Learning New Lessons

Well, we have broilers in the freezer, but not as many as we had hoped for. We started out with 100 Cornish X broiler chicks and were able to process 37.  Not a very good return on our investment, but I have to say we have learned many lessons.  We lost a few chicks in the beginning due to smothering or leg deformities, etc. (which is normal and to be expected).  But then we lost some to predator attacks (we finally got that moveable pen secure enough).  We also lost some to crazy rain storms and flash flooding (Note to self:  We now know that the bottom of the hill is not a good place to keep the chickens in Spring...to much rain=drowned birds).  We thought we would have 57 birds to take to the processor as we loaded them up the night before with hopes of pulling out of the driveway at 4:30 am.  The drive to Bloomfield was in a downpour with the chickens in the back of a pickup covered (sort of) with a tarp.  By the time we unloaded the chickens we only had 37 left alive...big bummer.  We think there were a few different factors in their demise.  The chicken processor said that that rain was a killer (no doubt), plus there was a drop in temperature.  Also, we think there were some smothering issues in the truck.  Unfortunately, most of the birds that died were our biggest birds, so we think stress/heart attack could have come into play.  So, we are blessed that we have 37 birds in the freezer, and that we have learned many ways on how NOT to raise broiler chickens.  We are figuring out how we want to raise the next batch (hopefully for this Fall yet).  We have had some customers interested in buying chickens, but we won't have any for sale from this batch.  If all goes well, we should have some later in September or October. 

 (A view of the chickens in our new upright freezer.)

In other news, we are experimenting with Square Foot Gardening in our backyard.  Troy built the boxes, we lined them with weed barrier fabric and filled them half and half with composted horse manure and potting mix.

 Here are the boxes filled and ready to plant.  It is suprising the amount that can be planted in these 4X4 beds.

Here is the first bed planted with sweet corn, basil, and a couple tomato plants.  In the other beds I planted an assortment of flowers, more basil (lime and lemon), lavender, and winter squash.  We plan to make a couple more for lettuce, peppers and tomatoes for salsa, and green beans. 

We are also going to be doing some edible landscaping around our house.  I purchased blueberry bushes today.  More on that to come. 

Storm Fronts and Chickens

Yesterday I went out to gather eggs before the storm hit.  I got this picture of the front moving in.  We ended up getting 1" yesterday afternoon and 2" last night (along with some hail).  Is this rain ever going to end?  The ground is completely saturated at this point.  Please sun, come out and stay for awhile!

  I also took a few pictures of our meat birds.  We only have about a week to go before they go to get processed.  We have a few in particular that are huge, so it will be interesting to see how they all dress out.  We are disappointed that we have lost almost half of these birds after all the work we have put into them, but we hope to raise another batch soon. 

Today's Harvest

We've been having a lot of rain lately.  I've dumped 5.5" out of my rain gauge in a matter of 24 hours.  This morning I went out to the garden to harvest something for farmer's market.  It was MUDDY.  Standing water in a few places.  The garden has a few washouts too.  Plus the weeds...the weeds are bad.  It is way too muddy to get in there to weed much, and there is more rain in the forecast.  But, the garden is producing.  I thought I would share some pictures from today.

 I harvested green onions, some salad (not enough to sell though), garlic scapes, and A LOT of radishes.  They seemed to come on all of a sudden, and the garden is still full of them. 

  A big bowl of radishes...a mixture of Red Rover and Pink Beauty varieties.  All of our seed came from Johnny's Selected Seeds. 

This was the biggest radish of the day...I would say about the size of a golf ball.  It tasted good in our salad too. 

Got Weeds?

Okay, so the garden is in desperate need of weeding...all that rain as given way to weeds, and it is not fun to weed in this 90 degree weather.  That being said, we went out this morning to attack the herb beds.  This is the before (yes, there are herbs in there):

Here is the after.  Much better.  We have oregano, sage, thyme, and stevia in this bed.

 In this bed we have rosemary, more thyme(German), onion chives, and garlic chives.

Here we have cilantro and basil. 

I still have more starts to get planted.  My other herb varieties are:  basil (Italian, purple, lemon, and lime), parsley, dill, and lavender.  It's supposed to rain again, then cool down and be dry for a little while.  Hopefully we can get the last of the garden planted...yay, (and weed some more...boo).

Pictures From The Farm

I thought I would share a few pictures that I had taken in the last week or so.  This is a view to the south of our house when we had that big rainstorm last Sunday.  It looks like a new creek running through the yard.  The tilled ground is where the popcorn is planted. 

 This is another view of the "creek".  The chicken pen in the picture is where we keep the meat birds (they get moved daily to fresh pasture).  We had moved them to higher ground after the last big storm when we lost 36 birds.  A hard lesson learned:  Don't keep the chicken pens in the low portion of the field, or they may drown in a flash flood. 

This is a picture of our potatoes after weeding and laying more straw over their tops.  We are trying this method this year for the first time.  If it works, we'll just lift off the straw when it's time to harvest and won't have to dig potatoes...they will be laying on top of the soil.  Troy really likes this possibility!

Here is a pic of our corn coming up.  This was taken a week ago, so they are a bit bigger now.  Come on sweet corn!

And lastly, a picture of harvesting onions.  I planted them pretty close together with the intention of harvesting every other onion for early green onions, and then leaving the rest to grow bigger.  So far, so good.  We are also mulching with grass clippings to help keep the weeds down.  It's working well too.

So, that's the garden update for now...stay tuned.

1st Day at the Farmer's Market

Today was our first day at the Knoxville Farmer's Market.  It went pretty well, but it did rain on us some.  We ended up leaving a little early because of it.  We have not bought our shade canopy yet, but plan on getting one before the next market.  We will be at the market every Tuesday afternoon and Saturday morning.

 Here is our table set up before the market started.  We also have a banner type sign that we need to figure out how to hang or display.  We'll also have the shade canaopy next week to protect our merchandise from rain/hot sun.

 Here is a close up view of the table.  We sold cinnamon rolls made with freshly ground organic hard white wheat berries, chocolate granola made with organic rolled oats, mini apple pies made with organic apples, green onions (both white and purple), and herb bundles (garlic chives, onion chives, and thyme).  We also had pastured eggs, market bags, and bottle cap magnets (a little craft I did for fun).

 Close up of the cinnamon rolls...we taste tested these and they were pretty good I must say. 

 Close up of our onions. They are sweet and mild, perfect for salads or maybe in a egg dish.

 Our egg sign.  Our eggs are from pastured hens and cost $2.50 per dozen.

These are the little magnets I made, displayed on a vintage metal tray.   All in all I would say our first market went pretty well.  Hopefully we will get more customers throughout the season.  Hope to see all of the locals at the market next week!

Farming: A School of Hard Knocks

Well, we had some major disappointment this morning when we woke up.  We lost close to 40 of our broiler chickens in the storm last night.  The silly things seemed to stay out in the rain (on the side of the pen that is covered in chicken wire so they get sunshine), instead of getting under cover where it was drier.  So it looks like they died of exposure.  This is a pretty big loss... not sure if we will have broilers for sale at the end of June like originally planned.  We also gave the goats to a friend.  Nettie wasn't letting me milk her (plus my inexperience with that and lack of time) swayed my decision to give her away.  She will have a good home with other goats and more experienced goat keepers.  The garden is a huge mudhole right now, too muddy to plant or weed.  Such is life on the farm...it's not always easy (I guess it rarely is actually), but we are not ready to give up.  This way of life is important to us, so we just try to learn from our mistakes and come up with a better plan.  So, right now we are rethinking the moveable pens for the meat birds (who seem to be much more finicky than the laying hens) and also what type of meat birds we will raise.  We have had some problems with these Cornish X type birds.  But, with all of the disappointment, I try to keep it in perspective...thank the Lord we have not lost our family or our home in recent tornadoes.  We are all alive and healthy, and that is the most important thing.