Boy have things been busy around here.<\/p>\n
To say we\u2019ve been busy has been a bit of an understatement, actually.<\/p>\n
I have tried to sit at the computer and put together posts at a few different times during the spring. \u00a0Typically I am outdoors until dark, then when I come indoors I have household chores to address, seedlings to water in the basement, laundry to catch up on, etc. \u00a0Actually sitting down to type is a very rare occurrence. \u00a0The last time I sat down to type was quite a few weeks ago \u2013 the day the last of our meat birds left the chick nursery and took up residence outdoors!\u00a0 Boy oh boy was that a lovely day \u2013 to begin reclaiming my school room (I homeschool our seven children and our school room holds our big brooder and several smaller ones \u2013 it turns into a chick nursery every spring).\u00a0 I always enjoy moving the meat birds outside.\u00a0 They can lay in the sun, take dirt baths, eat bugs and weeds, breathe the fresh air.\u00a0 It\u2019s a good time.\u00a0 But this year we raised more than ever.\u00a0 412 to be exact.<\/p>\n
412 meat birds, 312 of which needed a new coop built and fencing put up for their run. The other hundred could use the coop I build last year. \u00a0I built 8 coops and put up the same number of enclosures in a few weeks time to accommodate all of the meat birds.\u00a0 Then there is the (at least) three times daily task of changing water, giving more feed (only twice, as we put our birds on scheduled feedings to prevent leg and respiratory issues), and cleaning the coops out as needed.\u00a0 During wet weather, I cleaned or added straw to their coops daily \u2013 we had quite a bit of wet weather that had me very concerned about respiratory illnesses.\u00a0 Thankfully, we had none.
\nWe began butchering the birds starting at 8 weeks.\u00a0 It took us (experienced and brand new help) five different days over the course of a month, but we did it! \u00a0I love these gatherings – the task at hand isn’t pleasant, but the community effort and companionship is. \u00a0 Butcher day is a great time of colorful conversation, inappropriate jokes and laughs. \u00a0I provide some sort of a simple meal and we get to work. \u00a0I always welcome new people to come out on these days to learn the skill of chicken butchering. \u00a0I love to teach. \u00a0I send some chicken home to those who have offered help. \u00a0Families bring their kids, the kids process chickens with us if they wish, or they hang out nearby and play until the rest of the kids can join them. \u00a0Chickens are treated humanely and with respect throughout the whole process. \u00a0One thing I truly appreciate about our homegrown meat is not just the effort and satisfaction of producing a meal from home – but the fact that I know, without a doubt, that these animals live a good life. \u00a0They are treated well and live their lives happily until the ever after. \u00a0The ever after is quick and painless.<\/p>\n
We had several ages of birds, but they were all butchered between 8-10 weeks of age.\u00a0 I personally don\u2019t like those jumbo birds \u2013 I think they lack flavor and I am not a fan of the texture, so I butcher to our preference which is a dressed bird between 3.5-5lbs. \u00a0Once they were butchered, I pieced some of the birds out for the freezer and froze some whole.\u00a0 I saved all of the carcasses from the birds I pieced out, and I am slowly going through the process of thawing, roasting, and making stock from them.\u00a0 When you are going through a few hundred birds, this process takes a while \u2013 and a lot of space is taken up in the freezer from carcasses, too.\u00a0 I need to work on making more stock and clear out room in the freezer for our turkeys \u2013 and deer!\u00a0 Kind of crazy to think ahead to fall, but that\u2019s what we do on a farm.\u00a0 We are always (Trying) to think ahead. \u00a0Everything we do has an end goal, and in order to have a productive year we have to be a little proactive.<\/p>\n
Aside from meat birds, we also worked as a family to prepare and plant the garden.\u00a0 Unfortunately, most of my spring weather crops never made it in.\u00a0 Our very wet spring meant tilling and garden prep had to wait until the dirt was a bit drier.\u00a0 By that time, it was about too late.\u00a0 Luckily, fall is coming and I plan to do a bigger fall garden to compensate. Imagine us trying to ready a 2 acre garden.\u00a0 There are beds to till (ideally 3x before planting, however that was not possible this year due to how late into the season it was before we could get serious about work out there), new ground to break, seeds to plant, seedlings to tend, strawberry patches to thin, potatoes to hill, aisles to mow, suckers to prune, beds to water, bushes to trim, train plants to trellis, beds to fertilize, weeding to do, produce to harvest.\u00a0 Our garden keeps us busy all summer and fall.\u00a0 We plant a lot of food. \u00a0I like to use the spring, summer and fall to plant enough food for us to eat fresh all season long \u2013 but also grow enough to preserve through freezing, dehydrating and canning to get us through the winter.\u00a0 There is nothing like opening a jar of tomatoes from the garden in the middle of winter.\u00a0 Mmm, mmm, mmm.<\/p>\n
Now that the meat chickens are behind us, for the most part (we will butcher our excess heritage roosters this fall), now it\u2019s a different kind of meat bird season \u2013 turkey!\u00a0 We have 50 turkey poults in the brooder currently.\u00a0 These are the commercial breasted breed because I have no heritage breeds available for the dinner plate this fall.\u00a0 Our young heritage tom seems a bit confused as to what his duty is, and our hen keeps hiding eggs.\u00a0 So, commercial turkey breed it is this year.\u00a0 Hopefully next year we can all be on the same page for egg incubating, but the heritage breeds also take a lot longer to mature.\u00a0 At the same time, they forage a lot better and eat less, so there are tradeoffs. I prefer the heritage breeds, to tell you the truth, because I can hatch their eggs and keep a sustainable flock without having to start and end the cycle every year with the purchase of new poults.\u00a0\u00a0 We are selling turkeys this year, and even raising turkey for one of our favorite local stores\u2019 employees for the upcoming holidays.<\/p>\n
Turkeys require similar care as chickens.\u00a0 There is plenty of observation, cleaning and changing the waterer, making sure they have food 24\/7 (at this stage of the game, anyway), making sure the brooder is clean, dry, and warm enough.\u00a0 As they get older, they will gain more brooder space, then coops outdoors.\u00a0 I will\u00a0 be putting their enclosures and coops in a different area than where we raised our meat birds.\u00a0 I am excited to plant in the areas we raised the meat birds in next season.\u00a0 I put all the enclosures and coops in my garden to fertilize a spot on my garden that needed a little help.\u00a0 Hopefully this was the help it needed.<\/p>\n
Oh, did I ever introduce Fester?\u00a0 He was the latest kid born on the farm. Mom needed a little help getting him out, so I lubed up and went in to assist. \u00a0All in all, it was a positive experience. \u00a0We are happy to have a goat in milk, because when handled and cooled properly, goat milk tastes exactly like 2% milk from the store – which is what we are all used to. \u00a0We have tried the goat milk at the store that has been pasteurized and all, and none of us really cared for it. \u00a0I was shocked and the difference in taste between fresh, properly cooled raw goat milk vs. the pasturized goats milk at the store. \u00a0Huge, HUGE difference.<\/p>\n
I will write more as time permits, and share photos of our recent happenings.\u00a0 But for now, my eyes are beginning to shut and I am getting the impression that it\u2019s time to rest my weary body. \u00a0Tomorrow is another day. \u00a0My next projects on the farm are to pound in fence posts to make a new goat pen, find a good spot for the future turkey pen(s) and work on moving coops to that location. \u00a0We have a goat due to kid soon, so I need to keep an eye on her. \u00a0My bean rows need weeding, I need to start thinking about starting seeds for my fall garden, I need to sew up blossom bags so I can save seed from my squash this year (they cross pollinate very easily, so you need to bag the blossoms and pollinate by hand), plan and prepare for various upcoming classes and workshops at the farm, prepare for some rabbits to deliver kits and probably a lot more I can’t think of right now.<\/p>\n
Yawn. \u00a0Good night!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Boy have things been busy around here.<\/p>\n
To say we\u2019ve been busy has been a bit of an understatement, actually.<\/p>\n
I have tried to sit at the computer and put together posts at a few different times during the spring. Typically I am outdoors until dark, then when I come indoors I have household chores […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.k7farm.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1658"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.k7farm.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.k7farm.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.k7farm.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.k7farm.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1658"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.k7farm.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1658\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1661,"href":"https:\/\/www.k7farm.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1658\/revisions\/1661"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.k7farm.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1658"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.k7farm.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1658"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.k7farm.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1658"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}