The Cornish Cross Project - 2019

As spring approaches each year our thoughts turn to preparing for yet another Cornish Cross Meat Bird crop.  Each spring we order baby chicks from a hatchery, raise them for approximately 8 weeks and then butcher them.  We freeze them individually and enjoy homegrown chicken that is antibiotic-free and hormone-free all year long.

This year I ordered them from Ideal Hatchery out of Cameron, Texas.  I ordered 50 baby Cornish Cross chicks.  They are straight run, meaning that the chicks aren't sexed (there will be both males and females).  The day old chicks will be mailed via the United States Postal Service from the hatchery in Cameron, Texas.  The town of Cameron is a little northwest of College Station, Texas.  Cameron, Texas is 303.1 miles away from our home in Jennings, Louisiana.  The total cost for all 50 chicks was $116.50, and that includes tax, title, and license.  Simple math tells you that the cost per bird is $2.33.

This morning at around 8 am, Tricia got the call from the Post Office that our package had arrived.  Tricia motored to town and accepted delivery of a box of live one day old chicks.  They were all alive and appeared to be healthy.  After counting there were 51 birds.  They normally give you an extra bird or two in the event one or two die during shipping.  The night before we readied a Rubbermaid trough that had sprung a leak to be used as a brooder.  We put wood shavings down, feeders, a waterer, and checked out the heat lamp.  After watering them, Tricia set the chicks down into their new home.  They'll outgrow this in a couple of weeks and we'll move them to another brooder and then ultimately out into a chicken tractor outside.

When they are spread out like this, you know the temperature is just right.

I always like to pick up baby chicks.  They are so cute and innocent.  They don't stay like this for long.  Soon they'll be UGLY.

Are you my mother?

They are cute little fluff balls, weighing only a few ounces and fit perfectly in the palm of your hand.  These monsters grow fast, though, and in 8 or 10 short weeks, they'll weigh 8 pounds and once dressed, they'll produce a 6 pound carcass.

A bird in had is worth two in the bush...

Dr. Tricia, Medicine Woman, identified one chick that was not doing well.  She quickly quarantined him into a private room.  It looks like "pasty butt" to me.  That is an ailment that is very common with baby chicks.  We'll work on him and try to get him better.

Since the birds are out in the garage, we are fortunate to have the services of Big Boy, our Great Pyrenees Livestock Guardian Dog to watch over the chicks and ensure that no predator gets to the chicks.  Here he is now, diligently working, alert and attentive.  To Protect and Serve.

Oh Wait.

We'll post weekly to update you on the chicks' growth.  It is always neat to watch the metamorphosis of a cute baby chick into a carcass ready for gumbo.

A New Item in the Garden

Saturday morning featured beautiful blue skies and sunshine that made you feel like a million bucks.  On days like this I wanted to be in the garden, readying things for spring planting.  Unfortunately, the ground is far too wet to work and the wintry weather still isn't over yet.  I heard we'll be in the 30's next week.  I did get my hoe out of the garage and hoed all the winter grass and bermuda grass that was threatening the young onion plants.  After five rows of hoeing, I was ready for a break.  As I walked back toward the house, I knelt down and while I was at ground level, I took a photo looking south and west just over the beautiful green foliage of the three carrot rows.

The greenery is so lush and healthy and happy.  It is very tempting to the animals.  If you look in the photo below on the right side, you can see that I had to resort to using the old garden picket fence to use as a barrier.  You can see it standing straight up in the air tied to the outer fence.  One day I walked out and the goats were standing up on the fence, craning their necks over and eating my sugar snap peas!  Not a good deal.  The picket fence barrier thwarted their plans, thank goodness.  We have been eating lots of fresh sugar snap peas.  So delicious!

As I was looking at the carrot greens, I decided that some would be ripe for the picking judging by the size of the greens.  Sure enough.  I pulled a handful of nice carrots.  Except they weren't your traditional orange carrots.  These were white carrots.  They were from a packet of Seeds of Change Colorful Carrot Blend Seeds.  Check 'em out:

I brought them to the rain bucket and washed them off.  The cows were really looking at the carrot greens with covetousness and gluttony in their eyes.  I certainly saw it.  I'll be back in a bit to give them the greens.  I just want to go show Tricia and the boys the white carrots.  I've never grown them before.

When I brought them inside, they thought they were parsnips.  I've never grown parsnips, either, but these aren't parsnips.  I did a little research on white carrots from THIS LINK.  Here are some facts on white carrots:

White carrots are pigment-free and they contain phytochemicals that work with nutrients and dietary fibre to protect against diseases like colon cancer. The phytochemicals in white carrots can also help reduce the risk of stroke. White carrots are good for carotene allergy sufferers. These varieties are very low in total carotenoid content and lack any pigmentation hence the presence of the white colour. They tend to have a smoother flavour than orange carrots.

They do contain naturally occurring, health-promoting substances, called phytochemicals, natural bioactive compounds found in plant foods that work with nutrients and dietary fibre to protect against disease. One might say these are the least healthy of carrots but nevertheless have a rich taste.  These chemicals may be important in reducing the risk of atherosclerosis, which is the build up of fatty deposits in artery walls. White carrots are preferably used in baby foods to prevent them from forming orange skin.

Russ promptly washed them, peeled them, and cut them up and we cooked them.  Interesting looking, for sure, but they seemed sweeter and tastier than a traditional orange carrot.

The Last Days of Citrus

We had a bumper crop of citrus this year.  Since late November we have been eating tangerines.  Just last week we ate the last of them.  Not to fear.  We've plenty of navel oranges.  Big, juicy, navel oranges.  We ate a lot of tangerines this year, but we also made tangerine juice.  Last year we froze a bunch of it, but this year we didn't have much space in our freezer.  We drank all of the juice fresh.  The tangerine juice is tart and sweet!  Delicious.  The color of the tangerines and the juice itself is beautiful.

Sunday turned out to be one of the most beautiful days of the year.  As we walked around outside and observed spring taking place before our eyes, I noticed something on the navel orange trees:

The orange trees are about to burst forth with blooms!  But there is still fruit on the trees! 

In addition to the multitude of flowers on the trees that are about to open, you can see the bright, new leaf growth on the trees:

Now, I think that with the tree putting energy toward blooms and the setting of NEW fruit, as well as the tree putting out new leaves, it is high time to pick the remaining fruit off the tree and put it in the fridge.  Naturally, we had already picked all the low hanging fruit.  The remaining navel oranges were at the very top of the tree and required me getting a ladder and climbing to the top.  As I would pick the softball-sized fruit from the trees, I would toss them down and Russ and Tricia would catch them and put what would fit into a five gallon bucket.

This is the last of the fruit from our trees from last year's harvest.  It has lasted us 3 whole months.  The 2019 crop is about to set on the trees once they finish blooming.  We'll look forward to enjoying delicious citrus again from our trees in about 9 months.

Will the Cows Pass the Test?

Cows are lactating animals that sometimes get mastitis.  Mastitis can be a nagging, painful, troublesome ailment.  Some women who nurse get it.  Some cows in milk get it.  It is simply an infection of the breast or udder.  Mastitis has several telltale signs: The cow's udder is tender to the touch and she tries to kick you.  Her udder may be swollen, tight, and hard.  It may be hard to get milk out of the teat.  You may see "strings" of thick "cheese-like" substance on the strainer.

These signs are visible and/or evident.  However, your cow can have mastitis without those symptoms.  It is beneficial to catch mastitis in its early stages so that you can treat your cow or isolate the affected quarters.  So how do you catch mastitis and treat it without seeing symptoms?  A California Mastitits Test! (CMT).  We just ordered one in the mail and received it the other day.

A cow has four distinct quarters.  Just because a cow has mastitis in one of its quarters does not mean the others are affected.  If a cow gets an infection, white blood cells mobilize to fight off the infection.  These white blood cells are called leukocytes.  The California Mastitis Test works in that an ingredient in the test mixes with the leukocytes to form a gel.  The more infection your cow has, the more leukocytes are present which react with the agent in the CMT forming a thick gel.

Image Credit

The CMT test kit comes with a "paddle" and some reagent.  Clean and dry the udder and teats.  Squirt out a squirt or two from each teat onto the ground.  Then, get a few squirts of milk from each teat onto the paddle.  It is important to isolate the quarter that may have infection, so it is important to keep the samples identified.  Just keep the handle to the front of the animal and get a squirt or two from each teat into each corresponding cup on the paddle.

Here is the reagent.  It has been mixed according to the directions in the box.

You'll want to tilt the paddle to get equal amounts of milk in each of the four cups.  You want around 1/2 teaspoonfuls in each of the four cups.  Then you squirt approximately 1/2 teaspoons of reagent into each cup.

Gently slosh the paddle so that the reagent has an opportunity to mix completely with the milk.

After mixing for 10 - 15 seconds, if you have infection, you should begin seeing the signs.

How to interpret the test:
If the quarter is free from infection, the milk remains liquid and flows easily,
If the quarter has moderate infection, the milk forms a gel and breaks up into clumps,
If the quarter has a serious infection, the milk forms a thick gel and will not pour.

Here is the table that scores the test:

When we tested Rosie for mastitis, she passed the test.  Milk from each quarter remained liquid and poured easily.  The California Mastitis Test will help us identify problems and treat prior to the infection intensifying.

A Sign of the Times

At a Prophecy Conference that we go to every year, the evangelist, Dr. Dave Reagan, always starts off his talks showing us something that he collects - funny church signs.  I am a big fan of clever wordplay and some churches are just so doggone good at putting interesting things on their signs.  Roadside signs really catch your attention.  Some can really make you smile or even shake your head.  Here are five pretty good ones (before we talk about a sign of our own):

I was waiting at a red light today and heard a loud bang behind me.  Two cars back a car had run into the back of a van.  Everyone got out and appeared to be okay, but the first thing I thought was, "I bet someone was on their phone!"  The sign above is wisdom.  Honking doesn't avert your focus from the road, but texting while driving sure does...

The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much!:

Here is a word of warning to thieves who broke into this church:

I can't tell you how many times I've thought what this church put on their sign!"

Whoever thought of this one, I gotta hand it to them.  It's pretty good!:

Long about this time every year, we put up a sign by the road in front of our house and leave it up until December.  It doesn't say anything clever.  It just announces that our hens have started laying fresh, free range eggs.  With spring around the corner, our hens have begun laying and we are averaging about 3 dozen a day.  That count will almost double next month and then will come down in the dog days of summer.  We eat all we can and give away and sell the rest.

In previous years, we had a homemade sign that we made.  After election season, we picked up a politician's sign that had been left in a ditch and painted over it to make it a solid white background.  Then we stenciled "Free Range, Pastured Country Eggs" on it.  Passersby would stop in and purchase eggs.  After they had bought a time or two, we put them on the honor system and put eggs in the fridge in the garage.  They just pick up cartons of eggs and leave money in the fridge along with empty egg cartons.  I like that system!

Our poor old homemade sign is ragged and worn.  This year we found a sign online to purchase for $20 and "upped our egg sign game."  It was delivered to our back door and we put it up the other day:

It is colorful and even has a picture of a happy hen sitting on a nest full of eggs.  The only problem is that she's sitting on some white eggs.  Our hens lay brown eggs and blue and green eggs, but I'm not complaining.  I like our new sign:

We'll have to sell about 7 dozen eggs before our investment is paid off, but the sign is already working.  A customer from last year dropped in to purchase eggs and said, "I was wondering when you were going to put the egg sign back up!" 

An On-going Project

When we built our barn, we went about it all wrong.  Don't get me wrong.  We LOVE our barn.  It's just that we didn't start things off right.  We didn't do our homework.  We decided where we wanted our barn and just began construction - without building up the level of the ground.  When you start with a poor foundation, well, trouble follows...

We noticed early on that we placed our barn in the lowest part of our property.  That's okay if you build up the area with dirt PRIOR to building.  Especially in the fall and winter, if rains fall, you have mud and lots of it.  This creates problems when your milk cows and goats have to walk through the muck and mire every single day.  The holes get bigger and deeper.  You can actually see that the cows DREAD walking through the muddy gauntlet. When you go to milk them, mud has splattered all over their bags, legs, and tail.  What a mess!

The north side of the barn is only slightly better, due to the fact that the walkway is spread out.  The whole area needs to be built up six inches or more with dirt.  If this can be done while leaving drainage for the rains, our barn can be rescued and both animal and human will be happier.

A couple of weeks ago I had 3 loads of dirt delivered to the house.  This isn't top soil.  It is mostly clay that will settle and form a hard base - a solid foundation that should have been done prior to the barn construction.  Better late than never, I guess.  The dirt was $90 per load.  Two loads were delivered right in front of the garden gate.

And a third pile was dropped about 30 feet away to the north and east.

Now the really labor intensive part of the job commences.  Since it is way too muddy to drive any sort of tractor or truck to the back, we'll have to move the dirt by hand.  We used a Gorilla Cart, which is simply a big wagon with big rubber tires and a dump bed.  We shovel loads of dirt into the wagon and pull it to the back and dump.  Then we repeat the process.  And again.  And again.  The progress is slow, but it is still progress.  We watch as the level around the north side of the barn rises.  (Compare the photo below to the second photo in this post.)  The cows and goats help to pack the dirt down.

If we could go back in time, we would have moved soil in from the beginning.  Speaking of going back in time, this post reminded me of another time we ordered loads of dirt.  The photo below was taken almost 11 years ago.  I ordered some topsoil to build up the level of the garden at the time and our boys discovered (as I did 40 years ago) that one of the best things in the world is a pile of dirt.  You can play king of the mountain!

King Russ watches as Benjamin rolls down the mountain.

You can dig tunnels, play with tractors and cars, and of course, wrestle and relish victory over your vanquished "foes."

"It's good to be da king!"

You can dig foxholes or pretend your pile of dirt is a volcano.  There's just no end to the fun that you can have with a pile of dirt!

Except 18 years later, our pile of dirt doesn't seem like it is as much fun as Russ' and Benjamin's pile of dirt!

The Late Winter Garden

Working up the soil for planting potatoes got me really thinking about the spring garden.  The tomatoes and peppers continue to grow, and it won't be long before I take a measured risk and put them in the ground.  The spring garden is exciting.  For some reason, my favorite thing to plant is green beans.  Perhaps because it reminds me of one of the first things I planted.  In elementary school we planted beans in a paper solo cup and marveled each day as they grew.  Forty-five or so years later and I still haven't lost the wonder at watching seeds grow.

Anyway, before we plant the spring garden, we'll need to harvest plants that are growing in the fall/winter garden right now.  Plants like carrots, chard, kale, beets.  Plants like cabbage and broccoli.  Weeks after cutting off the main broccoli head, we're still enjoying fresh broccoli.  Broccoli is an interesting crop.  Unlike cauliflower, it keeps sending out shoots of these little florets.

We pick those little tender florets and find that they are perfect for stir fry.

The sugar snap peas really enjoy growing this year.  I kid you not, they are eight feet tall and growing!  The last front brought strong winds that broke some off the trellis, but for the most part, they are still thriving.  We're beginning to pick lots of peas.

There's an old adage that says we should "bloom where we're planted."  The sugar snap peas are definitely doing just that.  Not only do they produce delicious peas, but the flowers are very nice, too.

We like to pick these while they are young and tender.  Sometimes I'll just stand out in the garden by the trellis and snack on them, right off the trellis.  When we do cook them, We don't overcook them.  We like to eat them when they are bright green and crunchy.

The bok choy has all gone to flowering and will soon go to seed.  I'll probably feed half of them to the goats and cows and the other half, I'll save the seed.

Cilantro comes up volunteer in the garden now.  It likes cooler temps.  The first sign of warmer weather and it bolts.  It sends up a stalk and flowers and is no longer good to eat.  Before this happens we like to pick and freeze the leaves and tender stalks for later. 

Here is the patch of Red Russian kale.

Here is our lettuce patch.  Different varieties like Black Seeded Simpson, Red Romaine, Oak leaf lettuce, Rocky top blend and butter crunch lettuce.

Here is a patch of mustard greens.  If you listen closely, they are calling for cornbread.  Mustard Greens and Cornbread go together like peas and carrots.

Here is a side view of some of the colors of the winter garden. 

Soon we'll harvest all of the remaining items holding fast since last year.  Then it will be time to sow seeds and once again marvel at the miracle of the metamorphosis from a seed to a healthy plant.

The Spring Potato Crop is in the Ground

I like to research interesting facts about different crops we plant in the garden.  For potatoes, I learned the following from www.Potatogoodness.com:

In October 1995, the potato became the first vegetable to be grown in space. NASA and the University of Wisconsin, Madison, created the technology with the goal of feeding astronauts on long space voyages, and eventually, feeding future space colonies.

I don't know about growing potatoes in space, but we have always grown them in our garden.  Potatoes are an easy crop to grow if the weather is somewhat agreeable.  They don't like wet soil, however, and we've had times in which they rotted in the ground.  We usually try to plant them around Valentine's Day.  This year we actually got them in the ground on February 16th.

I got the weed eater and trimmed all the winter grass growing in the potato bed down to the ground.  There were a few turnips in the bed that were about the size of a baseball that we harvested and cut up and fed to the cows.  When the cows see us working, they always come near the fence knowing they'll be recipients of something to eat!

Beginning to work up the potato bed

The potato, from the perennial Solanum tuberosum, is the world’s fourth largest food crop, following rice, wheat, and maize. The Inca Indians in Peru were the first to cultivate potatoes around 8,000 BC to 5,000 B.C.

Last week we cut up our seed potatoes to let them scab over.  We also had some potatoes left over from the spring crop that we'll plant.  We turned the soil over with shovels, digging deep and then we used a hoe to chop the soil.  Finally, we used a rock rake to smooth out the seed bed.  The soil was perfect and easy to work.  The composted leaves and hay we've been amending is helping out.

Russ dropping seed potatoes into the holes

The LSU planting guide calls for planting seed potatoes 4 inches deep and 12 inches apart.  For the size of our potato bed, this gives us perfect room for three potato plants wide.  I dug the holes, and Russ and Tricia helped me plant by dropping the potatoes in the holes.  Before covering them up, Tricia dropped a tablespoon of organic fertilizer in each hole with the potatoes.  This will give them a little boost to get them growing.

Plant with the eyes facing upward

The potato bed is about four feet wide by 45 feet long.  With two of us digging and Tricia planting and applying fertilizer, the work went quickly on Saturday afternoon.  If you look down the row, you can see a stick in the middle.  This marks the spot where we switched from cut up seed potatoes to whole potatoes planted left over from the Spring 2018 crop.  I want to do a field trial to see which ones are more productive.  The cut up potatoes are LaSoda variety, while the ones north of the stick are the Pontiac variety.

Benjamin was working, so he couldn't take part in the potato planting, but Tricia, Russ, and I felt good about getting the potatoes planted.  It is nice when the family can work together on a task.  It is a rewarding experience when you can lean on your shovel at the end of the day and look over the work you accomplished.  Satisfying.  Gratifying.

When the potatoes pop up out of the ground, I'll add some chicken litter from our hen house.  Then I will mulch around each plant with hay to discourage weed growth and to also preserve soil moisture.  One day in May we'll hopefully harvest and enjoy the fruits of our labors.