Spring Brings Flowers... Along With Something Else

The weather has been fantastic lately.  Cool mornings with brilliant sunshine and the bluest skies you've ever seen.  The rains really invigorated growth on all of the plants, most noticeably Tricia's roses, by activating the rose fertilizer that I sprinkled around the base of the roses.  Her white rose bit the dust last year, but the yellow and pink roses are as happy as pigs in mud.

The pink rose yields a beautiful flower - just about as perfect as you can imagine.

The yellow rose isn't as perfect in shape or symmetry, but it has a really nice fragrance.  The pink one has no scent at all.

Flowers attract appreciation by others that aren't human.  Bees!  Bees are everywhere right now.  Tricia brought it to my attention, much to her chagrin, that our colony of bees (or columny of bees!) has moved back into the column that supports our side porch.  Tricia doesn't like the bees living there as it is not hospitable to guest to have swarming bees by the door that greets most of our visitors.

After the bees left the column last fall, it was my job to get caulk and fill up the crack between the top of the column and the ceiling so that it blocked their entrance.  My intentions were good.  My follow-through was not.  I put one layer of caulking along the bottom and decided I would let it dry before putting the second layer.

But the problem is, I never got back around to putting the second (and third layers).  Those two layers would have completely blocked the bees' re-entry to their home in the column.  Next time they move out, maybe I'll completely patch up the holes.  While Tricia doesn't like them in the column, I love having them there as they pollinate our garden and fruit trees. 

2018 Meat Birds - Six Weeks Old

Very early Saturday morning, we had some bad weather accompanied by strong winds blow through.  We were prepared, though.  The night before I had used a sledge hammer to drive a metal stake into the ground and tied a rope around the stake and the frame of the chicken tractor.  This (hopefully) would hold the tractor down.  We had learned a couple of years ago that the tarp on the tractor turns it into a sail and in high winds, it will flip it over and kill chickens.

After Saturday morning's weather, I learned that I need to stake down BOTH sides!

Staking it down

The winds picked up the tractor and shifted it, breaking one of the wheel levers in the process and setting the tractor down on a water bucket.  Fortunately, none of the chickens were injured or killed and only four of them were outside the tractor.  They were quickly caught and returned to safety.

A broken wheel lever that must be repaired

I simply used the old wheel lever as a template and cut another one out of a 2x6 and then drilled holes in it and put it all together.  It isn't as pretty as the first one, but it works!  I was able to move the tractor to a dry spot.

All Fixed up!

So it is 'weigh day,' and as I discussed last week, I normally pick out an average sized bird to weigh.  I'll do that today as well, but I'll also pick out the largest bird and weigh it.  I'll pick out the smallest bird and weigh it, and I'll also pick out an average-sized bird and weigh it.  We're shooting for a 6 pound carcass at 8 weeks, so let's see where we are at 6 weeks.  Here is the biggest bird.  He's an athletic thing and promptly jumped out of my bucket!

I put him back in the bucket and carried him into the garage where I have the kitchen scale set up.

The largest bird weighed in at.... (drum roll) 5 pounds 13 ounces!  Whoa.  He'll be ready to butcher at some point during his 7th week of life.  A week early!

Let's see the smallest bird.  He is easy to spot.  He's not agile enough to jump from the bucket, but he didn't like being in it for sure. 

The smallest bird at six weeks weighed 4 pounds 7 ounces.  There's almost a pound and a half difference in weight between the largest bird and the smallest.

Now, let's do like we've been doing every other week and we'll weigh the bird that looks to be the average-sized bird.  I scooped him up and put him in the bucket.

The average-sized bird weighed 5 pounds 4 ounces.



Let's look at a good comparison:

Week Six 2018: 5 pounds 4 ounces.  That is one pound six ounce gain since last week!
Week Six 2017: 4 pounds 8 ounces.
Week Six 2016: 5 pounds 1 ounce

We are well ahead of 2017 birds at this stage and slightly ahead of 2016.  These birds are just healthy and looking good.  We don't want them to get too much over six pounds as we've discovered the tenderness and flavor of the bird suffers.  We may very well try to butcher them in batches.  In other words, we may try to slaughter them as they reach 6 pounds and allow the smaller birds to grow for another week.  We'll see if that makes sense.  Stay tuned for next week's weigh-in, as it could be the last for the 2018 Meat Birds.

A Springtime Tradition

In what has become a tradition over the past several years, Benjamin and I plant a row of peanuts in the garden.  Peanuts are not a crop that I had ever planted until just a few years ago.  It turns out that they are relatively easy to grow.  I haven't achieved spectacular yields, but we have been successful in having enough to roast and make peanut butter with, and that's always exciting.

In past years, I planted Shronce's Black Peanuts.  This year I'm trying a Tennessee Red Valencia Peanut that I got from Southern Exposure Seed Exchange.

I opened up the artsy seed envelope and poured out the peanuts in my hand.  It looks to be about 13 peanuts.  I could eat all these in mere minutes, but these peanuts aren't for eating.  They are for planting.  The previous afternoon I had worked up the soil so that when I got home from work, I could milk Luna and plant peanuts before it got dark.

Before you plant them, you need to shell the peanuts.  I went and got Benjamin to assist.  We sat in the garden and quickly shelled them.  The amount of actual peanuts we get to plant in minimal compared to the big envelope of peanuts, but oh well, I actually have peanuts in the pantry from last year's crop that we haven't made peanut butter with yet.  I'll supplement with those seed peanuts if these aren't enough to plant the entire row.

The planting guide calls for planting them 1 inch deep and 8 inches apart from one another.  I started digging the holes and Benjamin planting a peanut into each hole and then filled the holes in with dirt.  We ran out with about 1/4 of the row left and I planted some of last year's peanuts to finish out the row.  Jane, our soon-to-be mother goat, supervised the work.

It didn't take long for two of the three triplet goats to come poke their heads through the garden fence and eat the green grass just inside the garden fence.

In this case, the grass truly IS greener on the other side of the fence.

Makes Me Wanna Take the Backroad

Makes me wanna take the back road...

My job takes me west on I-10 for about a 40 minute commute each day.  Almost entirely all Interstate travel with the cruise control set at 74 mph.  It is uneventful, almost automatic.  So routine, I think the car could drive itself.  Except they recently launched a multi-year construction project that has sent my easy commute into somewhat of a tailspin.

That 40 minute commute turned into an hour and 15 minute commute on the very best day and a 2 hour and 45 minute commute on the worst!  I tried many different routes, but it seems other people had figured out those 'supposed' short cuts and traffic was backed up there too.  So the other day, I had nothing to lose and I decided to take some back roads to get home.  Rather than idling in bumper to bumper traffic, I determined I would drive way out of the way to get home.

I headed north for 18 miles and then 37 miles east and then 21 miles south and then 25 miles east.  That is 101 miles, whereas my normal commute is 49 miles.  On the positive side, I got off the beaten path and saw some country at a slower rate of speed.  I took time to observe things around me.  On a stretch of back road between Kinder and Welsh, I was awestruck by the beauty of a shady canopy of oak trees that enveloped the country road.  The trees had fresh green leaves on them.  I had to stop the car and get out and take a photo.  That's something I'd never ever do on I-10!

It reminded me of a country song I like by Rodney Atkins whose chorus goes like this:

And it makes me wanna take a back road

Makes me wanna take the long way home

Put a little gravel in my travel

Unwind, unravel all night long

Truth be told, I'd like to take the back road, the long way home and put some gravel in my travel on a more routine basis, but there is a lot of planting in the garden that needs to be done.  I've learned that those seeds don't plant themselves!

Solving a Pet Peeve at Breakfast

Even though Luna lost her calf, it wasn't a total loss as she's now in milk.  We are milking her one time a day in the evenings when I get home from work.  So now we have an abundance of milk.  That is a good problem to have.  Tonight we had delicious homemade ice cream. 

One thing about having all this milk is that you also have a bunch of cream to skim off the top.  Tricia skimmed a bunch of cream and made some homemade butter.

Fresh milk to drink, butter to eat, and a by-product of butter-making - buttermilk.  We'll likely use this to make pancakes.

In order to store our homemade butter, Tricia pulled out the butter bell.  The butter bell is a contraption that solves and age-old problem for breakfast-eaters everywhere.  Don't you just hate it when you try to spread cold butter that you've just pulled out of the refrigerator onto a piece of toast or a pancake?

The rock-hard butter ends up tearing your toast as you try to spread it with your knife.  There is a better way!  With a butter bell, your butter remains at room temperature and is soft and creamy.

Tricia packed her homemade butter into the top portion of the butter bell.  The top portion is the lid and underneath the lid, inverted, is the bowl that holds all the butter.

Then water is poured into the bottom portion of the butter bell.

The lid/bowl full of butter is then inverted and placed into the bottom portion of the butter bell that holds the water.

The water acts as a seal, keeping out oxygen.  As long as you put fresh water in the butter bell every 3 days, you can keep butter in the butter bell sitting out on the counter at room temperature for 30 days.  And here's the best part - the butter will remain smooth and creamy and your toast will not be brutalized any longer.

2018 Meat Birds - Five Weeks Old

On April 7th, a north wind started howling, bringing with it chilly temperatures that dipped into the low 40's.  Certainly not expected at this time of year. We even fired up the fireplace Saturday afternoon and Sunday.  We have blooms on the tomato plants, so we hope that the low 40's are as low as things go. 

We were also a bit concerned about the meat birds.  They are out in the chicken tractor in the side yard and the tractor is facing North - Northwest.  The blue tarps and plastic that we have zip-tied to the tractor was whipping in the wind. I got up in the middle of the night the other night and re-fastened the tarps to protect the birds. They don't like the cold at all.

The fat birds generate a lot of body heat and they have figured out that they need to be under the heat lamp AND to snuggle with one another to keep warm.  You really don't want extended periods of cold weather when you are raising meat birds, because the birds are using calories to keep warm versus growing.

I almost forgot to mention that we had a tragedy of sorts in the chicken tractor this week.  I was feeding the chickens before leaving for work one morning at 5:30.  These meat birds eat voraciously.  They come running when they see me coming with a bucket of feed.  If you aren't careful, when you open the door, they'll run out of the tractor.  To avoid that, we trick them by going to the other end of the tractor.  They all follow.  Then we run to the other side and quickly open the door and spread the feed into the gutter feed troughs. 

This past week I was doing just that and the birds happened to get all around me.  They can't wait to eat!  They are so greedy.  I tried to step carefully around them and one got under my feet, causing me to lose my balance.  I quickly stepped to the side and proceeded to step directly on the head of one of the birds.  The bird quickly died.  There is a parable about greed somewhere in that story!  (If all you think about is getting fed, you'll end up dead with a flattened head.)

I didn't want to waste this bird, but I had to get to work. I called Tricia and had her put the bird on ice until I got home.  Later that afternoon I scalded, plucked, gutted and cleaned the fat little bird.  It was a little bit bigger than a Cornish Hen and it will be delicious.  We won't let him go to waste.

It was time for the weekly weigh-in, so I picked up an average sized bird, put him in a bucket, and brought him into the garage where I have Tricia's kitchen scale set up on my workbench.  I took a big chance in setting the bird on my workbench, but fortunately he didn't poop on the table top.

I zeroed out the scale with the empty bucket on top and then I placed the bird in the bucket on top of the scale to get an accurate weekly reading.  We do this each week to ensure that the birds are growing.

Let's take a look at the scale.  Ol' Boy continues to put on the weight!

Week Five 2018: 3 pounds 14 ounces.  That is one ounce shy of a pound gain since last week!
Week Five 2017: 2 pounds 15 ounces.
Week Five 2016: 4 pounds

I still say we are right on schedule to have a bird at 6 pounds at the end of week 8.  The unscientific thing about our weigh-in is that I am not weighing the same bird.  I am picking out an average-sized bird to weigh.  Perhaps next time, I'll pick an average-sized one and then pick the biggest and the smallest.  That way I'd have a good range - from the smallest to the largest.  Three more weeks to grow!

Record-keeping on the Ranch

Tricia went to Corpus Christi last weekend to visit her mom and she came back with something really neat in addition to the Mexican pastries (Pan Dulce) that she always brings back for us to enjoy.  It was a grocery bag full of memories from her Dad.  Tricia's Dad had a ranch out in Woodsboro, Texas and kept cows out there.  He really enjoyed his livestock and Tricia probably inherited her love for cows from him.

I went out to the ranch with him several times.  There were lots of mesquite trees on the property and a type of tree called Huisache that has thorns that will flat tear you up if you are not careful.  Huisache require constant maintenance to keep from over-taking the land - similar to the chicken tree (Chinese tallow tree) in our area.  The Garcia Ranch was very remote and was populated by deer, turkeys, wild hogs, and scorpions! 

Tricia pulled out some pictures from the plastic bag she brought back that contained many pictures of cows!  Tricia said it was always a running joke at her house growing up that her Dad would have more photos of his cows than of the family.  They would joke when Mr. Garcia pulled out his cow pictures, "Put those away.  If you've seen one cow, you've seen them all."  We started thumbing through some of the pictures in the stack that was rubber-banded together.  The front part of the package contained photos of the bulls.

We looked through the stack, but it contained more than photos.

Mr. Garcia was very detail oriented and his records of his livestock were meticulous.  His organization skills were first rate.  He didn't need Excel spreadsheets to keep records.

He had sections of note cards for each cow he ever owned.  The first part of each cow's section was a photo of the animal.

Behind the photo was a really neat record-keeping idea that we are going to use.  I wish we had learned about this method and started this earlier.  As shown below, each cow had a card with its name, color, tag #, birth date, who it was bought from and the price paid.

Furthermore (like genealogy for cows), it listed the cow's offspring, its sex, when born, who the sire was, color, when sold, weight, price per lb., total price, commission, and net price.

We like to keep good records, but our record-keeping is woefully inadequate compared to this.  We were amazed by the detail and what a good system it is and we are going to implement this tool on Our Maker's Acres Family Farm.  Not only was it neat to learn this, but it brought up good memories of Tricia's Dad.  I think if Mr. Garcia was alive today, he'd be proud of his daughter carrying on his tradition of being a cattleman (cattlewoman)!