A Sad Sight Indeed

Why is this sight sad, you might ask?  It looks like a dozen eggs.

Store Bought Eggs

Well, it is a dozen eggs purchased from the grocery store (gasp!).  When we have 60 + chickens roaming around in the pasture and we're not gathering enough eggs to feed our family, you know there's problems. Tricia did save the "good eggs" from our hens to feed to Russ since he's in from college.   Why is egg production down?  Let's find out what the problem could be and find some solutions.

1. Short days:  Hens are very particular about light.  Declining daylight hours will always equate to declining egg production.  You can avoid this by putting a light bulb in the hen house, but we don't want to go with that option.  For now we'll wait on nature.  The days start getting longer after the winter solstice, which is December 22nd.  This problem will take care of itself.
2. Age of bird: A hen is similar to a human female in that they are born with a finite number of eggs. Once they are laid, they are all gone.  We do have a number of older hens, but we replace them each year with pullets.  I don't think this is our problem.
3. Molting: Chickens will at some point stop laying eggs, and shed their feathers and grow new ones.  The body can't lay eggs and grow feathers efficiently at the same time, so they stop laying eggs to divert energy to re-growing their plumage.  You ought to see how ugly they are when they are molting.  We have a couple in this stage right now, but not enough to diminish production to the level it has.
4. Nutrition: I think we've found our problem.  Our hens are rugged individualists.  They roam around the 3 acre pasture, foraging for bugs, worms, grass, seeds, mice, and other such delectable morsels. We also throw them a few gallons of rice everyday.  This is fine during the growing season.  However, during the Fall/Winter months, the amount of natural forage is in short supply.  Think of a hen like an exotic race car.  She needs proper fuel (nutrition) to race (lay her eggs).  Calcium is a biggie, since she's depleting her body's calcium stores with each eggs she lays.  If the hen isn't getting what she needs, her body will put her egg laying on hiatus.  So what will we do?

Ground Oyster Shells

We will begin supplementing with a little bit of laying pellets which provide a nutrient balance that the hens need.  We're also giving them whey, a by-product of our cheese-making, which is high in protein.  Once Spring arrives, we can diminish the feed a little bit since they'll be getting nutrients off the land. For calcium, I've put a pan of ground oyster shells for the gals to eat on free-choice.   I think this will help. We'll wait and see.

My big question is this:  In the old days when there weren't feed stores providing a mix of nutrients in pellet form, how did the old timers manage poultry nutrition?  In reading, I learned a couple of things.  First, people fed their chickens scraps off the table.  We don't do that.  Most of our scraps get put in the compost pile to build our garden soil.

Secondly, and more interestingly, to give the chickens the protein they need in winter months, people would kill critters (possums, raccoons, etc), split the critter in half with an ax and throw it to the chickens.  Chickens are omnivores and will happily eat meat.  This meat provides nutrients that they need.  We currently do this with the rats we kill in the barn, but maybe we need to think about feeding the hens larger critters.

Image Credit

I wonder what people would think if they'd see me picking up roadkill on the side of the road and putting the carcasses in the trunk of my car?  Ha ha.

We'll let you know if we're able to get the egg production back up again soon.  It might take a while to get their stores of nutrition back balanced, but we need to get there so we can stop purchasing eggs from the grocery store. 

Economic Crash Course

Living on a homestead farm (to us) means trying to be as sustainable as possible, being as self-sufficient as possible, and above all, living within our means.  We try very hard to not go into debt and try to only buy things if we have the cash money to pay for it.  Listening to the news, especially on the economic/political front right now really grinds my gears.

Rant On [X] Off [  ]

There seem to be no adults in the room as anyone that brings up living within a balanced budget is branded as some sort of extremist.  Anyone that wants actual cuts to spending versus cuts to the growth in spending is marginalized by a society that wants more and more and more.  The concept of only purchasing what you can afford is foreign.  The question, "Can we afford this?" is never asked.  The word sacrifice appears to be an alien term.  Although greed and consumerism is nothing new in our society, is it just me or does it seem like the velocity of the "I want it now!" mentality is speeding up and our economy is hurtling toward the cliff?

Image Credit

It is my opinion that politicians of both political stripe within our Federal government don't have the gumption to address our bloated spending.  There are a lot of immoral things in our world today, but I think it is very immoral to purchase things for yourself and present the bill to your kids or your grand kids.  Our generation is saddling future ones with debt so large that the tax rates to service it will crush their standard of living.

With that being said, while reading Herrick Kimball's Deliberate Agrarian blog, I became aware of a great educational tool that is comprised of 20 videos, ranging from a short one minute and 38 second video to the longest, which is 19 minutes and 48 seconds long.  In all it takes 3 hours and 20 minutes to watch the entire course.  I did it over a week or so during my lunch breaks at work.  The class is called The Crash Course and you can go through it by clicking this link:  The Crash Course  I checked and the videos are also on You Tube as well.

I'm going to go through it again, but with my wife and kids this time.  The author, Chris Martenson put this together and begins by stating that "The next twenty years are not going to be anything like the past twenty years."  He then begins to develop that thesis by going back and explaining basic economics and moves to where we are presently and then finishes with how our past and current decisions have shaped the future.  But he doesn't stop there.  He gives you some questions to ponder and leaves you with some decisions to make.

It's really not a doom and gloom thing to make you fearful.  He's not selling anything.  He educates you so that your eyes are open and you have information to prepare yourself for changes that are sure to occur.  I'm was a Finance major so I sat through many boring lectures on economics, finance, and accounting.  This is not one of those type things.  Mr. Martenson has put together an informative, upbeat presentation that I enjoyed and I recommend it.

By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.  -Benjamin Franklin

Checking in on Big Boy

Big Boy is our Great Pyrenees livestock guard dog that we adopted.  We haven't talked about him lately. He is certainly a beautiful dog.  He hasn't worked out exactly as planned.  When we originally put him out in the pasture, he chased the chickens and barked incessantly at the cows.  One day I caught him with a chicken in his mouth and I knew we couldn't trust him for a while.  I think he was only playing, but he was playing too rough.

We got a heavy duty 30 foot cable with a tie down and put him in the pasture.  He has a good area to run around without getting in trouble.  We also let him run free, but the old boy runs around and gets in trouble. He ran down the road to a neighbor's house and must have done something because we heard the neighbor shooting a shotgun in the air to scare him off.  Big boy also digs holes.  Lots of holes.  Holes that hold water.

Big boy likes digging big holes

The people that we got him from gave him to us because he liked to roam around.  In fact he had gotten shot on one of his maneuvers.  You'd think he would learn his lesson, right?  It is such a dilemma.  I don't like him tied down all the time, even if it is at the end of a 30 foot cable, but when we let him go, he runs across busy roads where he could get hit by a car or goes to a neighbor's house and has the potential of getting shot. We're considering putting in an invisible electric fence with a collar, but some of those are pretty pricey.

He's a cool dog and we like him.  Sometimes he just chills out on the back patio.

What's up?

A profile shot of the hipster dog.

He is a good guard dog and barks his head off when strangers come down the driveway.  Benjamin has trained him to sit and shake hands.  If we could just teach him to not roam, not put chickens in his mouth, and not dig enormous holes, we'd be in business.

Delicious Party Dip

Tricia makes a delicious party dip that our family loves.  It doesn't last for very long. It is not made from something that you normally think about when making a good little appetizer or snacking dip - Radishes.  I stumbled across this recipe a couple of years ago when searching for something to do with a bumper crop of radishes and now radishes have become a staple crop in the fall/winter garden.

Here's a shot of the green leaves of a whole row of radishes growing right now:

A robust row of red radishes

Let's pick a nice handful:

Ruby Red Radishes

Of course when I'm in the garden, the girls have been conditioned to come running for a snack that I hand over the fence.  I pulled the tops of the radishes off and gave them to Rosie.  She was a happy little lady.

Thanks for the snack

Now if you're going to make dip, you need crackers.  Tricia decided to try to make crackers from scratch. With a cup of the cornmeal that we had hand-ground from whole kernel corn, she added a half cup of buttermilk, 3 tablespoons of butter, 1/2 cup flour, 3/4 teaspoon sea salt, 1/4 teaspoon baking soda, 1/8 teaspoon Criolla Sella pepper, 1/2 teaspoon chili powder and 1 teaspoon garlic powder and she kneaded it all up and rolled it out flat.

Rolling the dough out flat

Then she sliced it into 'cracker-sized' pieces.

Cutting crackers

Then she popped them in an oven heated to 350 degrees F and baked for 15 minutes.  There's also a pumpkin pie in there as well - yum!

Lovin' in the oven!

And here we are - homemade crackers!

Snack Crackers

So let's make our dip or the crackers will disappear before we have a chance to dip them.  First, we cut off the root and what's left of the stem.

Cleaning up a few radishes

We peel a few cloves of garlic:

Garlic

We soften up a brick of cream cheese and cut it into squares and put into a bowl.

Cream cheese for the dip

We put the radishes and garlic in a food processor and chop them up until they are finely minced.  When you open the top, you get a big whiff of spicy radishes.

Chopping up the radishes and garlic

Spoon the radish/garlic mixture into the bowl of cream cheese and stir.

Once mixed up, add a splash of kosher salt and a dash of Criolla Sella ground pepper.  You can get creative and add chili powder, if you'd like, for more flavor.  Stir it up again to mix it all up.

Salt and red pepper

Now the only thing left to do is to eat!  Grab a cracker (or three) and help yourself.

A mouth-watering up close view

This is spicy and good.  We almost ate the entire bowl this evening.  No worries, we've got lots more radishes growing in the garden.  This recipe is so quick and easy to make, you'll be snacking in no time.

Chicken-proofing the barn

A while back we talked about our chickens that have made themselves at home in the barn.  This causes a multitude of problems for us, including:

1. They poop all over the place.  
2. The roosters crow LOUDLY in the barn in the morning while we're milking.
3. The roosters and hens in amorous delight chase each other causing major drama when we need peace during milking.
4. The chickens jump up in the cows' feed trough and battle the cows for feed causing more drama.
5. Finally, they fly up into the hay loft and lay eggs in hidden nests that we don't find until much later.  The other day we found a nest of 19 eggs and they were much too old to eat.

So I had on my list to 'chicken-proof' the barn.  The chickens can climb underneath the edge of the barn since the siding doesn't go all the way down to ground level.  I was going to purchase a load of dirt and spread it in the barn, closing the entry into the barn.  It rained, though, ruling that option out for a long time. But our ditch had silted up and I needed to dig it out, so I figured I'd kill two birds with one stone and bring all the dirt/mud from the ditch and use it to fill up the areas in the barn where the chickens were coming in.

"Dredging" the ditch out

I shoveled out the ditch, placing the mud/grass in an old molasses tub.  When full, I would then pull it in our garden wagon out to the barn and shovel it in the holes where the chickens were getting in.

Digging ditches

You can see where I'm filling in the gap beneath the barn with mud that will harden and build up that area, keeping the chickens out.  I did this all around the perimeter of the barn.  This was a long, hard job (and very good exercise for someone who sits behind a desk in an office job all day)!

Filling in the holes

Right in front of the front gate to the barn, there is a big mud hole.  I filled it with the mud that will harden and hopefully fill in that low area.  The gutters we just hung on the barn should help out as well.  This also closed the gap beneath the gate where the chickens were doing the limbo dance to get under the gate and into the barn.

A muddy mess!

One more thing:  Not only were they climbing under the barn, but some were flying over the gate and into the barn.  I waited until evening and went to the barn and caught all of the birds that were inside.  I used my clippers to clip the feathers on one of their wings.  This will make them off-balance and they won't be able to fly over the gate.

Shave and a haircut - two bits.

When I was finished there was a pretty good pile of feathers beneath my milking bench.  Speaking of that bench, I made it years ago with lumber from a pine tree that lightning struck and killed at my parents' home.  It is heart pine and is still sturdy and strong after many years.  I've milked out hundreds and hundreds of gallons of milk sitting on that bench.

Milking bench, clippers, and feathers.

So the next morning when Tricia and I went out to milk... It was peaceful!!  There was only one chicken in the barn.  It was one we had missed when clipping wings the other day.  We'll take care of her tomorrow. All of the other hens have found new places to roost outside of the barn.  

Peace on Earth, Goodwill to Men, indeed!

Sasanqua Camellias in Bloom

Every year at this time the sasanqua camellias start blooming and the pink blooms brighten the landscape on otherwise gloomy days.  The Sasanqua Camellia is also known as the Christmas Camellia and it originated in China and Japan.  It is an evergreen shrub and has glossy leaves.  In Japan the leaves are used to make tea and the seeds are used to make tea oil that is used in cooking, lubricating, for lighting, according to what I read in Wikipedia.

Here is one of the pretty pink flowers after an early morning rain.

Pink Camellia Blooms

As I was looking at the flower, one of the bees from the colony of honeybees that live inside the column at our side door buzzed in for some pollen.

Busy bee

Sometimes we'll pick a handful of them and float them in a crystal bowl full of water as a centerpiece on our table.  It is a simple formality that brightens up meal time.

It's not only the bees that enjoy our camellias, we do too.  In reading about them, I was interested in learning how they make tea with the leaves.  You use only the fresh, new growth on the ends.  It's called a spear and two flags (2 leaves and the pointy end of a leaf about to open).  Once you harvest, you crumble and allow to dry/ferment for a few days.  Then you dry the leaves in the oven at 250 degrees for a short while and then you brew it.  I've got this on my list of things to try.  I never knew that we had a source of tea leaves sitting in our landscaping!

Keep Holding On!

Sometimes the simplest things speak volumes to me.  (Maybe they have to be simple for me to grasp them!) This afternoon was one of those gloomy, grey, wet, nasty, cold days of winter.  I was outside working around the barn and happened to look up at one of our pecan trees.

Barren Pecan Tree

The leaves have done their little dance to the ground and lay in crumple heaps on the ground beneath what used to be the canopy of the pecan tree - lifeless, dull, and brown.  If you step on them, they crunch under your feet and shatter into many pieces.  This is a normal cycle we call Fall, for obvious reasons.  All the leaves fall to the ground and eventually turn into soil in a marvelous cycle that enables the leaves to nourish the tree that once nourished it.

Dead leaves beneath the Pecan Tree

As a sharp north wind began to blow, I looked back up into the tree.  All the leaves have fallen to the ground...  Wait.  Check that.  What is that I see?

A lone GREEN leaf hangs on for dear life, long after all of his comrades decided to leave (pardon the pun). Every single leaf that once fluttered alongside it has given up and let go and fallen down, except for this one. This made me scratch my head.  There's a lesson to be learned here.  I want to be like this leaf.  Not content in following the pack, this leaf is holding on.  He's persevering.  He's fighting the good fight.  He's resolute, steadfast.   He perseveres.

Everyone else has deserted him and it looks bleak and hopeless.  He's at the end of his rope and he's tied a knot at the end and is holding on for dear life.  That's what I want to be like - a fighter, an over-comer, someone who never quits.

It's not easy being green.

You may feel some solidarity with the leaf in the old pecan tree. If so, don't conform! Even though things don't look good, against all odds, Live to Fight Another Day! Keep Holding On!