Shades of Green Farm

Our Dog Aubie Needs a New Home

The two pictures below show off our beautiful Aubie in the snow and with a chick... still don't know if she was going to eat that chick or not, but we've got her to the point of leaving the poultry alone, even though she is at least part Nova Scotian Duck Tolling Retriever. Aubie has a strong desire to "do right" and works very hard to overcome her hunting instincts. We do not ask her to overcome these instincts when it comes to chasing squirrels and barking off potential predators on the farm.

Aubie is 4 years old and needs a home with a family that has no dogs or young children. We found her by the dumpster in the rural area we live in near Bastrop; she was healthy but underweight. She is completely current with her health care, including being spayed; we have her vet records. She will need an annual exam and rabies/distemper shots in mid-July. Since we found her 3 years ago, she's been fed Wellness dry food, plus the eggs she finds around the farm and organic meat scraps she gets because we love her and she loves them. Her recent visit confirmed she's a very healthy gal.

She is an absolute sweetheart with people; our pet care person claimed Aubie is a healer the moment she met her. Her perfect home would include being an indoor dog some of the time (especially at night and for storms or gun shots), with lots of exercise and time to play in water, too (she is a great swimmer and has learned not to paw the humans in the water with her). She does fine with other dogs until they sniff her butt or approach food she wants. We wouldn't want to risk a dog or small child who might accidentally mess with her butt or food and get bitten. We don't know how she is with cats but we think she can learn not to make a fun toy of then.(The reason we have to let her go is she recently fought with our other dog and wouldn't stop until we pulled her off, leaving some bad bites. Whether this was from food aggression or alpha struggles, the tension didn't ease between the two of them and they now live separately here which isn't best for either.)

We're asking that her new owner pay $50 to cover her recent vet visit (cough guard shot and heartworm check, which was negative, of course, as she's been on Heartguard consistently). The cost is also to make sure you really want her and can take care of her~ she deserves a wonderful loving home! We will miss her so very much, this sweet dog we've called Aubie, Aubie Daubie, Aubie Bobbie, Aubster, Bobster, Bobbish, Bob, etc. etc.

Spring Equinox= Standing Eggs

The only time of the year-- two times a year to be precise-- when eggs will stand up on the ends; during the spring and autumnal equinoxes. Sue created a lovely scene on March 21st, on our counter, with our eggs and logo sign. And once again I want to thank the artist and designer who created our logo, Andrea Weissenbuehler, for this lovely representation of our farm.

Hatching is Happening Right Now!!

We collected eggs from our sweet Americauna hen, Nala, added gift eggs from Ken Bushong of Buck Moore Feed Store and some brown ones from out home flock Hyline Browns and put them in Ken's incubator on our kitchen counter. (Does a counter in a one room home count as "kitchen"?   :-)

Three weeks later-- they started hatching Sunday night and now on this Tuesday evening there are 6 all fluffed out in a little bin brooder in the corner and another 8 still wet and recovering in the incubator, or "bator" as the regulars call it. Here's a picture of one of Nala's (I bet Buddy is the daddy of this one) just out, still connected by cord to the egg shell behind it, and another one trying to pop out right in front of it.

One little bald character needed help getting out; the membrane had dried onto it, poor thing, and after a whole night stuck then trying to moisten it in the morning, in the afternoon I dribbled warm water into the shell cavity and worked it out, taking a bit of its fluff with the membrane. I am surprised it's alive, really, but once out, s/he commenced to alternative utter crash mode with careening about, just like all the other ones.

 And then the 6 fluffballs in the bin... just started eating since I took this picture with my phone. What fun!

 

Six More Drakes Gone, Six to Go

Well, I did it! With the help and support of two loving, farm-raised friends, I learned the how-to of killing ducks. On the spur of the moment, I asked Logan and Caroline if they'd help me slaughter some of the too-many drakes we had left. I showed them the video on 'breasting' duck, which takes out the scalding, plucking and eviserating processes and given how little other meat is on these young, not-meat birds, seemed the right thing to do.

After the first bird, Logan the one-time science teacher, gave both of us an anatomy lesson by looking over the sliced neck closely, finding the severed artery, the one left intact, the trachea (which you don't want to cut or the bird suffers and which was also intact) and the spinal cord. She carefully felt the next drake's neck as he hung passively in the cone, found the arrangement with her fingers, and cut. Next we decided to use the 'sticking' method I'd seen in another video, holding the trachea so that the knife point entered with the non-cutting edge sliding along the trachea, cutting both arteries easily. Now I felt ready to do it... together Logan and I had taken the time to find the smoothest, best approach and I knew I could do it. The first time Logan held her hand over mine, the next time I did it solo.

For each drake, Logan and I worked together to get him in place-- she opened and closed the pen door so I could focus on keeping a close but gentle hold on the bird I had netted. We walked slowly over to the processing area, breathing calmness and me feeling his racing heart slow. At first I held the legs while Logan cut and Caroline kept the chickens away. We all gave our attention to easing the drake from life, watching his process, sending gratitude, holding his head because the dripping blood bothered him when it touched his eyes or nostrils... staying attentive the whole time... which seemed like a long time... and the birds were not panicked nor seemed in pain at all. It was as fine a slaughter experience as could be.

Once all 6 were killed and hung to bleed out, we began breasting. It took only one bird each to understand how to break the skin and the membranes in order to expose the breast meat and cut out each piece. From there it was easy and much much cleaner than full processing. In two hours, we had killed and breasted 6 drakes, buried the remains and cleaned up.

The twelve breast halves we ended up with were beautiful and more abundant than I expected to see. Caroline researched cooking duck breast online and we ended up salting them overnight. The next day, Caroline prepared them in the crock pot with a lot of onion, garlic and carrot and they came out like succulent roast slices-- yum!

No one took pictures since we were all busy with the process and Sue was at work, but here's a picture of Caroline (the wench) and Logan (the leather man) at the Renaissance Fest the next day. Deep gratitude to both for their fine friendship and sweet visit!

The Taste of Place Video is Here!

and we've received inquiries already! So, I'll repost Donald Link's visit and add the link to the short video that is the online result of his day here.

Watch our video on Delish.com

DONALD LINK FROM A TASTE OF PLACE COMES TO VISIT!

What a treat to have a long visit with Donald Link and his crew, filming our farm and daily chores while discussing agricultural philosophy and good food!

I put Donald through the paces of feeding, collecting eggs and filling feed buckets... well, actually, he accompanied me while I did chores and we talked and talked. It was a comfortable experience and I was pleased to have a chance to discuss my favorite topic~ why we raise the Freedom Ranger broilers that we do! I sent him back to Austin with one of our broilers for him to cook... and was thrilled that he loved it!

He also gave us a copy of his wonderful cookbook "Real Cajun", in which his easy-going and place-loving spirit really shines through~ it's beautiful and an inspiration.

Here's Donald- second from left- along with most of the sound and film crew that came along.

 

Processing on the Farm-- 3 hens and a duck

Last fall we incubated over 2 dozen duck eggs from our foursome of khakis and mongrels and another couple dozen from a friend who gave us khaki campbell eggs. We raised them in the brooder where they made an incredible mess and I concluded I'll never do that again... brood on pasture, if I do it at all. We ended up with over half of them being drakes (males) and given that the purpose was to increase duck egg production, we planned to eliminate all but 2 of the drakes.

When I told my foodie friend Sonya that we could cook a young drake when she came to visit, she was thrilled. She also said she'd like to "do the whole thing" and start with slaughter. So, when Martha the chef (a new friend met at a farmer rights conference) called about having a class on working with the whole chicken, I told her about our plan to process some drakes here on the farm. I said we could add a few of our older hens to the day's work so that she and I could figure out how to set up the day for folks attending. And given that neither of us had ever slaughtered or eviserated poultry, it seemed like a really good idea for her to join us. Finally, Rachel (another foodie friend who has cooked with Sonya before) was happy to be invited to join the crew, work with us, and make Sonya's traditional roasted duck recipe that evening.

Sonya and I spent Friday scrounging around and we put together a fine slaughter station using an old feed and water sled for pastured broilers, an etched glass shower door panel whose swan image inserted a bit of grandeur to the set up (thanks to Rachel for her bulk trash pickings),  a couple 'found' traffic cones and a brand new fillet knife that was sharp sharp. This and the propane burner and pot (thanks to John) and several buckets to hold feathers and clean up water, and we were ready. We also searched out and organized several helpful YouTube videos on every step of processing, eliminating the gross and unhelpful clips which were sadly abundant and frequently upsetting. We also caught up 4 drakes and 4 hens and put them in a pasture pen nearby with water but no feed... however, there was a fair amount of grass in the pen, which later showed up in the crops of the hens.

Saturday morning Rachel and Martha arrived and we toured them through our set-up, then watched the videos carefully, hoping to gain the readiness to kill along with the skills to do it right. We were ready to start... as ready as we could be given our various natures and lack of experience. Rachel had done this once before, but chopped the head off instead of bleeding out... and a couple of decades had gone by since. She killed the first bird, a hen that hadn't been laying for awhile and didn't seem to be feeling very well ever since her last molt. I brought her over from the holding pen (as I did in each case) and put her in the cone. Rachel's hand was sure and swift and that hen bled out just fine. Our propane powered scalding pot was ready to go, the dipping arrangement worked well after a couple alterations, the plucking not too hard. The eviseration was a whole other thing, with us not knowing exactly what we were looking for, the scooping out process not at all the single movement described in the videos, and all of us concerned about the gall bladder (which by the way, we never nicked or broke this day). We were eventually done and that hen was put in ice water to cool and I went off for the next hen.

Our plan was to each of us do each task, taking turns. I confess I did not kill, although I got pretty comfortable eviserating, feeling for the innards and finding them... never in one scoop however. We all watched as life ebbed from the 3 hens and the 1 drake we processed that day. Sue joined in periodically when she wasn't doing chores or errands, took a few pictures, and was witness to life passing.We learned a lot, shared laughter and a solemn respect for life and the gift of meat given. That evening we enjoyed a scrumptious meal featuring Tuscan baked duck.

I came away knowing that I could kill and that I needed to work with someone who really knew how to make the kill smoothly, and teach me the movement. I learned the set-up and the respectful gratitude has always been there... I just need to learn how to kill... and I will.

Left to right: Martha, Sonja, Rachel and jules... and the killing and eviseration table.

Our Friend Jeff Visits

After four years, we finally got Jeff to come down from St. Louis and spend a couple days. This oh-so-city person turned to me after we finished feeding hens and collecting eggs and said "OK, I get it. It's not how I would live but I can see why you would. It's lovely." Only Jeff would describe an experience that included chicken poop and dust masks as 'lovely'. We love him for that and his helpful suggestions around the house.

Here we are, ready to head off to do chores on a blustery but warm winter day.

And here we are showing off our loot of eggs, some very fresh from under a hen still in the nest. Jeff really loved the softness and murmers of hens letting him gently lift out the eggs the had under them. It was a very sweet experience for me as well!

Global warming vs. climate change-- our big freeze

Ah, to those who say we can't be having global warming because it's so darn cold I say extreme weather conditions reflect the changing climate caused by the warming... and the proof is in the weather. We're in our third day of freezing temps, which is not what is 'supposed' to happen here in central Texas. Freeze at night, sure... then thaw by late morning. Not constant freezing temps for days on end!

Check out the photo album for pictures of the farm in snow!

Donald Link from A Taste of Place Comes to Visit!

What a treat to have a long visit with Donald Link and his crew, filming our farm and daily chores while discussing agricultural philosophy and good food!

I put Donald through the paces of feeding, collecting eggs and filling feed buckets... well, actually, he accompanied me while I did chores and we talked and talked. It was a comfortable experience and I was pleased to have a chance to discuss my favorite topic~ why we raise the Freedom Ranger broilers that we do! I sent him back to Austin with one of our broilers for him to cook... and was thrilled that he loved it!

He also gave us a copy of his wonderful cookbook "Real Cajun", in which his easy-going and place-loving spirit really shines through~ it's beautiful and an inspiration.

Here's Donald- second from left- along with most of the sound and film crew that came along.

The BioPod Experiment Begins

Hmmmm..... what is it? Almost looks like a toilet, except who would want to sit on that 'seat'? A shredder? Don't let the paper fool you. It's a composter... with benefits.

Of course, you might say, composting has benefits~ to the planet (landfill waste reduced); to the soil (enriched by the compost when it's done and the liquid compost tea dispensed from the tube at the bottom); to me, who gets a simple way to toss garbage the chickens don't get, including meat and dairy.

But wait- there's more! But wait, let's take a look at it first.

This BioPod is set up~ you can see the tube that lets me harvest and use the liquid generated by the process of breaking down our waste; there's the circular lid that makes it easy to add stuff (like the paper shreds and veggies in there now) and it's mounted on the full-size lid that also swings up if needed to clean the whole thing out or access completed compost; and behind it is the soldier fly larva collector, which is the extra benefit of this system. The what?!

See, soldier flies love really putrid stuff to lay their eggs on and to grow in and eat and compost through several larval stages. When  they're ready to pupate for the last time and become flies, they want to climb out of the mess and get dry... and inside this box are built-in ramps that aid them in climbing up, and then falling into the collector compartment, where some of them will finish their journey to become more soldier flies... and that's good. Really?!

It's really good... because soldier fly larva excrete pheromones that repel other flies... where soldier flies are there will be a reduction in regular household flies and blow flies, both infamous for bugging people and spreading disease. More soldier flies, fewer bad flies. And soldier flies, when they're flying and mating and laying eggs, do not eat. So, no pesky and dirty flies to bother us... just sightings of a rather cool looking metallic blue, almost waspy looking thing that wants nothing to do with us because we're neither soldier flies of the opposite sex nor putrid, although our garbage might be. Very very cool benefit to this mode of composting, I think.

And the other even better, oh-so-fabulous benefit is that chickens love to eat the larva and they are so good for them! They scratch and find them already, which is fine but now I can server them up as part of the protein component to their diet, taking one of the most expensive components to the feed and replacing it for something that is free. Not only free, but the end product of a most useful and delightful process.

TaDa!

A gigantic thanks to Dave Pennington, who provided the BioPod and a link to you to learn more about them.

http://blacksoldierflyblog.com/ 

and here's a little something about Dave and another of his endeavors...

Aquaponics

and yet another something he's up to

papercrete construction

quite the multi-purpose creature he is, too. Enjoy.... I know we, and our chickens, will.