The Reluctant Student

I've never been engaged in education as a profession.  My mom is a retired kindergarten teacher and my sister currently teaches at the high school level.  Teaching (if you are doing it right) is hard work!  It involves dedication, drive and determination.  Most importantly, a good teacher will cunningly explore means of motivating his or her student to learn when he or she does not want to.

I was thinking about this in my daily effort to halter break our little heifer, Betsy.  Betsy is LuLu's little girl.  When I say halter break, what I'm talking about is to teach her to walk when being led with a rope.  It is best to train them before they get too big.  When they get too big, it's almost impossible because they can pull YOU instead of you pulling them.

Each day for the past couple of weeks, I've cornered Betsy and put the breaking rope around her head.  She is adamantly opposed to this restriction of her freedom.  In response, she'll stubbornly pull back when I pull forward.  As you might imagine this is an uncomfortable thing as the rope pulls snugly against the back of her head and around her muzzle.

For about the first 50 yards, she puts up quite a fight, with me essentially dragging her against her will.  What I've learned, and my wife will vouch for this, is that I'm more stubborn than Betsy.  I continue pulling longer than she can continue resisting.  She eventually figures out that it is exceedingly more comfortable to walk alongside me than to pull against me.  When that happens, I loosen the rope, gently stroke her neck and behind her ears and I'll talk in a nice tone to her.  I'm never mean to her.  I never strike her.  

The negative motivation is the uncomfortable feel of the halter tightening when she fights back and the positive motivation is the loosening of the halter, the stroking and the kind words.  This positive and negative reinforcement are strong tools in teaching this little reluctant student.  Before you know it we are in the opposite diagonal corner than where we started from by the barn as we walk the perimeter of the 3 acre pasture.

Sometimes she wants to walk or run so fast that she gets out ahead of me.  That's an easier thing than pulling her, but she needs to be taught to follow me at MY pace - not hers.  It's about control.  She's getting it.

Day by day, little Betsy is getting better.  It takes less effort to catch her.  It takes a shorter time of pulling before she decides she wants to walk with me.  It also takes less and less time each day to walk around the 3 acre pasture.  The reluctant student is slowly learning.  It's a rewarding experience to see the progress we've made in a short time.  We'll keep at it.

Not Catch & Release

Still licking my wounds after the annihilation that occurred in the chicken tractor in which ALL 49 Cornish Cross meat birds were killed in one night by a mink or minks.  We're not giving up, and we're moving forward with a two-pronged plan.

1. Chicken tractor redesign to make it mink-proof:  I've been researching different designs and have a plan in mind.  I will start that phase next week so the chicken tractor is rebuilt and fortified so that we can quickly order another batch of meat birds.

2. Trapping: This part of the plan is underway.  As I discussed, I gutted out a bunch of the slaughtered chickens and froze the guts and organs in a big container.  I keep that in the OUTSIDE freezer.  I'll use those bloody guts as bait.

Day one of the trapping was met with success!  Regrettably, although catching a critter in the trap, this ol' gal was NOT the perpetrator in the mass killing in the chicken tractor.  I'm 100% positive that it was minks.  They wiped out my neighbor's entire flock as well.  This is a big fat raccoon.  You may be asking, "Will raccoons kill chickens?"  My answer is "Yes, they will."  Raccoons rank #1 on the list of backyard chicken predators, so it was a good thing that the first thing we caught was a chicken killer.  Raccoons are nocturnal (mostly) hunters and rarely kill during the day.  At night, my egg layers are safely contained in a protected, sealed hen house.  But we're already seeing success as I baited the trap and this old coon was caught.

I should have put my foot in the photo to give you some perspective, but I'll tell you that this is the biggest coon I've ever caught.  I quickly dispatched the coon with my Marlin lever action .22 rifle.

The other trap I had set along a well-used animal trail in the woods behind the house had been tripped but no varmint was inside.  This is a common occurrence as the animals smell the bloody bait and try to dig around the outside in order to get to it rather than figuring out how to get into the open door.  Sometimes to combat this, I put tin or wood on the outside of the trap to encourage entry through the open door where they'll step on the foot pad on the way to the bait which then shuts the door behind them.

I have four traps in total and I intend on continuing to set them until my bloody guts/organ bait runs out.  Then I'll thin out some squirrels in the yard to get some meat for the pot and guts for the traps.  My goal is to eradicate the murderous minks in the area or at least thin out the population of them so that we can raise some more meat birds on Our Maker's Acres Family Farm.  

The Sower Went Out to Sow

Over a month ago, I purchased a bag of crimson clover from our local feed store.  I intended to broadcast it in the yard all around the bee boxes.  Last year we had great success with it.  The flowers were beautiful and the bees loved it.  As an added bonus, the clover sets nitrogen, essentially growing its own fertilizer and bettering the soil.  We let it go to seed, but unsure of how much re-seeded, I bought 3 pounds of crimson clover seed.

After making the purchase of the seed, I waited and waited.  It didn't rain for practically the entire month of October.  Finally on November 3rd it rained!  Not a lot, mind you, but enough to wet the soil and provide a good opportunity to plant the crimson clover.

Here is the bag of seed that I bought.  It looks similar to cole crop seeds (broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, etc.), but twice the size.

My sowing process is similar to what I envision the sower in Jesus' parable from Matthew 13.  The farmer probably had a bag and would reach into the bag and pull out a handful.  As he walked he would broadcast the seed.  Over time you'd get proficient in throwing the seed so that you would get even coverage - not too much seed in one location, but not too little either.

The sower of the seed had to watch out for where he was sowing because every location wasn't conducive to producing a harvest.  The first soil he broadcast the seeds on was hard and rocky.  Immediately, the birds swooped down and carried off the seed.  I watched some little Mexican doves watching me plant and wondered if I would experience that pitfall.

The second soil was rocky.  We live in Louisiana and don't have many rocks, but due to the drought, much of the ground was rock hard.  Seeds thrown here might grow, but the roots wouldn't be able to penetrate the hard earth and with lack of water, the sun would scorch the seedling and it would quickly wither and die.

The third soil was good, except it was populated with thorns.  As the thorns grew they choked out the plant.  I didn't plant the clover anywhere around thorns, but I was cognizant of making sure the seeds fell where they wouldn't be in competition for light, water, or fertility with other grasses.  If you look in the loosened, damp earth below, you can find the seed pretty evenly broadcast.  I can count seven.

The parable of the sower is teaching about the Gospel and the condition of the hearts of those who might hear.  It is interesting to note in the parable that 3 out of 4 of the seeds Jesus talked about bore no fruit!  I think that's why He implored people at the end, "He who has ears, let him hear."

I hope that our seed fell on good soil and that I'll be able to show you some lovely photos of crimson clover full of honeybees!

When One Door Closes, Another One Opens

A couple of years ago minks got into our henhouse where they roost at night and killed 39 of them before we used the dry pour technique to cement the entire floor of the henhouse disabling the minks' ability to tunnel under the henhouse.  We also purchased a solar-powered automatic door that would open at daylight and close at dark.  It was a cheap-o door that cost about $40.  Both of these improvements stopped the killing and we've held steady at roughly 20 hens.

The automatic chicken door has worked flawlessly for two years.  All good things, they say, come to an end.  I noticed one morning last week that the door only opened halfway.  The hens could squeeze through to get out, but the roosters are bigger and could not get out.  I began trying to fix it, cleaning the tracks, even oiling it.  It did not work.  I took the wall apart, thinking that the weight of the henhouse was bearing down on the door, bowing the tracks creating resistance that eliminated the smooth opening and closing of the door.  I put it back together.

Later that evening I walked out to the henhouse to see if the door had closed.  It is a good thing I checked.  The door had not closed all the way.  I opened the walk-in door and checked on the hens.  They were all safe, roosting on the roosting bars.  I manually closed the little door and decided to tackle the problem the next day.  It lasted two years and cost $20 a year to dependably open and close before it gave out on us and required replacement.  The door was a 'roll-up' door.

I ordered a new automatic chicken door.  The doors I looked at ranged in price from $20 to $175.  I ordered one for $60.  It is solar-powered with different settings.  It will also open at daylight and close at dusk, but you can also set it to open and close at specific times and the manual recommended doing this.  I made some minor carpentry alterations to the size of the door opening and installed the new door when it arrived in a couple of days.  While the old door was a roll up door, this one has a flat panel that glides up and down.  This seems to be a better design after watching it in operation.

There are different settings with a clock.  What you see below shows opening and closing based on the detection of daylight or lack of it, but after installing and testing and the time change at the first of the month, I changed to specific times.  I currently have it set to open at 6:00 am and close at 5:30 pm.

I've tested it for a couple of days, walking out at night to ensure it closes.  I don't quite trust it yet, but last night it was closed when I set it to close and this morning it opened at the programmed time.  So far, so good.

The chickens in the henhouse are safe and sound now once again, protected by the new automatic chicken door.  We'll see how long this one lasts.  They say when one door closes, another one opens.  That's fine as long as they open and close when they are supposed to.

Luffa Gourds From the Garden

In the very back of the garden, luffa gourds come up every year volunteer from seeds.  That's one thing about luffas - they produce a LOT of seeds.  They grow and vine all over, climbing on top of the sugar cane and blooming their glorious yellow flowers that attract the bees.  Finally they produce gourds.  I let them mature and turn brown.

Then I peel the outer skin off of them leaving the fibrous sponge exposed.  If you shake it, a multitude of black seeds come out.  I scatter them all over the back of the garden where we'll rinse, wash, and repeat this whole thing again next year.

There's one more step before the gourds are ready to use.  I put about a cup of bleach into a 5 gallon bucket and fill with water.  I'll soak the luffas overnight in the bleachy-water solution and they come out nice and clean.

These are great to use in the shower as a body sponge with soap.  The luffas exfoliate the skin.  It can be used again and again.  Every once in a while you can put it back in some bleachy water to freshen it up.  We've got so many of these now left over from last year and more this year.  I think we'll start giving one away with every jar of honey purchased.  It'll be a little lagniappe!

The Massacre

It was Halloween Day.  A day where many people in the world dress up and "Trick or Treat."  Most expect treats, candy or such.  Not many people think about getting a trick instead.  On Halloween Day I woke up to do the chores and filled the feed bucket to go feed our 49 meat birds that are only two weeks away from butchering.  Well, there was no treat for me - only a trick.  A cruel trick, if you will.  It was a massacre.

Merriam Webster Dictionary defines massacre as follows:

massacre

/ˈmasəkər/

A massacre is the violent, cruel, and indiscriminate killing of a large number of people—(birds, in this case) especially those who are defenseless, unresisting, or non-combatants.

I opened the door to the chicken tractor in the dawn hours before the sun peeked above the eastern horizon.  Normally, I'm greeted by hungry birds awaiting breakfast making all sorts of noise and commotion.  Instead there was dead silence. I found ALL 49 of our birds DEAD.  I can't put into words the frustration and anger I felt toward the perpetrator of this crime.

I had been thinking about the 300 pounds of chicken we were going to store in our freezer in two weeks, and I think the old saying, "Don't count your chickens before they hatch" can be altered to "Don't count your chickens until they are in your freezer."  Starting the race is one thing, but you gotta finish it.

The Killing Field

It was a mink, to be sure.  They are cruel, devious animals, programmed with a bloodlust, a zeal for killing, and they kill all at once.  They don't even eat the animal.  They bite the neck and bleed the chicken out, leaving their wasteful kill for you to find in an almost mocking fashion.  The population of minks have exploded due to the expansion of their habitat which locally is crawfish ponds.  More crawfish ponds and rice fields mean more mink.  More mink means more chicken deaths.  It's not just us.  All of our neighbors have lost their flocks.

Butchered, but not by us.

The chicken tractor is protected by chicken wire which has, historically, done the job.  However, minks can dig as you can see the point of entry in the photo below.  All they need is an inch of clearance and the opportunistic killer is inside.  Their murderous intent at this point is easy, like shooting fish in a barrel.

The chink in the armor

The horror the birds must have felt as they were picked off, one by one.  You can see that some tried in vain to find refuge from the killing spree under the waterer.  They found no safe quarter.  There was no life left in the chicken tractor.

No place to hide

Our weekly Wednesday weigh ins have come to an end as we have realized a 100% mortality rate.  Sickening, I tell you.  There was nothing to be done except bury the dead.  I loaded 49 beautiful, but dead birds into my wagon and pulled it down the boulevard of broken dreams.  I estimate 250 pounds of meat wasted.  Is it a total loss?  Yes and no.  We won't be able to butcher and eat any of these birds, but I'm trying to find whatever silver lining I can find.  I'll bury them in the garden and they'll at least provide fertilizer for next Spring's vegetables.

The (wasted) meat wagon

I began to dig their tomb in the spot where the sweet potatoes were just dug up.  I figured I would dig a trench, lay 8 birds in the hole, cover it and repeat the process until they were all interred.

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust

But not so fast, my friend.  Before burial, I gutted out the birds, saving the guts and organs.  I'll freeze them.  Why?  Proverbs 6:16-19 lists seven things the Lord hates, one of them being "hands that shed innocent blood."  God is not talking about animals here, so it doesn't really apply to our situation, but I hate minks that shed my chickens' blood.  And I'm going to do something about it.  I know the Bible says, "Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord."  I agree.  I won't act in vengeance, but I think as a steward over the little piece of Creation He's given us, I've got to exact some justice and stop it from happening again.

Tricia told me, "Kyle, it's just like swatting mosquitoes.  You can't kill them all.  No matter how many mink you trap and kill, more will arise."  Maybe so.  But you don't stop swatting mosquitoes.  Every mosquito you kill is unable to bite you or lay eggs to make more mosquitoes.  Same with a dead mink.  Hence the bucket of chicken guts which I'll use to bait my traps.

Bait for the mink traps

The burial went swiftly, each trench holding the remains of 8 fat birds.  I shoveled the dirt over their carcasses, about 6-8 inches deep.

Finally, the work was done except for adding a two inch layer of mulch over the exposed soil which will come later.  Within three hours of finding the carnage, all 49 birds were buried.  Now came taking down the waterer, removing the feed troughs, heat lamps, extension cord and removing the tarps from the top of the chicken tractor and putting everything back in its place.

I did a brief 'post-mortem' regarding the financial implications of the mink attack.  The chicks cost $223.50.  So far we had $200.88 in feed costs.  We never factor in the cost of labor (our own) because if we weren't working on the chickens, we'd be doing something else.  $425 is a bitter pill to swallow.  An investment down the toilet.  We may be down, but we're not out.

As discouraging as this might be, I think about the settlers, the sod-busters, the homesteaders that founded this land.  When calamity like this struck them, and it often did, the ramifications were far more serious.  There was no store down the road to go to when you lost your laying hens to varmints in order to buy meat.  They had to make things work.  They re-doubled their efforts and moved forward. 

I plan on ordering another 50 chicks in early spring, and I'm researching "mink-proofing your chicken tractor, which includes lining the outside with hardware cloth and then making "hardware cloth" wings on hinges to lay down on the perimeter of the tractor that are a foot wide.  Minks don't dig tunnels that far.  We'll also do some trapping to thin out the mink population.  Maybe I'll make Tricia that mink coat I joke about.  We've been raising meat birds for years and years and never had this happen before.  We'll try to improve our process so that it never happens again.  Join us again this spring as we try again.  

Digging Up the Sweet Potatoes

Back in March of this year, we talked about sweet potatoes.  For the past 20 years we've never had to plant them.  Like cilantro, they come up volunteer each year.  We estimate the first sweet potatoes came up from compost that we buried in the garden from kitchen waste.  It was a gift that kept on giving!  About 10 years ago, we introduced an heirloom variety called Golden Wonder that we got at a seed swap at a sustainable agriculture conference.  They really took off.  Too successful, in fact, crowding out the Beauregards and over time, became susceptible to what we think were sweet potato weevils.

To combat that, as the Golden Wonders came up this spring, we pulled up about 3/4 of them and planted slips from both the Beauregard and Evangeline varieties.  Those varieties were developed here.  In fact, Russ worked for the professor at LSU in developing these successful varieties for commercial use.  The Beauregard and Evangeline slips grew and vined all over the garden and despite the dry conditions, seemed to thrive.  It's now time to dig up the 2026 harvest.  Since they grow underground, you can't really estimate how your crop will be until you dig them up.

I wish there were an easier way to do this, but there's not.  I use garden digging forks.  They look like a pitch fork but with wider tines.  I turn every square foot over, unearthing the mature sweet potatoes.  Here you can see I'm almost done.  My lower back will be glad when we're finished.

The cows and goats really dig my digging, because I throw all the vines over the fence and they feast on the sweet vines.  At first they eat the small roots and then they eat the entire vine, leaving nothing left.

As the sun sank in the western sky, I finished the digging!  We don't like to leave the soil uncovered, so we quickly cover with leaves and mulch so that the sun doesn't kill the beneficial microbes that might have been uncovered and exposed.

Here is an Evangeline Sweet Potato:

And here is a Beauregard:

We got a decent harvest with sweet potatoes of all sizes.  The smallest ones we'll feed to the cows.  They love them!  Maybe almost as much as they love cabbage.  Lots of medium sized ones perfect for baking.  Here Tricia is showing two of the largest ones we dug up:

We store them in crates in the garage that will allow air flow as they cure.  Curing allows time for the starches to convert to sugar and also allows those with any scars to heal up.  Scars, you ask?  Well, since you can't see them when you're digging, you inevitably cut right into some with the garden forks.  Unfortunately, some of the biggest, prettiest ones get scarred in the process of digging.

I weighed them on the garden scale and we got 33.5 pounds.  Not the best harvest we've ever had.  We routinely dug up over 100 pounds.  But we won't be complaining over 33.5 pounds.  On the contrary, we're looking forward to the two week curing period to be over so we can bake some up and slather big pats of butter on top!