Burt says, "Good Morning"

This is Burt, one of Good Old Number 68's twins. He's doing well, but unfortunately his twin, a heifer calf named Nan, died. She always had a hard time getting around. At first we thought she was just the weaker twin. But one day Matt got up close to her and saw that she was blind in at least one eye. There were probably other things wrong with her, too.

Otherwise, the calving season went well. The last 2 cows dropped their calves just last week for a headcount of 9. When I walk down the road to the other end of the pasture to feed the chickens in the morning, all of the calves watch me with great curiosity.

Dumb clucks

A couple of rather contemplative chickens

I truly do enjoy raising broiler chickens. My favorite time of day right now is first thing in the morning, out in the pasture feeding my birds. It's so peaceful...the cool morning air, the sun rising, watching the birds eat their breakfast and run around in the grass.

Right now mine are 7 weeks old, fat little things. (And they're all named "Fred".) The fatter they get, the more they waddle like a duck. But still they try to propel themselves faster by flapping their wings and waddling as hard as they can. If I fill the feeders and then run around the pen with feeders in hand, the birds run after me in a big wave making me feel like the Pied Piper. Or something. (Wonder what my neighbors think of me out there frolicking in the pasture with chickens.) One of these days I'm going to have to figure out how to put a video of their antics on YouTube.

I also like the challenge of raising them, i.e. keeping them alive. They do require quite a bit of hand claw foot holding. They'll die over anything, it seems.

This afternoon we had quite a rainstorm and I didn't get to feed them at the usual time. Finally about 8:00 tonight the rain slowed down a bit and I ran out to get them fed. There were only a handful inside the shed. The rest were all huddled under the eaves of the shed outside, squeezed in as tight as they could be. Sure enough, one was dead. He either had a heart attack from the stress of raindrops falling from the sky, or perhaps had been smothered underneath a pile of other chickens.

So at this point, with a week left until butchering, I have 122 on pasture and orders for 112. But I've learned never to count my chickens before they're in the freezer.

Don't try this at home kids

As promised, pictures of Matt hand feeding Mr. Bull



A little scratch on the head



Can you believe that people actually climb on their backs and ride them? I can't imagine. Matt said one day, "I think I could put a halter on him and lead him around. But I won't."

A horse story

Week 1

Me: Olivia, let me see you lope that horse.

Olivia: Noooooooo!

Week 2

Olivia: loping fool

Week 3

I'm down the road getting ready to feed chickens in the pasture. Olivia is loping Star down the road towards me. And then Star is running. And Olivia is bouncing a foot out of the saddle. And Olivia is trying to pull on the reins. And Olivia will not grab hold of that saddle horn because that is for wimps. And Olivia falls off her rather tall horse onto the gravel road.

She catches herself on the ground with her left arm, and screams that her arm is broken. It's sore for a few days, but actually no serious damage done.

(This will later come to be known as the first ER visit averted that week.)

Olivia is not scared, she is pissed off at her horse.

Week 4

After several days of the silent treatment, Olivia kisses and makes up with Star. They ride for over 2 hours Sunday, and the first thing she does is lope :)

The Bachelor

Mr. Bull has been layed off from work for a month or so now. He hangs around in his pen, gazing at his honey's out grazing in the pasture, longing to give out a rose or 9. Around the 4th of July we'll return him to his duties.

This is what a bull does when he's bored:


He broke the fence post off below ground and bent up the wire panel. (And yes, that little chain wrapped around from gate to post is what's holding him in.

Matt feels sorry for him and feeds him corn out of his hand. Yes, I have a heart attack just typing that. And yes, there will be pictures.

Ava, and her herd of one

With no sheep on this farm to herd, Ava takes work wherever she can find it.

Marketing meeting

I had a marketing meeting this morning. Me and 125 broiler chickens. Members of the board. Bouncing "jingle" ideas off each other. Well, I probably did most of the bouncing. They ate breakfast. But they seemed generally supportive of my ideas.

I wasn't really looking for a jingle. What got me going on it was poop. You see I had just finished filling the waters and was wrapping the hose back up. And when a hose has been drug through the wet grass of a chicken pen, you can imagine it ends up covered in chicken poo. Which ends up on my hands as I wrap up the hose. And then onto my sweatshirt, because what else am I going to wipe my hands on out in the pasture?

And that made me think of the people I know that I could completely gross out with that. Hee hee.

And that made me think of the growing number of people interested in farm-fresh foods, raised the old-fashioned way. But most of them don't really want to have to get chicken poop on their hands (or sweatshirts) in order to have it.

And that's okay that they don't want to raise their own food. I don't think total self-sufficiency should be the goal here. Even Ma Ingalls purchased her calico. Which of course works out well for us, because we don't mind the poop and we enjoy providing the end product to people.

And because this is a small, local business, our customers are people that are providing products & services to us in return. Teachers, preachers, insurance agents (Hi, Scott!), mail carriers. Factory workers that make socks, which we then purchase from a local store. (Almost like Ma Ingalls and her calico! Can you tell she's my idol?) The sense of community that is fostered and grown in all of these exchanges is amazing. It's what makes me so enthusiastic and excited about the Local Food movement.

But back to the jingle. (Finally!)

Sugar Creek Farm.
Farm-fresh meats.
Old-fashioned taste.
No pitchfork required.
Who's your farmer?

(Said in that "Who's your daddy?" tone of voice.
That makes me laugh. I might be the only one, though.)

Naptime

Sometimes there's a cat curled up there with her

Ava's use of the wicker loveseat has rendered it useless for human seating. To be fair, the chickens had already started the disintegration by pooping all over it in the girls' corncrib "club house". So I'm trying to convince my dad that his new hobby should be building me porch furniture. Dog-proof porch furniture.

Ava has really grown since this picture!

D. t'the E.

t'the L.I.C.I.O.U.S.

Our neighbor gifted us with this gorgeous bunch of morel mushrooms. Seems everbody's got their own way of preparing them. I soaked them in salt water, rinsed and picked through them, cut them in half then coated them in flour. Then dipped into egg and finally Italian breadcrumbs. A quick fry in some oil and we were good to go.

T. t'the A. t'the S.T.E.Y 'shroom you're tastey

Okay, enough of the bad mushroom rap.

The best part of waking up

Chickens emerging at 6:30 this morning

Even though making mistakes, mistakes that result in a lot of dead chickens, is one of the downsides of farming, you can least have the satisfaction of taking what you learn from those mistakes and make changes that suit your particular farm.

I gave a sneak peak at our new broiler shed last week. So I guess this is the grand unveiling. This building is based on a design found in Free-Range Poultry Production & Marketing by Herman Beck-Chenoweth.

Our old setup had several problems. One, the building was not well ventilated. In hot weather we had to go out and kick all of the chickens out of the building, and shut them out for the day.

Two, the building had a small entry/exit door. Broilers are lazy birds. They walk in the door and plop down just as soon as possible. Pretty soon you've got a blockage at the door end, the opposite end of the building still empty, and a whole lot of birds stuck outside for the night.

Three, in order to provide shade we had to set up tarp with tent stakes. And as we've seen, that's not a good situation.



The picture doesn't really show it, but the birds' range area is surrounded by electric poultry netting.

This 12' x 16' shed has entrances the width of the building at both ends. They flip down to provide a ramp up/down for the birds. Both ramps are covered with hardware "cloth", and one ramp also has plywood inserts. These can be used if we need to cut wind or cold, or taken out in hot weather for additional airflow.

The sides are also covered with hardware cloth. They can also be covered with 8-foot steel panels to cut wind or cold. Matt covered just the back half of the building this time (because that's all the panels he had on hand) and it worked well. It was cold, rainy and very windy when we moved the birds out to pasture Saturday. So for the first couple of days we fed and watered them right in the shed. Monday afternoon the weather straightened out and I let them out and started feeding them outside.

The eaves are extra long to provide shade under the overhang. And they should also be able to sit inside the shed, rather than us kicking them out, since it will have adequate airflow with the steel panels removed.

The whole thing sits on skids so it can be moved with the tractor as needed. We usually don't have to move it until the second week, but after that we usually move it weekly.


Breakfast time

Newest resident

What little girl doesn't dream of the day she gets a horse? Olivia got her wish on Saturday when Star came to live at Sugar Creek Farm. There's been much currying and brushing and a daily ride since.

What a difference 3 weeks makes

This picture was taken last Friday, 3 weeks and 1 day since this picture. Our new brooder guard was a success. The garage stayed much cleaner, the chicks had plenty of room as they grew.

We only lost 2 in the first 3 weeks, moving 126 birds out to pasture on Saturday. I like those numbers.

(Still doesn't look like 126 birds, does it?)

Train kept-a rollin'

Train crossing over Sugar Creek

Our farm is bordered on the west by train tracks. Living less than a mile from the grain elevator as we do we see at least one train a day, more during certain seasons.

Quilt squares

Several years ago my grandma (who will be 92 this summer) passed on to me a dozen quilt squares hand-pieced by her mother-in-law, my great-grandmother. They had languished in my cedar chest since then, waiting for me to decide what to do with them. The fabrics are now too delicate to stand up to the use of a large quilt.

When I repainted the kitchen I decided I'd like something other than plates on the plate rail. I remembered the quilt squares and the proverbial lightbulb went off over my head.

The squares are each about 16 inches square. None of them were truly square, however. I took my rotary cutter and evened them up a bit.

I found out a 16" square frame is hard to find, and expensive when you do, and I'm not very good with tools so there would be no making my own. Then I ran across these 16 x 20 inch frames at Hobby Lobby for $7.50 each on a half off sale. I sewed solid brown strips to make each square long enough to fit the frame, which made them look even more like pieces of a quilt. Voila! My quilt square art gallery was born.


Love that little flower face fabric in the middle

Here's some closeups of my favorite bits...


Great greens


Fun paisley-ish print


Wish I had yards of that brown/white/orange combo

Chicken decorating

A while back I think I mentioned something about a chicken decorating post. I'm sure you've been on the edge of your seats since, waiting on me. (Right.)

Late this winter I got the urge to repaint the kitchen. And my inspiration was that rooster up there, Little Bigfoot. (He's a Lakenvelder cross.) The picture doesn't do him justice, but hopefully you can see how his body is white interlaced with a lovely cream color. His tail feathers are delicate gradations of gray and brown. And his bright red comb and wattle makes everything pop.

(And by now you're thinking, this girl maybe watches too much HGTV and also maybe does not get off the farm enough.)

What I was after was that grayish-brown in his tail feathers. Or is it brownish-gray? "Either way it sounds like a depressing color," said my mother. I thought it sounded like the perfect neutral.

But how to color match a rooster's feathers? One day when I was in the coop I grabbed ahold of them and tugged, thinking surely one would come loose. Nope. All I got was an indignant rooster.

My mom suggested I catch him and take him with me to the hardware store. Maybe they could stick his tailfeather right there in that machine that automatically detects colors from things like fabric samples and sheets of wallpaper. Could be fun.

But I just winged it (ha ha) and came home with the perfect color. Brownish-gray. Grayish-brown. A color they call "greige".



That's it above the plate rail, and around the window. I really love how it turned out on the wall and plan to continue it into the dining room, perhaps a shade or 2 darker.

Tomorrow, more on those quilt squares...

Springtime

The irratic blog posting around here is indicative that things have taken a turn for the busy. It's one of the blogging life's ironies that in winter, when there's more time for posting, there isn't so much going on. Now, with all kinds of things to blog about, there's no time to post. Let's call it "Miller's Paradox". I've always wanted a paradox named after me.

For now I'll throw up a little pictorial of the springtime activities around here:


The garden has been started - mesclun, spinach, radishes, peas, potatoes and onions.


Soccer. What a difference 6 months makes. Last fall Rafe refused to play. If he didn't make the goal, he stomped off the field and sat on the bench to pout. Just a tad competitive. Now he's out there kicking at the ball and having fun. "I'm going to be a big sport, Mom." Right, except you mean good sport.


Softball pitching practice for Madeline, and one more volleyball tournament to play next Saturday. And one more band concert, one more vocal concert, and two more dance recitals before school's out for the summer.


Beekeeping! We now have a hive on the farm. Matt's learning, and he keeps trying to teach me things. I keep telling him I don't want to know because if I don't know it, I won't have to do it. I don't need a new skill right now.


Time to get the motorcycle out of storage.


Matt's been dredging up those carpentry skills his foster dad taught him. More on this project after the coming weekend.


Olivia took on the dreaded "pick up sticks" chore last weekend. But only after negotiating a wage for doing so. There are a few chores around here that I'll pay for. This is one of them. (Hand picking potato beetles is another.)