Eight of the Frey’s Special Dual Purpose roosters are still around, in fine form, roaming the farm. Clearly, I have yet to kill them! Not even one… We’ve been eating chicken often since summer, but there’s still a good supply of fat, frozen White Rocks. Meanwhile, I imagine the meat on these guys getting tougher by the week as they run around and do their thing: turning on one another in brief, furious bursts, digging deep, bowl-shaped holes, hopping on goats, sitting on fences, crowing at all hours, scratching and pecking. It’s a little out of control, but also fun to watch, and they haven’t done anything really bad so far (one has grown quite mean and somewhat vicious, though, and menaces or even attacks people—he’ll be first to get it in the neck! :) They’re truly free-range, they’ve put on impressive weight strictly by foraging, which includes stealing some of the goats’ grain, but mainly involves bugs and whatever else they find in the fields. Most mornings, they get a little scratch, or some of the girls’ feed. Sometimes I’ll hand-feed ’em for a few minutes, for no real reason, but maybe to keep ’em feeling safe with me, and easier to catch down the road…
Animals
Big egg
Every few days, at two dozen a day, along comes one very big egg. It’s hard to see with the chipped paint on the old egg scale, but these big guys take it right off the chart. Beyond measurement by this technology. Poor girls (I think, or maybe not). They’re too big to fit into extra-large egg cartons, they won’t let the cartons close, so I put ’em aside and eat them. They’re pretty big, fat eggs!
Donkey care
Tanya the Farrier drops in on Jack the Miniature Donkey every 6-8 weeks to clean and trim his hooves. It’s a pretty quick operation, maybe 20 minutes. You might expect trouble, Jack being a fairly frisky, 400+ pounds of muscle, hard head and hoof, but he’s also easy-going, and Tanya seems to have established authority way back. I’ve been watching this routine for the six years I’ve been here. Bob does the holding, and Tanya goes to work…
…using a hooked knife to prying out built up gunk…
…and trim down the hoof.
A rasp is used for finishing touches…
…and in no time, Tanya’s gone and Jack’s good to go…
Fantastic egg tray technology!
OK, so they’re just regular cardboard egg trays from the commercial kitchen world, and they’ve probably been around exactly like this for decades. BUT, they haven’t been around HERE. Lynn recycled them from Shelter Valley Folk Festival, where she was last week, where they were feeding big groups of volunteers. The trays are fantastic! Our chickens produce only about two dozen eggs a day, but that still adds up. I’d been keeping them at first in regular one-dozen cartons, then in bowls and small baskets. It was getting a little out of control. Now, they simply, efficiently stack in the fridge, 30 per tray. Every second week, like today, we bring a bunch to the farmers’ market as a bonus in the CSA shares, and the trays make transport a lot easier as well. Amazing. :)
Weighing eggs
Egg production has been moving along smooth as anything. The girls are great, easy going, seem to be having a good time, and they’re pumping out 23-25 eggs a day. Besides giving them out to everyone around here, there’s been enough to take to market every other week as a CSA bonus, usually, half a dozen per share. Bob unearthed an old egg scale from somewhere in the barn, and I’ve been playing with it lately (for actual distribution, there’s no sizing, everyone gets a mix). Egg size has definitely increased. Where they were mainly medium with a few small at the start, they’re now maybe half medium, half large. The scale is the kind of old school tech that I love, with everything simple, open, obvious, and FIXABLE. It may be a little hard to read in the pic: there’s a little pointer, with a fleck of red paint on it, at the bottom of the open triangle of the indicator—this egg’s Large, just on the border of XL…
“I love intense!”
If you’re not on top of weeds by mid-June, things are gonna get ugly. Here, I’ve yet to come close to not having…problem spots, like this year’s onion section, where a perfect combination of heat and rain made relatively tiny pigweed JUMP in just a couple of days. At this size, and with the weeds growing right close to the onions, careful hand-weeding is the only option, other than tilling under the crop. Today. Lynn, Libby and I tackled the job…
Hours of weeding and a complete weather change later, the deed was done. As much as you think about the intense amount of labor, what that adds to the true cost of one of these onions, how things could’ve been done more efficiently, and so forth, you can’t help but be satisfied by such a complete…makeover. I asked Libby, after her very first crazy weeding spree, how she felt. With a big grin, she said: “I love intense!” You can’t help but love that attitude! :)
And there was still time for other fieldwork, an unhurried lunch break, and time out to play with the goats… Is this an economically viable way to farm? Well, it’s kinda working out so far, things are slowly, steadily improving, and we seem to be having ever more fun as it goes along!
Eggs everywhere!
Barely a week after the arrival of the laying hens, egg production is in full swing, with about 20-21 eggs a day from 25 birds. From the start, all of the hens took to laying in one particular nest, I only occasionally find the stray egg elsewhere. They’re averaging about medium size, getting closer to large by the day (that’s the extent of my egg size terminology so far). Donated stacks of egg cartons are coming in from all directions. We’re surrounded by tasty little brown eggs…!