Summer Update

Summer is officially here and boy are we in the thick of it. I know that I am a native of this place but when it gets this hot I wouldn't mind being native a few hundred miles north.

In addition to being hot, it's very dry. I don't like to complain when I know others have it much worse. I just wish that I had taken the time to get rainwater collection put on the greenhouse roof and added extensions to our pond drain to make it deeper. I could have 300+ gallons in plastic barrels and maybe another 8,000 gallons in the pond (very rough estimate).

The weather lately has made me realize the importance of deep mulch gardening. I've got quite a bit of exposed soil and it's fried. So, in addition to the upcoming chicken butchering days, I plant to:

1. Put a gutter and downspout on the greenhouse.
2. Get 3 PVC elbows and short pieces of pipe to add 12-18 inches of depth to the pond.
3. Mulch the garden and get some soaker hose for targeted watering.

I'm a little concerned about the pending availability of 2nd cutting hay on this area. This has got me to thinking about putting up loose hay by hand. I've mowed about 5 acres of pasture. If I had managed it for making hay from some of it, I could probably have 4 or 5 tons of hay. When I say "loose hay by hand," this is what I mean.

Here's a cool blog for those of you with an interest in horses.

And, last but not least, here's some food for thought.

Hogget and Chickens

We ate the first of the hogget last night. As far as we could tell, it is indistinguishable from the 6 month old lamb that we've had in the past with the exception of the size of the cuts. If we can get more quantity with the same quality, I expect that all of our ewe lambs will be kept over to one year old.

We will be butchering chickens on July 7th or 14th and will have a few extra to offer for sale. More will be ready in mid-September and we are taking orders for then. Quantities are extremely limited! If you are in north central Ohio and are interested let us know soon. The price is $2.50 per pound, including processing. These birds are raised on pasture and live their lives feeling the sun on their backs and the grass under their feet. In addition to all the grass, insects and worms they can eat, we feed certified organic grain.

Hogget Butchering

Our hoggets were slaughtered on May 29th and I picked up the meat from ours today. I can't wait to try it for the reasons outlined in this post.

The corral we built for separating hem worked well - as long as I remembered to close the gate!

The butcher and I are on the same wavelength. He told me that he would be sure to tell my customers, "You know Joe and now you know me and that's a food chain!" Walmart could never match it. He is looking into expanding an offering "natural," i.e. no antibiotics, other drugs, artificial hormones, steroids, etc. meat by the individual cut. More power to him!

Belated Memorial Day Post

Wendell Berry on war:

As a father, I must look at my son, and I must ask if there is anything I possess – any right, any piece of property, any comfort, any joy – that I would ask him to die to permit me to keep. I must ask if I believe that it would be meaningful – after his mother and I have loved each other and begotten him and loved him – for him to die in a lump with a number hanging around his neck. I must ask if his life would have come to meaning or nobility or any usefulness if he should sit – with his human hands and head and eyes – in the cockpit of a bomber, dealing out pain and grief and death to people unknown to him. And my answer to all these questions is one that I must attempt to live by: No.

How different might the history of this nation look if more parents thought like this - beginning with the 600,000 dead Americans in the War Between the States?

I highly recommend Look Homeward America: In Search of Reactionary Radicals and Front-Porch Anarchists by Bill Kauffman.

Still Kickin'

Whew! It's been so long since I blogged I almost forgot how. We've been very busy but not much has been really blogworthy - just continuing in the cycle of seasons. There are a few things worth reporting here for sure so consider this post an update.

Border's is coming to slaughter four hoggets (yearling ewes) next Thursday, the 31st. In anticipation of that, I've had to build some means of working and separating the sheep. We put new door on one side of our sheep barn and are building a pen 8 feet wide by about 35 feet long. There will be a gate at then end and a gate in the middle. The idea is to run the sheep out of the barn (gathering pen) into the first section of the new outdoor pen (forcing pen, crowding pen). This area will be crowded and I can go inside and easily (hah!) catch the animals I want and lead them to the gate and through into the second section. The sheep being separated, the barn door is opened and the remaining ewes and lambs can go back inside, out the other door and back to the pasture. I'll let you know how it works.

We found out that our broiler losses were due to a deficiency of vitamin B in the supplement. The organic farmer who provides our feed switched back to Fertrell and everything seems to be OK now. Unfortunately, we lost most of our original 50 so we've got some new chicks. The few survivors from the first batch will be ready in a week or two. We've also had some predator losses so we've had to turn one of our stalls into a fortress of chicken wire.

At this point we have the best garden we've had for many years. We didn't get started as early as we wanted and so haven't done the succession planting we had hoped to do but we're getting a little better each year.

Be well.

Killing Cones

These are chicken killing cones that I just finished making. They are made from aluminum sheet which I already had here at the shop.

The chicken goes in head first with the head out through the hole in the bottom. The cone restrains the bird while it bleeds out.

Butcher Table

Here is my latest chicken butchering acquisition. It will make a nice addition to the plucker I built.
The table is 10 feet long with a sink molded into it. I plan to plumb a faucet in it with a garden hose connection and add a drain pipe to keep my feet dry while I'm working there. A friend and customer had this and sold it to me for a song.

I've been remiss in reporting on our lambing progress. The ewes are done now with the last set of twins born on Sunday, April 22nd. We arrived home from church to find them in the barn. Final count is ten - five sets of twins with 5 ewes and 5 rams.