What smells???

That's what Danielle was saying when Buddy ran back to us during an after dinner walk in our pastures. I had seen a skunk earlier in the day when I was disking our upper plot and figured he would move on after all the noise from the tractor. That was not the case and Buddy managed to find the skunk and get sprayed in the face in record time. When he ran back to us he plowed his head into the ground and started rolling around in the wet grass to try to get the smell off. We quickly rounded up the dogs -- not wanting Boo to suffer the same fate as Buddy -- and I ran back to the house and got my rifle. An impromptu skunk hunt commenced with the kids and I tracking and Danielle taking pictures.



Lucky for us skunks never seem to be in a hurry to get anywhere and thus we were able to find and dispatch the skunk without too much trouble. I was willing to let the skunk go about its business earlier in the day but we could not tolerate one taking up residence in our pasture, spraying our dogs, and preying on our chickens.



They are mean looking critters with sharp little teeth. Their aroma shall we call it is quite pungent. Since I work in chemical research I knew right away that the skunks spray was primarily thiol based. As it turns out there are three main classes of chemical compounds in a skunks spray thiols, thioacetates and alkaloids with the thiols being the most odoriferous of the three.Sam brought a shovel up from the barn and we buried the skunk out in the hedgerow where I shot it.





With that taken cared of it was now time to try to detoxify Buddy. We went with the old standby of using tomatoes. We did not have any tomato juice handy so we used a can of crushed tomatoes from the pantry. Buddy was actually fairly stoic through the process of me rubbing the tomatoes all over him then rinsing and shampooing him with normal pet shampoo. He has spent the last two nights in his kennel in the garage but is mostly fumigated now so we will probably allow him to sleep in the house tonight.

Busy Weekend on the Farm

It finally warmed up this weekend so we tried to make the most of it and pretty much worked dawn to dusk.

I replaced the rotten sheathing on the barn.



Started turning an old trailer into a mobile chicken coop.



The kids took turns helping me out, but also took advantage of the warm weather to have a water gun fight.





Some other things accomplished that do not have associated pictures.

• Hand forked the new berry patch
  
• Tilled up a portion of our new plot for onions
  
• Planted Bi-Color corn
  

All in all it was a great weekend, but one of the weekends that I am kind of happy to have end so I can go back to work and rest.

Ribs!

The picture above says it all. Danielle picked up the pork from the butchers on Wednesday and we have been eating it almost constantly. The kids tried some pork chops the night she brought everything home and liked them so much that Sam requested to have more on Friday night. This weekend my parents were down so I barbecued up a couple racks of ribs and we made some more chops. It was quite the feast. Emily my oldest has already requested that I barbecue up a pork shoulder for her birthday, the kids really love the pulled pork. Danielle is salt curing the bacons and hams and my only disappointment is that I will have to wait up to 6 months for the ham. I must say that all this good eating is making me forget how much trouble we had getting the pigs to the butcher.

Fields Plowed

The last two evenings after work I have plowed up two plots for crops. The larger, where the pigs were paddocked, will be planted with corn, beans, melons, pumpkins etc. The smaller plot is up at the top of our property where the potatoes and first round of corn are planted. I plowed up a wedge shaped area next to the original plot which we will use for transplanted berry plants. We hope to some day have a pick your own berry operation with strawberries, blackberries and raspberries. We already have all of these varieties in the kitchen garden and will be transplanting the suckers and daughter plants as they spread.

When Pigs Fly

Runt and Grunt, our Tamworth pigs have done a good job of rooting up and fertilizing our field over the last couple of months. They both put on a lot of weight and thus were ready to go to the butchers. The plan was to load them into the back of my pickup the night before their appointment (Easter Sunday) and drive them up the next morning. I built a ramp out of two 1/2 inch thick sheets of plywood with furring strips spaced every foot or so for traction. Danielle and I tried to coax them in with the slop bucket and after many failed attempts managed to get Grunt -- the bigger of the two -- into the back of the truck where he happily went about eating his dinner. We tried unsuccessfully to get Runt to join him then realizing that one was better than none decided to just take up Grunt and let Runt feed out for another couple of weeks. After we closed up the back of the truck and turned it on Grunt started to take exception to his location. He broke the latch that holds the cap window down and then proceeded to flop up onto the tailgate, teeter there for a moment and ungracefully flip out the back. He was quite the site in my rear view mirror. Luckily he was unhurt and was more than happy to return to his paddock.

My wife wakes me up the next morning to inform me that all before 6:30 AM she has called a livestock hauler that the butchers recommended and that he would be coming that morning for the pigs. The hauler shows up to our place at 9:15 AM. It takes the three of us at least a half hour to wrestle the pigs into his truck -- I am stiff and sore as I type this. And the biggest kicker is after calling the hauler at the last minute and him having to help us fight to get our free range pigs into the truck, all he wants to charge us is $15. I have to force him to accept $25 for his troubles and feel that I got off cheap.

So all in all the pigs make it up to the butchers and we should be able to pick up our fresh pork on Wednesday, and now I have a story to go with the expression When Pigs Fly.

Garden Tilling and Corn In

Spring is definitely moving on although we are still getting some cold snaps, and may even get some snow flurries later this week. We picked up a walk behind tiller this weekend and turned over the kitchen garden. Danielle had a bunch of seedlings in a makeshift cold frame which we needed to get into the ground. I am pleased with the way the garden soil is developing. It was much easier to work this year and all the organic matter from our composted kitchen scraps and chicken bedding that we worked in has really helped to break up the clay. Maybe in a couple more years we will be able to skip the tilling altogether.

After work on Tuesday (April 3^rd) Sam and I carted the tiller to the upper field, prepped the soil and put in some rows of corn. We had some White and Bi-Color super sweet left over from last year. Not sure how successful the germination will be on this seed but figured it was not going to do us any good sitting in the barn. If we do get some to grow from this planting it will be a nice early crop of corn. We are going to plant new seed down where the pigs have plowed and fertilized for us after they are shipped off to the butchers next week.

Potatoes In

Over the last two days I put in our first round of potatoes. The seed stock are leftovers from last years crops. We have some fingerlings on order but for now I got in three rows of Red Nordlands and two rows of Yukon Golds. I still have more of each in the cellar, we plan on planting a couple different rounds to maximize our yield and storage ability. Last year we only did the one early planting and got an excellent crop, but over the last month or so the Yukon Golds were getting mighty soft. We had stopped eating the Nordlands in the early winter. The Nordlands will be harvested early as new potatoes, but we will let the Yukon's fully mature. After a long winter it felt good working the soil again and getting our first crop in.

Look what I found.

Those would have been the words Buddy -- our 1 1/2 year old border collie/terrier mix -- was saying when he exited the hedge row with his latest find. I took the dogs out for an early morning walk through our back pastures. I like getting out to survey the land and think about where we will plant things and what other projects I need to do. The dogs, the aforementioned Buddy, and Boo -- a 4 year old springer spaniel mix -- love to run and explore the hedge row around our field. This morning Buddy pops out of the hedge row with a large white object in his mouth. I initially thought it was a piece of styrofoam or other trash. He was a little hesitant to give up his prize but did come over and leave it for me when directed. Turns out Buddy found the top portion of an animal skull. After bringing it inside the kids had fun speculating what type of animal it was until Google revealed its true identity. The skull is from a White Tail deer and since there are no horn buds (not sure if that is the correct terminology) I assume it was a female deer. We need to start a nature shelf so that we have some place to display all the things we find around the farm.

Snowy Morning

Got off to a slow start this morning. Snow started around 5am so I took my time getting ready for work to let everything settle on the roads. Since I was still at home when the sun was up I let out and fed the animals before I left. Normally Danielle takes care of the animals in the morning, but it was peaceful to feed the animals in the falling snow.

Winter Finally Here

Well winter has finally arrived, and none too soon. After watching "An Inconvenient Truth" with the kids last week Sam was convinced that we would never have snow again. It was real windy and started snowing hard Thursday afternoon. The kids headed out the door just as soon as they saw that the snow was sticking. The kids did their best to get some sledding in, even though we barely had a dusting.


The snow did not seem to bother the goats any, they just went about their business as normal, but the pigs were happy to curl up inside their shelter and wait for the squall to blow over. Not more than an hour after these pictures were taken all the snow had melted and Sam was back waiting for winter.

New Year -- New Fences

The addition of our pigs highlighted the need for some new paddocks. Although we have 5.25 acres only about half an acre was fenced in with goat fencing. I had previously tried to contain the goats with electric tape but their desire to be up by the barn and us was much greater than the deterrence factor of an electric shock. Having three goats, two pigs and thirty some chickens all on half an acre was definitely taking a toll on the pasture. Besides the over grazing, the rooting of the pigs and their enormous manure production was just too much for the area to handle. So the mild weather around the new year provided a good opportunity to fence in the upper pasture. Enclosing this field effectively doubled the area for the animals as well as enabling the goats to browse the hedge row.


I purchased two rolls of fencing for the upper pasture, but since I was able to tie into an existing line of field fencing in the hedge row I only used one. The other roll was used to fence in a long border with our neighbors properties. The kids helped me remove the electric tape and post connectors as well as driving the tractor with all the needed tools.







Finally, we used the recovered electric tape and some step in posts and a few hog panels to make a paddock for the pigs. The pigs are not nearly as agile as the goats and after getting shocked a few times the first day have been content to be in their quarter acre slice of heaven. Now their rooting and manure is being put to good use, prepping the area of pasture for spring plantings.

They sleep in a simple A-frame structure fabricated from a tarp and some scrap pallets. Another pallet A-frame provides shelter for our rent a stud goat buck Skeeter in the upper pasture.

Another thing I never thought I would do

We added two Tamworth pigs to our small hobby farm a few weeks ago. My son and I in particular were excited to raise some pigs since we are as he likes to put it "bacon buddies". I must say the pigs are quite cute and we all enjoy having them around. We all get a laugh out of watching them run around since they can not bend in the middle and thus have a particularly amusing running style. Don't worry I am not getting too attached to them and I will have no problem sending them off to the butcher when they have fattened up.

Now for those of you who think the title of this post refers to the mere owning of pigs you are very much mistaken. See we purchased two weanling male pigs that were approximately ten to twenty pounds each. No problems so far except that the person we purchased them from had yet to castrate them. My wife brought the pigs home a few days before we went on vacation. A week down in Disney followed by a week of my wife and kids at her mother's place in Alabama. Did I mention that we all caught a nasty cold down at Disney which I am just finally starting to get over. What all this means is that by the time we are ready and able to castrate the pigs they weigh in at about 60 lbs for the big guy and maybe 40 lbs for the runt. I will spare you the details of the castration, except to say it is surgery that I am performing on the pigs while my wife is trying to hold them still. Normally watching my petite wife try to wrestle a pig would be funny, but when I am trying not to cut her or myself with the scalpel, nor cause any undue harm to the pigs during the procedure it is quite stressful.

I am happy to say that the pigs seem to be healing nicely, and my wife and I now know that we can do some things we never would have thought about.

Farm Truck

Besides a tractor a good old truck is probably the most indispensable tool to have on a farm. I had been looking for a truck for sometime and finally was able to find one last week that fit the bill. It is a 1986 Chevrolet Silverado diesel with over 200K miles on it. We now have something besides the wifes mini-van to cart hay, goats, pigs etc. around in.

Thanksgiving Turkey

As my wife is fond of saying, we started Thanksgiving dinner last Easter by setting 18 Narragansett turkey eggs into an incubator. From those 18 eggs we only had three turkeys make it to maturity one of which was white (not the proper coloring for a Naragansett).
We augmented our flock with two birds from Springfield Farm to make sure that we would have a breading pair.

All told we ended up with three Toms one Hen and the aforementioned white. In order to allow the bird to age appropriately and to avoid grossing out some house guests I processed one of the Toms and the white one the weekend before Thanksgiving. After plucking and cleaning our Tom weighed in at ten and a half pounds. The white went into the deep freezer and will be dinner sometime this winter.

On Thanksgiving we also cooked a store bought thirteen pound bird, to ensure leftovers and placate my mother who was somewhat leery of eating our homegrown bird. While our bird was a few pounds smaller it was considerably taller (our turkey is on the left).

All said and done the turkey was delicious and it was great that the potatoes and beans were also grown on our farm.

An Accidental Dinner

Our chickens like to go into the goat stall during the day to root around through the straw for food as well as to just hunker down out of the weather. Some had gotten in the habit of jumping up on-top of the corner hay feeder. This was not a problem when it was full of hay other than the fact that they tended to spill some of it, but one day the feeder was empty and one of our Delaware's managed to fall down into the feeder and get herself stuck. Not sure how long she was like this but upon removing her it was clear she could not walk. Danielle hoped that she was just in shock so she isolated her and gave her some food and a electrolyte solution.

After a couple of days it was clear that she was not going to recover so I culled her. Not really wanting to take the time to pluck all her feathers I instead just skinned her. It was apparent when butchering her that she had broken her one leg and had a significant amount of internal injuries. It ended up that I was only able to salvage the two hind quarters and one breast. After letting the meat age for a few days in the refrigerator I made what turned out to be a delightful dinner -- if I do say so myself. I first browned the chicken on the stove top with some butter and onions. Then added some chicken stock to deglaze the pan and baked it with some fresh rosemary from the garden. Served over some farmstyle home fries made with our own red potatoes it was quite a treat.

We have since removed the corner feeders from all of our stalls, but this definitely seems like an example of making lemonade from lemons.

Our First Rifle(s)

Make no mistake this was a big transition for self proclaimed liberal easterners, the acquisition of our first firearm. Growing up in densely populated Northern New Jersey I never handled or fired a gun when I was a child. There really was just never the opportunity or reason to do so. Since moving to a farm in Western Maryland things have changed substantially. As just one example a few months after we moved in one of our dogs chased/cornered a groundhog into the goat stall of the barn. Now groundhogs are a real pest around here since they do a job on the fields with their tunneling, as well as their habit of digging into gardens and eating all of the good fruits and veggies. We realized that we wanted to dispatch it, but needed to ask our neighbor to come over with a rifle to take care of him.

So when my Dad mentioned that he had an old single-shot .22 rifle that he won in a poker game during college (whole other story there that we will not go into) I jumped at the chance to have it, "for the farm" as my dad put it. My folks still live in the same house I grew up in and thus the rifle had been sitting unused in the attic for more than 40 years.

When I brought the rifle into the house, we had a family discussion, ostensibly to talk about the responsibilities associated with having a firearm. We were talking and the kids were listening and interjecting and at one point I was somewhat sloppy in my choice of words and said something along the lines of "Since we now have a weapon in the house..." My 6 year old quickly interjected to correct me stating that we already have weapons "we have all these sharp knives ...". The obvious albeit sometimes overlooked fact that many of the tools we have around the house and farm can be used as weapons, and the fact that my children recognized this made me more comfortable that they understood what the rifle signified.

Since that was out of the way obviously the next thing was to see how well the rifle shot. After cleaning the barrel the kids and I went out to the back pasture where we would have a safe backstop, set up a makeshift target and tried out the rifle. While the rifle seemed to operate fine my shooting prowess needed a significant amount of work. The kids all tried it out, but since this is an adult sized rifle they were not able to hold it with proper form. Not wanting them to be discouraged or learn bad form I did what any unschooling homesteader would do, went out and bought them a youth-sized single shot rifle. So now in the space of a week or two we go from zero to two rifles in the house. The model I bought the kids is actually a matched pair, meaning it has a .22 rifle barrel and a 20 gauge shotgun barrel that are interchangeable so depending on how you want to count things maybe 2 rifles and a shotgun.


The new rifle fits the kids much better and was an instant hit with the girls. Sam however was getting frustrated since he was unable to site the rifle properly. For those of you unfamiliar with shooting a gun, when you use open or iron sites you need to focus on the end site and line it up in the slot of the rear site. To be honest if you are not used to doing this it takes a while to get used to and it helps to close your non-shooting eye. This is a lot to ask of a six year old and I wanted shooting to be something Sam enjoyed not something that made him feel insufficient. It is really tough always being the youngest. This lead to another trip to the sporting goods store and the purchase of a Red Dot scope. This is a non-magnifying rifle scope that superimposes a red dot on the target. All you have to do is look through the scope put the red dot where you want to shoot and squeeze the trigger. With this addition Sam is doing great and it felt great to me when he lit up with the re-newed self-confidence.

Not sure where we are going to go from here, but we have discussed hunting some rabbits since they are in season now, although Julia wanted to jump right to deer. I explained that we needed a much more powerful rifle for that and we would not be going deer hunting for a number of years. She took solace in the fact that if we got any rabbits she could sew their pelts into cool stuff.

Last of the Tomatoes

We have had our first frosts the last couple nights. We were able to get some row covers over the lettuce and spinach, but there seemed no good way to protect the tomatoes. Here are the last of the San Marzano and Beefsteak tomatoes, in half bushel baskets my Mom was able to acquire for us. We are going to store them down in the cellar with the potatoes in hope that they will slowly ripen and extend our fresh tomato season.

Filling the Hay Loft

This morning Julia and I took the tractor and trailer up to the corn patch and harvested all of the remaining corn stalks. While this last planting of corn was a complete bust in terms of ear corn it did provide a fair amount of stalks. We cut down the stalks at the ground and bundled them with some twine into 6 large bales.

After driving them back to the barn I threw them up into the loft and Emily helped arrange them. Latter in the day Danielle picked up 24 bales of straw which we also put up in the loft. As you can see we have quite a bit of supplies for the winter (from left to right it is corn, straw, hay). The corn will be used as a treat for the goats as well as feed for the pigs we are getting in a month.

A Fall Morning on the Farm

Culling, Processing, or as I like to call it a good old Chicken Slaughter

The chickens had finally fattened up so we decided to take advantage of the long Labor day weekend to slaughter, pick and pack our surplus cockerels. We are keeping one Welsummer and one Dorking rooster, but this left us with nineteen cockerels for meat. Trying to learn something from our earlier test run, we separated the cockerels from the rest of the flock Saturday, putting them in the extra stall in the barn. This allowed us to evaluate all of the cockerels and decide which two birds were the closest to their respective breed standards and thus would be kept on as our roosters.

It also made it much easier for me to grab the birds on the day of the slaughter since they were in a confined space. We normally use the extra stall to store hay for the goats, as well as to store other odds and ends. We covered up the hay with a tarp to keep the cockerels from getting into it, the whole point of separating them out is to clear their crop and stomach of food so that the eviscerating is less messy. This was not completely successful as they managed to still get into the hay and thus in the future we will want to put them in an empty stall.

We did not get started as early as I would have liked on Sunday, mostly due to the fact that I had to run out and pick up a knife to do the killing with. We do not have a boning knife and my pocket knife which I used on the test bird was not the best tool for the job. So after Sam and I ran out to the store and we all had breakfast I pulled killed and started processing the first three birds at around 10am.

Things were going along slow and steady, so slow in fact that my wife took sympathy on me and decided to help out with the picking. We worked out a system where I would kill three chickens at a time then bring them up to the patio where we would scald and pick them. The picked birds would go into the garage fridge to cool, and the process would continue. We did this until we had 9 or 10 birds cooling then we switched to eviscerating and packing. Again Danielle helped out -- I am only pointing this out since it was made clear to me early on that she did not want any part in the processing of the birds. I eviscerated and washed the chickens in the kitchen sink and Danielle did a final picking and cleaning of the birds then packed them into bags. We recently purchased a vacuum sealer (thanks to the kind support of our personal CSA) and she put the birds in these bags but did not seal them so that they could drain for a few days in the fridge before being sealed and transferred to the freezer.

So as not to be too boring you can figure out where it went from here, back out to kill and pluck the rest of the birds and then back inside to eviscerate and pack. When all was said and done including cleaning up the barn, patio and kitchen it was about 8:30 PM. A long day for sure but now we have a freezer full of chickens (well not full since my wife purchased a huge freezer but that is a different story) and we can look forward to pulling them out for dinner throughout the winter.