Hannah dropped by today to check things out. She’d gotten in touch through the farm web site, wanted to volunteer for a day or two every week through the season, to learn about small-scale farming and how to grow stuff. No garden experience. We spoke briefly on the phone, but the only way to see is to meet in the field and get hands dirty! It’s amazing how easily people can take to tiny farming when given the chance to dive in. So, a quick tour, and then, to work. She weeded, forked and raked a bed in the greenhouse, transplanted a couple of dozen lettuce, seeded a bed of all-lettuce mesclun using the Earthway seeder (tightly spaced rows), tried out the mini-cultivator (a rototiller attachment on a heavy duty weed eater), drove the Kubota compact tractor and worked the bucket on a big snow bank, trimmed a couple of trays of onion seedlings, checked out the production standards and paperwork for organic certification, and seemed fine with my mildly intense stream of background info and general microfarming explanation. All in three hours. Everything for the first time. She did great, no problem! Just as important, at least for this tiny farm, she seemed to have FUN, had a cool energy, and didn’t make me WONDER when handling machinery, tools and plants! After last year’s great crew, standards are pretty high. Will this season of people in the field go as well or even better? There’s no real advertising or recruiting plan, I’m trusting that, through general word of mouth (and maybe, good karmic energy!), things will…pleasantly unfold. We shall see!
Catalog shopping: chickens on order!
Chickens are on the way! On the left, a reportedly prolific brown egg producer, the Shaver Red Sex-Link. On the right, the reputedly hardy, healthy Frey’s Special Dual Purpose as our meat bird.
I almost broke a pretty basic rule on this one—get your questions answered first!—and ordered White Rock Cornish X for meat. Chatting with Bob, we’d decided on the Frey’s Special, but at the last minute—on the phone ordering them from the feed store—I asked about the Frey’s, and was told that “99%” of the small quantity meat birds were “White Rock” (meaning WR Cornish X), that people were often disappointed with the dual purpose for meat, that for meat, White Rock is the way to go. White Rock! White Rock!
So I got off the phone, and did some quick extra research. Talked to Bob again, who said the thousands of meat chickens he’s raised were all White Rock, BUT, they have to stay indoors, WR just stand around and EAT, which is why he thought Frey’s would be better for outdoors.
Next, hit the Web, and found stories of people successfully free-ranging WRs, even in the heat. BUT, they also said things like: “They did wander around a lot but nothing like the regular birds. They did all the normal bird things just a whole lot less gracefully. Only thing they couldn’t do was perch or fly.” Hmmm…
Which took me back to the original stuff I’d read in the hatchery catalog, things like: “Unfortunately, the White Rock’s increased efficiency at feed conversion has not been matched by improvements in the bird’s cardiovascular system. Simply put, too often the bird’s heart just can’t keep up with the rest of its body.” Yikes… Hello flip-over disease (aka Sudden Death Syndrome, aka…heart attacks), which tends to afflict the biggest, healthiest birds… And there’s lots more disease warnings, feeding restrictions, general strict instructions… Extremely fast-growing meat chickens, no doubt, and I’ll probably try some…later, but too weird for now…
For good measure, I got through to the Frey’s hatchery. The woman on the phone was great. She said most people just want to produce meat quick and go for the WRs, and they may do OK free-ranging, but really, they’ve been bred for rapid growth in a controlled broiler barn environment, AND, for a hardy, free-ranging, TASTY meat bird, dual purpose are great, friends of hers raise the Frey’s Special and love ’em. So Frey’s Special Dual Purpose it is, more traditional chickens that grow a little slower and weigh a little less, but can actually have fun, run around, eat insects, scratch in the dirt, and won’t…flip over! There are 50 2-week Frey’s Special cockerels coming either April 16 or 30, and 25 ready-to-lay Red Sex-Link on June 23.
Entering the world of CHICKENS, I’m excited!
(UPDATE: After writing this post, I read the comments below, did some more online reading, and switched the order to 40 White Rock Cornish X and 10 Frey’s Special…)
(UPDATE 2: It’s a year and a half later, and we recently processed a second flock of White Rocks. My original last-minute double-switch to White Rocks was a good one. I still want to raise other breeds, but you absolutely can keep healthy, free-ranging WRs, and they do get to a good size!)
Inside and out…
Inside, in the increasingly GREEN Milkhouse, this year’s artificial sun set-up is done. It’s about fitting in as much area-under-lights as possible, while making sure all of the trays are easily reachable, for watering, rotation, thinning. So, there are the four grow racks, and the lightbox (that’s leek, onions and parsley under there), with its second level (why waste a flat surface that comes with chains?!). For now, this extra space is the new spot for the rescued-and-passed-along decorative plants (the heather was too dried out and didn’t make it, the wintergreen are doing fine, and the orchids seem OK…), but they’ll eventually be crowded out and moved somewhere else. The shelves are filling up fast… MEANWHILE, outside, it’s snowing and snowing, again. That’s a lot of snow. Around here, we’re definitely off to a later start this year than at least the last couple, but I’m still not particularly put off, not just yet. Although, it’s not supposed to warm up for another week, maybe two…
This is today’s peaceful but uninspiring view of the garden from the north-facing Milkhouse window…
Chickenhouse inspection
Checked out the chickenhouse today to make up a materials list for the renovation. Here’s a view of the south-facing side (the usual daily view is from the barnyard to the east; the barn and silo are to the north, and hidden behind them is the market garden). From this side, it has that ramshackle cabin-in-the-woods look. I quite like it: 200 sq. ft. of open-plan living, big windows for lots of natural light, electricity, running water…instant home! Like most things on the farm, it has its history. The structure is 80-90 years old, purchased 50 years ago from the farm that used to be across the road (now a village subdivision with a bunch of houses, and untended fields), dragged over by tractor, and set on a concrete pad. It was used as a pony barn for a while; harnesses are still hanging on the wall. For the last 15-20 years, it’s housed a few chickens and turkeys, or been unused. Now, it’s back! There’s not much to do, besides a good cleaning: banging in a defensive baseboard (in the pic below, that’s a GNAWED not-so-little hole under the window), a window to fix, nests to build for the layers, and a coat of lime to disinfect and whitewash (that’ll be interesting). Outside, T-bars and chicken wire to fence in yards, and that should be it. Most of the materials we can salvage on-farm: the fencing stuff, lime, and plywood should be all that requires cash! There are even a bunch of feeders lying around. All these bits from the past, unused and still in place after years and decades, would be a little creepy, if we weren’t coming across them on the way to getting new things started!
Rack built
New lumber turns into new grow rack. This adds a fourth to the set, a measure of tiny farm growth. I started with two in Year 1, built another one last year (Year 5). It’s not like the focus here is on rapid expansion…this is the speed of staying tiny! ;)
Although I don’t build these often, it seems to get quicker every time. Well under a hundred dollars of wood, wheels, screws, bolts, brackets, hooks and chains, plus a chop saw, a drill and a couple of hours, and there it is! Light fixtures are extra. In the pic, the shelves still have to go on.
Lying across the middle supports is one of the four old fluorescent fixtures, given to me instead of being tossed in the trash. Not only free, they’re BETTER: these are the overhead lighting type you see in (horribly lit) offices, the tubes are spaced farther apart than in the standard shop lights I’ve been using, the light will spread more evenly over a larger area—for the seedlings, a lot less leaning and stretching…
Peppers!
Another little new-season milestone: the first of the original veggie gang has appeared. These are Gypsy (hybrid) sweet peppers, seeded six days ago, along with other varieties of pepper and eggplant. They started to poke up in the last day or so, and by this morning, the first leaves had unfolded. Along with tomatoes (soon to be seeded), I think of these three—toms, eggplant, peppers—as my original crops. These are the veggies I started first (and way early) in Year 1: winter was storming along outside, while these brilliant little splashes of green were popping up in the warm, bright bubble of the first seedling room (a side room in the farmhouse). I was fascinated and kind of amazed. I used to come downstairs in the middle of the night to check ’em out, make sure they were still alive and growing… Actually, it’s not so different even now! :)
Meet my garden spirit guide
So I’m heading into the house this morning, by the winter front door, which is a door cut into the attached-garage door (it’s easier to keep clear of snow than the real front door…). Kinda zoned out and lost in thought, I was on my final step, arm out, automatically reaching for the door handle, when suddenly, whoaaa!, I froze and stepped back. By mere inches, I’d almost grabbed a handful of OWL. There’ve been owls in the barn, and an owl can be seen once in a while sitting on a pole in the farmhouse backyard, but we definitely don’t have owls calmly hanging out on the front door handle. This had to mean something. This had to be a Sign! The owl was just perched there, perfectly laid back, kinda squinty, looking at me. It didn’t flinch. I took another few steps back to check things out. It watched me, unperturbed. Hmmm… I checked it out for a couple of minutes, kinda walking around, moved closer again, slowly reached towards it. No problem, it just watched me back. Then I headed to the Milkhouse for my camera, returned, and still the owl. It let me come as close as I liked. It really didn’t seem to mind me being well within touching distance, a couple of feet away. A few minutes later, Bob went by and I called him over. The owl was unfazed by TWO people looming around (since it was my owl encounter, maybe at that moment, Bob didn’t really exist?). After a couple more minutes, looking perfectly airworthy, it calmly flew away through the four feet of space between us… And it was gone. So what was up with the owl? Could be that, with youthful naivety (it looked…young), and the natural confidence of a predator high on the food chain, and maybe being tired out by too much flying, and having to squint in the bright sun, it just didn’t care. That’s possible. More likely, though, it was simply there to hook me up with forces unseen and the entire spirit world. It gazed at me for a long time and I felt good. At last, my spirit guide revealed! Of course, I had to vet all of this and get more words and meaning, so I rushed inside and hit the Web. Wooo… Glancing at the first search results got me worried, all messenger of death stuff. But, the fantastic thing about the Web is, keep looking and you can find whatever you want! Like this page, much more…REASONABLE, that explained how cool having a personal owl encounter is, with words like “wisdom”, “protector” and “symbolic of inner knowing”. I particularly liked: “If an owl has visited you, an incredible gift has been bestowed.” This is good! Thanks!! Life on this tiny farm now walks with the owls… (It’s a fully-grown adult northern saw-whet owl; thanks to Sharon the BirdChick for ID-ing it in the comments below!)