretty serious snake problem, which means no spring ducklings this year, but for the one - the lonely survivor from the last hatch. He's holding his own. We're fairly certain he's a he. This gives us mixed emotions - if the one surviving duckling were a girl, we'd be thrilled as it would give us another future mother, increasing our odds of boosting the duck population. If a boy, well, then we get to eat it, which was the whole point of the exercise. It's hard to say which option we prefer at this point. Not that it matters - we get what we're given.

Little Bridget is now weaned, and still with us. We're also transitioning the girls to a once-daily milking, so that we may have some semblance of a social life again. Two milkings a day was never part of the plan, but sometimes plans don't go along with you, do they? We frankly can't cope with the volume of milk that two milkings a day provides. A gallon a day for two people? Honestly, even WE can't eat that much cheese. Between the copious amounts of milk and all the overtime the hens are clocking these days, we have the world's luckiest dogs. They know better than to complain about much of anything - they know how good they have it.

I have a bit of garden maintenance to do over this long weekend, but the bulk of my plans involve planning. These are the days when we look back over our year, take lessons from it and decide how to move forward. Each year has its challenges, and yet we come through, always with something to show. The thermometer outside is telling me, "It's time to stop now. Sit down, pour a cold drink and take stock. The cycle will begin again sooner than you think, so make your plans."

That thermometer is wise.

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.

down to one

Please forgive the silence around here - it's springtime, and that means our attention is needed more outside the house, and there's less time available to spend here at the blog. There is plenty going on, although it's been a week of mixed emotions.

Our second hatch of ducklings was small to start with - only six, which is a very small number for the prolific Muscovy ducks. We suspect that due to our unusually cold weather earlier in the season, some of the eggs may have frozen. We lost one of those six ducklings very early on - in the first couple of days. This is not unusual. The other five have been growing and thriving, and all was well until this week. Another one disappeared earlier in the week. I just found it this morning, inside the duck house, half-buried in the bedding. I don't have any idea what happened to the poor little guy. Betty has been sleeping outside with the babies at night, and we were worried that it had been taken by a predator - most likely a raccoon. Not wanting to risk any more of them, we closed them up inside the house last night for safety. Words cannot express the dismay I felt when I opened the door this morning and only one duckling came out. I searched inside the house, and all around the yard, and...nothing. Where did they go? What happened to them? I honestly don't know. My suspicion is that they wandered out through the wire enclosure during the night and were unable to get back in. Betty wouldn't have been able to go out after them, and they'd have been helpless in the grass. I feel beyond awful.

We've been expecting some bunnies as well. They were due to kindle around mid-week. I went out Wednesday afternoon to check on everyone and was excited to see that mama rabbit was inside the nest box! As I approached, however, something just didn't look right. The poor thing had died, presumably during labor. Two babies had been born, but were dead as well - the rest never made it out. I have no idea what happened here either, and between losing the rabbits and the ducklings, it has been a very dispiriting few days.

As usual, though, it hasn't been all bad. Our other duck is working on a new clutch of eggs, and we have another rabbit that's due to kindle in a couple of weeks. The garden is looking great - even the flagging beans are starting to rally - and the goats and chickens are producing in abundance. We processed the first half of the broiler chickens last weekend, and I could not be more pleased with the results. I'll write a full post on that soon. I know some of you have been awaiting a bee update, and I'll give that in a separate post as well. For now, I need to remind myself that weeks like this come along from time to time, but it's hard not to beat myself up. All I ever want is to do right by my animals - to give them a safe and happy life - and it crushes my spirit when I can't deliver even that.

**UPDATE** - I now know what happened to the ducklings. I just opened the duck house to find all the new eggs gone, and a snake (caught red-handed, I'll spare you the details). It has been dealt with, but I know there are more out there.