The Honey Harvest (Part 6)

After a week we got the honey dehumidified and now it is time for the bottling process.  In order to get the honey marketable, we put it in pint sized jars (22 ounces).  Last year we did this simply pouring it from plastic food grade buckets with a honey gate on the bottom into glass jars.  This year a friend let us borrow his old stainless steel bottler.

You can't see it, but on the back there is a thermostat and a place where you pour about 2 1/2 gallons of water into the back.  This creates a "water jacket" where, once plugged in and turned on, the water in the water jacket is heated to 110 degrees Fahrenheit using a thermostat controller.  You want the honey warm so that it will flow easily through the spigot, but not too warm, where the honey is heated over 105 degrees as you'd cook away the beneficial properties of raw honey.

The buckets of honey are placed in a cradle that allows the honey to slowly drip out while you're bottling.  Here you can see Russ operating the bottler.  As he slides the full jars over, I have the easy job of capping the jar with a lid.

Here is a close-up of the honey flowing as he holds the handle down which opens the valve and allows the honey to flow into the jars.

I'm holding the honey up to the light that shows its rich, golden orange color.  You can't control where the bees got their nectar, but I would guess it is primarily foraged from the flowers of the Chinese Tallow Tree, privet tree, willow tree and white Dutch clover.  One thing's for sure though: it's sweet! 

It didn't take us long with our assembly line process of bottling.  We got all the honey bottled and stacked in boxes.  The buckets are mostly empty, but we put the lids back on.  We'll add a little water to each bucket, cleaning the honey off and pour into remaining buckets.  Then we will feed this "honey water" back to the bees this fall or winter.  They'll take it back to the hive and not let it go to waste.  

Now that all the honey is bottled, we'll put our labels on the top of each jar.  This allows the customer to see the purity and beauty of our girls' honey.

Last years' honey production (2024 harvest) off of 5 medium honey supers yielded 13.5 gallons of honey or 119 jars.

This years' honey production (2025 harvest) off of 7 medium honey supers yielded 20.39 gallons of honey or 178 jars.  We thank the Good Lord for His blessings on our second honey crop and also thank our honeybees for their hard work.

This week we'll put the sign out in the front yard.  Fresh, local, raw honey!  $10 per jar with a $1 rebate if you bring your empty jar back on your next purchase.  That's a sweet deal!

Two Weeks Until the Spuds Go in the Ground

Then Isaac sowed in that land, and received in the same year an hundredfold: and the Lord blessed him.  Genesis 26:12

There are many verses in Scripture, particularly in the Gospels about the Parable of the Sower, in which the Lord talks about sowing and the multiplication of the seed, resulting in harvests of a hundredfold.  That's a great yield!  This year, we are going to track our harvest in our potato crop.  I've always enjoyed growing potatoes.  I can remember Irish Potatoes was the first thing my grandpa taught me to plant when I was a young boy.  Those are good memories about gardening that I still think about forty-something years later as I put in a garden each year.

I asked my wife to check out our local feed store for Seed Potatoes.  We generally plant the LaSoda variety.  The LaSoda is a red potato.  This variety was developed in 1948 by Louisiana State University Ag Experiment Station.  It is suited for our soils, climate and growing conditions.

Finally, Tricia texted me at work to let me know that seed potatoes were in.  You can see that we purchased 6 pounds of potatoes.  They were priced at $0.50 per pound or $3.00.  We have a whopping 10% sales tax in our parish, so after rendering to Ceasar what is Ceasar's, Tricia exited the feed store.  

I examined each potato for quality and all appeared to be good.  You can see right above my thumb in the photo below is one of the eyes of the potato.  My science teacher in high school, Stuart Buck, used to jokingly tell us that we should plant our potatoes wrapped in a newspaper so they'd have something to read while in the ground.  However, most newspapers today aren't worth wrapping fish in or lining a birdcage with , but that's neither here nor there and I digress.

Now you can plant the entire potato, OR you can cut the potato in pieces, ensuring that you have at least one eye in every potato chunk.  That's what I always do.  Each eye grows a nice potato plant.  I use a sharp knife to cut the potatoes up and then I turn them so that the cut side faces upward.  Then I place the potatoes inside in the warmest place I can find.  This will allow the cut part of the potato to 'scab' over.  I am told that if you immediately plant them without allowing them to scab, then the potatoes would rot in the ground.

I generally try to plant the spuds on or as close as possible to February 14th - Valentine's Day (since we love potatoes).  We'll see if the weather is cooperative.  They will mature in 110 to 120 days.  We know that we will put 6 pounds of potatoes in the ground.  A hundred-fold yield seems like a tall order!  We will track our harvest, though, and weigh it and report back our yield in early summer.

2014 Cornish Cross Meat Birds - By the Numbers

Things change quickly don't they?  In just 10 short weeks, our Cornish Cross Chickens went from this:

1 day old - a few ounces

To this:

10 weeks old - 6 pounds

To this:

Change indeed

In what I promise to be the last post on Cornish Cross Meat Birds for a long time, this is the post where we look at the numbers and examine the hard facts about the birds. I think it is helpful to do this as it serves as a basis of comparison from year to year - sort of like a measuring stick.  It may not provide all the answers you need, but at least starts you asking the right questions.

Date of Receipt:           01/03/2014

Date of Slaughter:       03/15/2014

Days old at Slaughter:               73

Weeks old at Slaughter:       10.43
Number of Birds Slaughtered:  92

Expenses:

• Purchased birds:                  $40.00  (101 birds at $0.40 per bird)
• Propane                                $10.00
• Waterer/Feeders                   $14.50
• Bulbs for Heat Lamp            $19.55
• Fixed costs                            $37.50
• Ice                                         $  8.75
• Ziploc Bags                            $  6.13
• Feed  (40 bags @ $17.48)   $699.20 {50 lb bags}

Total Cost:                                    $835.63

Losses: 9 birds or 8.91% mortality rate - unfortunately, most of the losses occurred at the latter part of the ten week growing period, AFTER they had consumed a lot of feed.  If they are going to die, you want them to die early on.

The math:

Cost per bird:                   $9.08

Cost per pound:                $2.22

Feed consumed per bird:   21.74 pounds

Feed cost per bird:            $7.60

Feed cost per pound:         $0.35

At $9.08 per bird, those are some expensive birds.  Notice the expenses DON'T include labor and it is a lot of work for 10 weeks to care for, then butcher, then cut them up. If you were to sell them, you would need to find clintele that placed a premium on a natural, quality bird versus the 'factory birds' you get at the grocery store.

Total pounds Cornish Cross carcasses whole:  376.07 pounds

Average pounds per bird:  92 birds:                      4.09 pounds

This is very interesting information.  Our records from 3 prior batches show that the size or average pounds per bird was not materially different from prior harvests.  All other expenses compared to prior years were not materially different.  I have to tip my hat to Parsley's Feed Store in Jennings as the feed cost per bag of Chick Grower remains the same price since 2012!

But the Huge difference was the Feed Consumed per bird:  This year each bird consumed on average 21.75 pounds of feed.  Last year each bird consumed on average only 12 pounds of feed!!!  We experienced almost a doubling in the amount of feed the birds ate while harvesting a bird yielding the same carcass weight. Our feed cost per bird went from $4.20 per bird last year to $7.60 per bird this year - with NO CHANGE in the cost of feed!  How can this be?

I certainly don't have an answer.  I can tell you that the winter of 2014 was colder and wetter for longer than the 2013 crop year, which may have encouraged them to eat more this year to stay warm?  Or perhaps the colder weather hindered grass growth which supplements their diets, causing them to eat more feed?  Fact is, those are guesses and I just don't know.  It remains a mystery.

Sometimes life throws you curve balls and you just have to choke up, stay in the batter's box and keep swinging for the fences.  And that's what we'll do.

In the end, we have a better, more high quality bird than what you can buy in the store and we'll have some nice chickens to eat on all year long that were harvested right off of the pasture of Our Maker's Acres Family Farm.  Sure, you can purchase a cheaper bird, but you can't purchase a better bird.  These chickens will provide some mighty fine eating - and there's no mystery there!