Morning Chores

This past weekend I took the camera out with me for my morning chores.

The piglets are always anxious for their breakfast.

The red potatoes are coming in nicely, and the goats are enjoying their job of keeping down the brush.

The chickens are always on the look-out for something tasty.

Big boy is moving slow before his first cup of coffee.

Pig Roast

Since we have more piglets than we care to feed out I started the process of reducing numbers this past weekend. We are planning on culling the boys through out the summer and just feed out the three girls to market weight. This was the first time I butchered a pig and it all went fairly well. The little guy was 32 lbs live weight which made home butchering possible. I don't imagine a large pig would be all that much more difficult, but not have the necessary equipment to manipulate a ~250 lb pig means that I will leave the real butchering to the experts. I had planned to roast up the entire pig on the BBQ rotisserie but he was too long to fit. Instead we cooked up the front half. The back half is frozen in two portions and I still need to make sausage from the head and neck meat. I really need to pick up a copy of the The Whole Beast: Nose to Tail Eating so that I can find out how to make the best use out of the pigs. I already have a book on Charcuterie but need some information on making natural sausage casings and other lost arts.




As far as seasoning all I did was make some slits in the skin and stuffed them with garlic. The pork effectivley self-basted as it slow roasted over indirect heat. The pork was the most tender I have ever eaten. The tenderloin in particular just melted in your mouth. My parents were down to celebrate Sam's B-Day a little early and all enjoyed the feast.

Farm Work Catch-Up Post

Spring has clearly sprung around here and so have all the farm chores. I am a sporadic blogger at best but like having this as a record so that I can look back to see where we were and to also have an idea of what worked and more importantly what did not.

Over the last few weeks I finished hard fencing the perimeter of our property. Now our entire ~4.75 acres of working land is enclosed by field fencing, with a hot wire running along the top. This lets us make better use of our electric netting since we can situate it against the field fence in a semi-circle and clip into the power at will. More importantly if any of our animals escape their individual paddocks (which the goats are particularly prone to do) they are still confined to our property. A final piece of fencing that needs to be accomplished is surrounding the market garden so that any aforementioned escapees do not gain access. I am going back and forth on what is the best way to accomplish this. Field fencing would be the strongest and most durable solution, but would make plowing and prepping the fields more difficult since the tractor would have restricted access. I am thinking about using some of the electric netting since it could be removed and installed as needed but it would be less of a barrier to the animals and would require that I maintain the fence line so that the charger does not short out due to long wet grass.

Speaking of plowing fields, last weekend I plowed up the newly expanded market garden as well as a new plot that will be planted with a variety of grains. I was able to borrow a plow from my neighbor and modify it to fit my tractor. I always enjoy being able to borrow farm tools, especially ones like a plow that you only need to use for one to two days in any given year. This past week I also ran the disc through both plots a number of times to break up the soil and get it ready for planting.


Finally on to this past weekend. Danielle cut up 50 lbs of seed potatoes this week so priority number one on Saturday was to get these in the ground as we were expecting rain on Sunday. Julia helped me place all the potatoes in the trenches and even covered one entire row. In all we planted 11 rows each 85 feet long. I still have 50 lbs of Yukon golds and 20 lbs of Russian fingerlings to get into the ground. The giant market garden is not looking so large anymore and the free area will continue to shrink as I get the other potatoes in.


Gratefully, the rains came as promised and so far we have received over an inch and a half of much needed precipitation. I know others are barely keeping there heads above water with all the rain this Spring (sorry Woody) but we really needed a good soaking. This will go a long way to help all the new young plants that have started to pop in the last few weeks as well as provide a good watering in for the potatoes and the 50 trees that Danielle planted this weekend. It also provided some time for us to rest aside from rinsing out some recycled water containers with the runoff from our gutters.

Turkey's Out to Pasture

Last Friday and Saturday Danielle was learning how to shear sheep, so my work crew and I were left to our own devices. Our Narragansett turkeys have started laying for the season and we wanted to get them moved out onto pasture before the hens started to set. We did not want to move them after they were setting since this would likely be stressful on the hens and eggs, and based on last year, moving them after the poults hatched out would be a lesson in futility since the poults are wary of us and quite quick. We definitely needed to move them since our barn yard area needs to rest over the summer to recoup from having all the animals on it, as well as the fact that the turkeys got into the neighbors grape vines last year, something that will not be repeated.


The kids helped me put some sides and a back onto a simple shelter we used last summer to provide shade for the geese. We used some scrap wood I had left over from the basement remodel we have been doing. The crew got a ride on the trailer out to the turkeys new pen with the shelter, electric poultry netting and some straw for a nest.


We tied the electric netting into the fence I ran last week, giving them a nice sized area to hang out in.


The hens seem to have found the nest in the corner of the shelter acceptable. We moved out 8 eggs and as of last night I counted 11 in the straw. Not sure if they will share this nest, or if one will lay another clutch once the other sets. I guess as in everything we do on the farm, only time will tell.

Spring Farm Work

Spring brings about a lot of changes and chores around the farm. One of the bigger chores for me was pulling a fence line through the overgrown hedgerow on one side of our property. The previous owners had a fence in there at one time but never maintained it, and every time it became overgrown they would just put in new t-posts. This limited the amount of usable pasture that we had access to and made it difficult to allow the goats to browse the hedgerow since I had no way of containing them on the other side. Starting late winter I began the task of chopping a path through the wild olive, rosa multiflora, Chinese sumac, and honeysuckle that is our hedgerow. The culmination was on Easter Sunday when I was finally able to put in the field fencing.


It is hard to see here but if you click on the image to enlarge it you can see that the fence line goes through the hedgerow just in front of the larger trees on the hill behind the mobile chicken coop. The weather was beautiful on Sunday (warm but not hot and plenty of sun) and Julia came out and helped me put the finishing touches on the fence. She stood at one end of the last pull and told me where to place the t-posts so that the were in a nice straight line. Jules was a great help and when we were policing up all the tools and getting ready to go in she told me that this was the best Easter ever since she got to find an Easter basket, got a new game and DVD and got to spend time with me. Well I had to agree that it was a pretty great Easter after she told me that.

Spring also brings about the start of barbecue season on our farm. For Easter this year I barbecued up a beef brisket for the first time. The whole family is fond of pulled pork so I did more or less the same recipe. First I give it a dry rub consisting of paprika, chili pepper, garlic and salt. Put it on the grill with the coals off to the side and cover with the lid. After 8 hours, periodically turning, mopping with a mixture of oil, white vinegar and tabasco, and adding coals to keep the temperature the meat is done.

Since I was in charge of cooking, and was also doing the fencing we ended up having a carnivores delight dinner. The entire meal consisted of the beef brisket, rolls, BBQ sauce and beer. The kids of course got to choose their own beverage but seemed to really like the meat. I am sure it is not the healthiest way to eat and I would not want to do it all the time, but after a long weekend of fencing gorging myself on beef and beer was pretty great.

Hope everyone had a good start to Spring.

Full Moon Rising

Here is the view of the moon rising from our back porch. Depending on your religious/historical associations you might call this the Paschal moon (which is why Easter is so early this year), or the Worm moon (so named for the appearance of worm cast in spring).

Snug as pigs in straw

Well that might not be the correct saying, but these little guys and gals seem pretty happy.


They are our first litter of Tamworths here on the farm so we are probably obsessing a little over them. You can see that we have two distinct color variations blonde and red. Danielle thinks that all the blondes are females, but I will request that you all refrain from the dumb blonde jokes.


I look in on them when I feed the pigs, since their mama Maya is distracted. Big Boy, the sire is in an adjoining pen and has been foaming at the mouth a number of times when I came near. I guess he is anxious to protect his offspring, which is a good thing, but might make our barrowing of the boys difficult. He calms down when he has food in front of him so we might have to feed both Mama and Papa and see if we can abscond with the boys. Will let you know how that goes.

Spring Rains

After work last night I took the kids to check out what happens when the Spring rains come. This is one of our fishing spots along the Conococheague Creek. The nominal creek bank is 20 to 30 ft from where the wood posts are. Here is what it looks like in the summer.


When the creek is running normal this waterfall is about 5 feet high. Yesterday there was not much difference in the height on either side.


We watched a number of large tree trunks go over the waterfall before heading back to the house. While this is less than a quarter mile from our house we are a good 100 ft or so higher in elevation, which made the kids feel comfortable that we would not be flooded out.

Archive Meme

I was doing my best to ignore the Archive Meme that Jenny tagged me for, but since I am sick as a dog and spending the entire day sitting on my ass next to the wood burning stove now seemed like as good a time as any. The directions for the meme are at the bottom of the post. I omitted the part about tagging 5 other people since I am anti-social by nature.

1. Family : The best way to celebrate any occasion, in my opinion anyway, is to get the family together and eat and drink to excess. This post talks about our Holiday Feast a couple of days after Christmas.
   
   
2. Friends : This would more appropriately be labeled neighbors, but even if they are not close friends good neighbors are great to have. I have been able to borrow a plow from a neighbor down the road for the last two years, and have been the happy recipient of two old trailers from my next door neighbor which I transformed into a utility farm trailer and a mobile chicken coop.
   
   
3. Me : One of my passions is cooking food over an open fire. We tend to grill year round even in the snow and rain. Here is the rotisserie Danielle got me for Father's Day last year. Its funny (given my anti-social admission above) that one of my favorite things is to BBQ up a pork shoulder for a bunch of people, like when we have our Memorial Day BBQ for friends and CSA members. To steal a line from Clerks "I hate people, but I love gatherings. Isn't it ironic."
   
   
4. Something I Love : This one is easy and hard at the same time. Easy since the thing I love most is my wife and family, hard since I don't tend to post sappy blogs. These posts about birthdays (Julia's, and Dainielle's)will have to do.
   
   
5. Bloggers Choice : As the name of my blog implies the adventures we get into trying to farm, which are largely the result of us having no prior experience, are the most memorable things that happen on the farm. Here are two posts about learning to castrate pigs and getting them to the butcher, which demonstrate this point
   

Archive Meme Instructions: Go back through your archives and post the links to your five favorite blog posts that you've written. ... but there is a catch: Link 1 must be about family. Link 2 must be about friends. Link 3 must be about yourself, who you are... what you're all about. Link 4 must be about something you love. Link 5 can be anything you choose. I think this is a great way to circulate some of the great older posts everyone had written, return to a few great places in our memories and also learn a little something about ourselves and each other that we may not know.

Turning Japanese --- I really think so

I was in Japan last week for a workshop related to my day job. It is amazing to see how the Japanese use space to its utmost. Parking lots had triple-decker elevator parking devices. One car was stored up in the air, one was at ground level and a third was held underground. The entire unit went up and down on hydraulics like the lift at a garage. (Sorry I failed to get a picture of this.)

The other noticeable area that they utilized space optimally is in agriculture. Almost any space between houses, warehouses, stores, basically anywhere there was some flat ground, held a garden. Since it is the middle of winter most of these gardens were pretty bare, but the hoop houses were plentiful and the cabages and onions that were still growing looked gorgeous, in perfectly straight rows with nary a weed in sight. The fields that were farrow had beautiful rich black soil just waiting for the weather to warm enough for spring planting.

I also saw vast expanses of rice paddies. They were all drained for the winter but you could see the canal system and pumps that allowed them to be flooded. I apologize for the glare in the pictures, the sun was shining off the windows of a train.
Tokyo is amazing. It is more Manhattan then Manhattan. Large portions of the city are as billboarded and lit up as times square.


But there are still signs of the past such as this Kabuki Theater,


Buddhist Temple

and most notably the Imperial Palace.

Snow Day

I was on kid duty Friday so Danielle could go to a farming conference. It happened to work out well since we received a couple inches of snow Thursday, not enough to cause Danielle any problems getting to the conference, but enough for the kids and I to have some fun.

Emily and Julia bundled up to help me with the morning chores.

And here is what the barn yard looked like when we walked out.

The girls were checking out some bunny tracks in the upper corner of the field, but the Turkeys thought they were playing with them.

Here is Sisyphus and his sister trying to roll his snow boulder up to the barn.

Goat Curry

Since winter has set in I decided to spice things up by trying some new recipes. As I blogged about here I butchered our Nigerian Dwarf Goat wether earlier this fall. At the time we grilled up some of the tenderloin and enjoyed it, but since then the goat meat has just been sitting in the deep freeze. Not just wanting to do beef recipes with goat I went to the largest cookbook in existence, the web. Typing goat stew into Google brought me to a Caribbean Goat Stew recipe that sounded interesting. I followed the recipe fairly faithfully except for omitting the tomatoes since we obviously do not have any fresh ones. I could have pulled some frozen ones out of the freezer but I was being lazy. The resulting stew was great (if I do say so myself) but what was even better was that everyone ate it. Now my kids are very adventurous eaters, but I would not have been surprised if they had passed on this meal. The curry gave it a nice kick, but did not make it too spicy for the kids. The funny thing is that everyone liked the meat, it was the potatoes and carrots that were not as well received. They came out as I would have expected and as I have had in other Indian Curries, but Danielle thought it would be better with vegetables cooked separately with a different flavoring. Truth be told she is not much for stew, or mushy vegetables. I knew that she really did like the goat though when she mentioned making the curried meat but with a different side dish later this week.

I find I get great enjoyment out of my kids eating food that I raised and prepared myself. My dad used to tell me something similar when I was a kid but I did not appreciate it until I had kids of my own. I guess that is always the case.

Julia's Birthday

My lovely daughter Julia turns 9 today. To celebrate here are some pictures of her over the last year.

Driving the tractor on a warm winter day (January 07).

Tilling up the garden (March).

Helping me construct the mobile chicken coop (April).

Swinging in the crab apple tree (April).

Riding on the water wagon (May).

Hanging out with her cousin (June).

Fishing (July).

Hiking the C&O Canal (August).

Collecting eggs (September).

Kyoshi Warrior (October).

High atop a load of straw (November).

Farm chores on a cold winter morning (December).

For anyone with a slow internet connection I am sorry for all the pictures, but Julia does a lot in a year.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY Julia!!!
Love Papa

Holiday Feast

A couple days after Christmas my mother, father, sister and nephew drove down from New Jersey to celebrate the holidays. I took the opportunity to try out, so to speak, one of my new presents. Danielle got me The River Cottage Meat Book for Christmas this year.

This book is a wonderful combination of political/social commentary on food production, cooking theory, recipes as well as gorgeous pictures and humorous anecdotes. It is truly a coffee table book with a message, and being a new farmer/foodie I am all ears. I was already planning to make prime rib since we had some in the deep freeze from last years side of beef, and figured this would be a great occassion to try out my first recipe from the book. I cooked up two prime rib roasts since neither seemed big enough for the 5 adults and 4 children who would be eating dinner.

Fairly simple recipe for the beef, rub with olive oil, salt and pepper, cook for 30 minutes under high heat to brown the outside then slow cook until done. Hugh, the author of the book, stresses that all roasted meat needs to rest for a minimum of 30 minutes for best results. Actually, the way he talks about it, you are committing a mortal sin if you don't let the meat rest. So while the meat was resting we took some of the drippings and made some Yorkshire Pudding (also from a recipe in the book).

I had never had Yorkshire Pudding so was not really sure as what to expect. There really is not much in Yorkshire Pudding, the recipe called for just flour, milk, water, salt and eggs. It did call for 4 eggs plus 2 more egg yolks which makes it quite decedent. The pudding puffed up nicely as you can see above, and the meat was thankful for the rest.

We also had mashed potatoes, gravy, and a green salad from our garden to round out the meal. Below is some of the dinner party.


My daughters were dressed up as fairies, and my son was too hot from playing with his cousin to wear a shirt, we have a very relaxed dress code at Chez Kushmerick. My nephew and sister are also in the picture, arguably much more appropriately dressed. Long story short the dinner and company was excellent and too many bottles of wine were consumed, exactly how I like to spend the holidays. The Yorkshire Pudding was a huge success, and based on the way it disappeared I foresee making it again soon.

Hope everyone had an enjoyable holiday full of good food and friends.

Early Xmas Present

We were gifted with a beautiful rainbow a couple days before Christmas.