Apple Juice!

Starting a farm is a fun but overwhelming endeavor. What does one start with? My first two entries on this blog ("From Our Wedding To The First 100 Chicks" and "Becoming Real Farmers" ) talked some about our process and how it was we ended up starting with chickens as our first, for-sale-off-the-farm product.

BUT, chickens won't be the last! And here is the second (sort of!): cold-pressed, organic apple cider. This is definitely the yummiest apple juice I've ever had, and I'm not usually an apple juice fan. It's so incredibly sweet that Milan and I usually water it down at least a third with water. It's great heated, too -- just add a little cinnamon, nutmeg and a squirt of lime or lemon juice. Pick up a jar or two when you come get your chickens on processing day (TBA, but pretty soon).


This is our 2008 bottling, but 2009 bottles are available, as well as frozen quarts from our 2009 pressing (they just don't look quite as nice). The benefit of frozen is that the juice is raw. Pasteurization to 180 degrees is necessary for bottling. Either way, though, it's still organic goodness!

Graduating

I'm a little behind in my blogging. We went on a road trip and I wrote, but couldn't post, while we were gone. This entry would be dated May 9th.

It's that time of year. Graduation cards are filling up card aisles at local stores. Yes, we're going to a couple graduation celebrations this year, but the most recent one here was anything but academic. The 6-week old chicks "graduated" to new quarters, specifically, we split the bunch into two, nearly-identical runs ("nearly", because Milan made several improvements to the design in building the second one).

You can see in the first image that the quarters were getting rather cozy. Chickens need each other, especially as chicks, to keep warm and for general camaraderie. But, they don't need this many friends all at once! Like all of us, they like to hang out in the sunshine (and sure wish we had more of it, lately!), so the "porch", seen here, is always the most crowded. When the runs are moved morning and evening, you can always tell where the sunny spots were: they're the thickest in chicken dung. This photo was also taken just before being fed, so they're crowding up to the front, eager for dinner.


The new run spot is down in what we call "The Girls' Field", as its where our two mares lived for quite a while. It's the field closest to the house that's not "lawn" or landscaping (... kind of. Those categories all seem to blur together here, depending on what's going on. For example, this Spring we paddocked the horses on the "lawn", moving the paddock every one or two days, because that's where the best feed was with the least likelihood of damaging the incoming grass crop). The chickens had to be moved down the lane, across a small bridge, and out a ways into the field, as the ground along the fence was too bumpy. The run needs flat, smooth ground. This allows it to sit pretty snugly on the ground and keep out small critters (mostly weasels). Milan got the new run all set up before starting to catch chickens out of the old run, including running 500+ feet of white poly hose from the nearest underground water box. The hose is white (poly hose is often black) to keep it from heating up the water, which flows into the automatic watering system.

The new run also has a system of removable plexi-glass panels for rain, snow and wind protection. You can see it also only has the one, long feed trough. The trough is set up to be raised and lowered according to the birds' height (see the photo with Jack grabbing at a wire with stoppers on it). It's made out of a 4" PVC pipe with 90-degree cut out from center (so cut at about 3/4 instead of in half) to hold as much feed as possible while still giving the chickens ample access. The 10-minute criterion (mentioned in "The Feeding Frenzy") still applies.




Next up, move the chickens! Milan caught up 23 at a time out of the run while I opened and closed the door on our large dog kennel and made sure Jack didn't get into trouble (I spend a lot of time doing the latter!). It was just the two of us, so we didn't get pictures of the actual carrying -- Milan on one side of the kennel with Jack on his shoulders, and me on the other, hauling the white birds down the hill. I was surprised at how heavy 23 of them are in one place!


And as usual, Jack wanted to be in the thick of everything.

It took some doing getting the second run, which still had 46 chickens in it, down the hill. It was quite a long walk for the birds, not to mention quite a job for Milan, who provided all the muscle in the operation. I was in charge of keeping the birds moving so that none of them would slip out the back or taken out by the moving run. We took lots of breaks and only moved a few feet at a time, for both the birds and Milan, but what we didn't think of animals' fear of weird, new surfaces, like gravel or a wooden bridge! The chickens have grown up on grass, so when we had to pull the run off the lawn and onto the drive, they all bunched up and tried to stay on the grass. Convincing them they could walk on the gravel just fine was a little comical and frustrating. Same deal with the transition from gravel to wooden bridge! Ah, the things we're learning!

We did finally get the second run in place next to the first. Milan connected the watering systems, which most of the slightly stressed and thirsty birds immediately appreciated, and gave them a little extra helping of food for the energy expended in the whole affair (also appreciated!).

Cash, our big, white Pyrenees cross, will be staked out at night with the chickens to keep any wild creatures from getting too curious.

The Feeding Frenzy

I'm a little behind in my blogging. We went on a road trip and I wrote, but couldn't post, while we were gone. This entry should be dated May 2nd.

Okay, so thank goodness we don't have a feeding frenzy in the most scientific sense of the term (according to Wikipedia, it usually refers to predators, and more specifically, sharks and piranhas, that bite anything that moves (read: "each other") instead of the food that's amply available). But, feed time is definitely the chickens' most exciting time of the day. These photos were taken before we split the batch into two runs, which we did when the chickens were 6 weeks of age (see "Graduating").

Feeding this breed of chicken is a science in itself. The Cornish Cross (or Cornish X, or sometimes called "White Cornish") is bred to eat and produce muscle as quickly and efficiently as possible. They do this well, which is why commercial operations almost always raise the white, Cornish X's. Commercially raised birds are usually butchered at the age of 6 weeks or less because they can just grow so darn fast. This is great if you're a commercial chicken producer, raising them in 12"x12" cages where they don't do anything but eat all day. They're happy to do it, too -- eat all day, that is. They'll plop down in front of the feed trough and never move from there, except to waddle over for a drink, if they even have to move to get that.







Anyway, the point is if you want to free-range or pasture the white Cornish X (as opposed to the Red Cornish, a breed I'll mention again in a bit), you can't offer it "free feed", or have feed constantly available. Instead, you have to ration it to a certain amount per day. If you don't do this, their muscle growth so outpaces their bones, joints and organs, that not only would they never "range" around on the free range, they would start spontaneously dying at about 6 weeks of age anyway from heart or respiratory failure, inability to walk, and a host of other physical problems. They are simply bred (or genetically modified, if you want to think of it this way) to convert feed into muscle, or meat. They are the couch potato of the chicken world. This is why, during our initial research into the whole chicken-raising business, we wanted to raise Red Cornish. Red Cornish are naturally more slow-growing and robust than their white cousins, yet still offer similar quality meat. We didn't end up being able to get the Red Cornish chicks locally, however, so decided to try the rationing on the white Cornish X.

This just brings us back around to the fact, then, that when they are fed, it's a big deal! Before we split the group into two runs, two troughs were just barely enough to get everyone a spot at the feed trough (part of how we knew it was time to split the group into two runs was when they got too crowded at the troughs at feeding time). Milan was feeding three times a day, and the criterion was that the birds had to all be eating all together and finish the ration in 10 minutes.

So, how to fill the trough, when chickens are clucking and bawking and flapping all over, eager for food, became kind of a big issue. It was clear pretty quickly, especially as the birds got larger and larger, that filling the trough by hand was a hassle. To make feeding time easier (and to mitigate a lot of wasted feed), Milan created a special dispenser. A large tube at the top is filled with feed. A valve at the bottom of the large tube flows into a smaller tube. The trough itself is only hung on its ends, so there aren't any obstacles to navigate around to keep the smaller end of the tube in the trough.

Milan actually has to fake the chickens out at one end of the trough and then jump the dispenser tube to the other end to even be able to get the feed into the trough. Of course, Jack is often part of the process. He loves to hang around one side or the other and watch the whole thing.

Injuries!

It's kind of a way of farm life: you get a lot more bumps and bruises, cuts and wounds on a farm where you're constantly using tools and machinery than you would in "normal" life. Milan is always coming in with some new injury. This was the most recent:


Probably doesn't look too bad from the photo, but this was already at a day old. He basically took a chunk out of the end of his finger with a router. It bled like crazy and was a nasty-looking wound!

I manage to avoid the tool-related injuries, but still get my share. About a month-and-a-half ago now, my biggest horse stepped on my smallest toe. I think she crushed it, because it's hurt pretty good ever since.

But, you just suck it up and go on. Milan didn't even come up to the house after doing this one. When he finally did come in that night, he said, ever-so-casually, "Oh, I cut my finger."

"How bad?" I replied.

"Pretty bad," he said.

"Are you serious? Let's see it."

He had to be pressed to take the bandage off and the thing was still bleeding a lot, hours later. Both of us got a little queasy while cleaning and dressing it.

Healed up nicely, though! Milan's hands take such a beating and seem to rally amazingly well.

Building Our Pastured Poultry Runs

Milan's busy today putting the finishing touches on our second run. When we move the old run this evening, we'll split the batch between the two runs to give everyone more space and room at the feed trough. These are some pictures from earlier; the run's nearly completed at this point. The third photo is the top of the hover, which we use for the first 3-4 weeks of the chicks life to keep them warm. The little white rectangles are heaters. More on our run and hover design another day...