The Art & Science of Meal Planning - Part One: Seasonality & Budget

Our family is just the four of us* - The Hubs, The Teens, and lil' ol' me. So you might be surprised how involved planning our meals and buying our food can get. When I actually took a minute to stop and think about all of the elements that go in to planning my family's meals and groceries I was kind of surprised by how many factors were involved.

The things that influence how I plan and how I shop for my family's food:

• The Season
• Our budget
• Our schedules
• Specific health/dietary needs of family members

Four items - that's not too much in the way of a list, is it? Well, each item contains complexities of it's own. For example - Seasonality. It not only influences what is available for purchase, but the quality and price of the item. It also greatly influences our family's tastes - Fall and Winter call for roasts, casseroles and soups, whereas Spring and Summer are barbecue, salads and stir-fries.

A few of the staple Fall & Winter menu items for our family are things like shepherd's pie, beans with ham hocks and cornbread, green chicken curry, tikka masala, pot roast and potato soup. Basically, hearty fare that is meat and root vegetable intensive.

The Spring and Summer would typically be lighter and fresher - garden salad with roasted salmon or grilled steak, chicken stir-fry with brown rice, baked bone-in chicken with pasta salad, fresh spring rolls, carne asada tacos.

Then you throw the budget in the mix.

As loyal adherents to organic and sustainable farming practices, both on our own farm and in the products that we purchase from other sources, we spend a fair chunk of change on groceries - especially meat and seafood - to support environmentally-friendly and sustainable ranches and fisheries. That translates to us eating less meat and seafood than a typical American family.

As such, I try to be very thoughtful in my meal planning, choosing quality over quantity, without forgoing taste or nutrition in my meals. It complicates my life a little, but I recognize that it is the best choice for all concerned in the equation.

So this means that while I plan my meals around the "protein" element, it doesn't represent the bulk of a given meal. I try to balance the relative expense of the piece of meat or fish with a lower cost, but still healthy and well balanced side dish/dishes. A small portion of steak with a lot of green salad, nuts and veggies on top, or a pound of ground beef with potatoes, carrots, celery, mushrooms and onions in a shepherd's pie. With ravenous teenagers in the mix, stretching a pound of hamburger to feed and satisfy a family of four can present a challenge. Buying meat in bulk from local buying clubs (mine sources its beef/pork/chicken & seafood from local sustainable ranches, farms & fisheries) or growing your own are both fair ways to trim the grocery budget, but both involve fairly substantial upfront costs. Below is the spreadsheet I made for tracking "Pig Expenses" last year.



Like a ding-dong, I didn't note anywhere on my spreadsheet what the final hanging and the cut/wrapped weights were for our pork, but suffice it to say that the take-home cut & wrapped weight was in the neighborhood of 150-200#. Based on that guesstimate, our homegrown pork cost us roughly $6 to $8 per pound, which is on par (and maybe a little cheaper, considering you get the full spectrum of cuts) with sustainably, non-medicated, non CAFO pork sold in farmers markets and butcher shops. It ends up being a fairly intense and expensive six months raising the pigs from weaners to the freezer, but the pork lasts our family of four for a year, eating it 3+ meals per week.

*At the time that I started this post, all four of us were still at home full-time. Now the big kiddo is away at college for 8ish months out of the year. When she is home though, she still eats like a viking. ;)

Three Little Birds

Close to a month ago, we noticed a pair of Stellar's jays building a nest in the camellia bush outside our dining room window. Then we saw Mama & Papa bird taking turns sitting while the other found good things to eat. The incubation period of a Stellar's Jay egg is supposed to be 17 days. As of last week, we were officially starting to wonder if all of Mama & Papa birds' efforts had been for naught.

Then, just today, we saw Mama bird sitting on the side of her nest. Upon closer inspection, we were also able to see two little nestlings in the classic baby bird pose; faces turned upward in anticipation of food, scrawny necks extended as far as they could be stretched in the hopes that they'd be the recipient of more of Mama bird's delicious regurgitated grub.

I grabbed my camera immediately. Alas, my expensive, fancy camera wouldn't take a nice picture of the birds or the nest, but would only focus on the dag-gum camellia branches. So a grainy, under-lit cell phone picture is the best I could do. I think I can see a nestling in this pic. Judge for yourself -

Maybe it's silly, but when a wild creature chooses our little foothold as a sufficiently abundant, safe place to raise a family, I take it as a positive affirmation that we're being good and gentle stewards of our land and the creatures who, whether by their choice or ours, call this place home. :)

Rainy Days and Mondays... A Whiny Rant from Farmer Crankenpants

Today has not been my day.

I suffer from insomnia, so I'd only had about 4 hours of sleep before the tsunami of poo, also known as Monday, decided to slap me awake(ish).

The first thing was a phone call, bright and early, from an uncharacteristically chipper gal at the post office. I wouldn't have even picked up, tired as I was, but Scarlet was still home and so she answered, then handed me the phone while I was still 90% unconscious. "Good morning! Your chickens are here!" Awww... what the crap?! I had the chicks' arrival written down on my calender as being slated for Friday. The run that these little guys would be moving in to in the coop hadn't even been set up yet. Oy.

So I drag my buns out of bed. I make myself a ginormous iced coffee. I have about two swigs of it before I get a call from the garden supply company that is delivering the 25 cubic feet (yards? Whatever. A smallish mountain.) of soil that will be going into our new raised beds. The driver is running a touch late - is it ok if he comes in 30 minutes? I say sure, but I have to run to the post office super quick to pick up my box of chickens first. "Your what?" Having to explain interstate chicken delivery to a stranger who seems to have decided, rather hastily, that I'm half batshizz crazy... Just. Not. Helping.

After the call, I threw on some clothes and put a very sad Penny into her kennel, then ran to the post office to pick up my chicks. The only bright spot in my post office jaunt was getting to show a little kid my package o' peepers. The surprise and delight on his face when he saw and heard the chickies going bananas was awesome. It's one of the aspects of farming in the city that I straight-up live for. Watching a kid break into a smile when they see a baby goat go bouncing by, or just after they pull up and take a chomp out of their first bright purple carrot, dirt and all - it makes me so dang happy.

Alas, the happiness was fleeting.

About 30 seconds after I pull into the driveway, the dirt delivery guy shows up. I have a package of shivering, mildly-traumatized poultry that need dealing with, and now this fella who needs my input on where to heap my dirt. I gave him two potential choices - both were rejected. He wanted to dump the dirt a little further into the yard. You got it, chief. Go nuts! I leave him to it, and go to put my peepers in the coop.

I no sooner unpack my peepers than I notice that we have a jailbreak unfolding. The chicks are still small enough that they can get through the holes in the chicken wire, and have wandered into neighboring runs. Crap. I round up my freshly liberated chicks and ponder a plan B.

I slap a temporary home for them together in a galvanized water trough. I stash them in our back room, hopefully securing them by closing the the two doors that separate them from the range of Penny the Huntress, freelance chicken murderer.

Sweet. I have two seconds to sit down and chug my nearly-forgotten cup of coffee. Then I realize that I've nearly forgotten something else that is kinda critical - that I need to show the chicks how to drink their water. It's been so long since we've had baby chicks here that I didn't even remember that chickies don't come with that knowledge. I went to check on my peeps only to find that - yep - these guys and gals were going to need a little help in the drinking department.

Check out the rocket scientist STANDING in the water, just chillin'. 

I'm about to sit down and starting teaching these chicks, one by one, the dip/scoop/tilt-the-head-back drinking method when there is a knock at the door. It's the dirt delivery guy. His truck is stuck. Super.

I go outside to help him find some wood scraps and gravel to throw under his truck tires. In my haste, I fail to secure the front door completely. To Rex, that is an as good as an engraved invitation to take the heck off.  Out-muther-frackin'-standing! Cue the parade of helpful neighbors driving/biking/jogging by who stop to let me know that "Your dog is out!". You don't say! Is that why I have a leash in one hand, a chunk of ham for a bribe in the other, and a completely humorless/borderline apoplectic look on my face? Thanks so much!

To recap, I have - 

a) thirsty, travel-weary chicks who can't drink until I show them how,

b) a d-bag escape artist dog who thinks that my limping down the road after him - IN THE RAIN - is some sort of great sport, 

c) a tiny terror of a dog who is just waiting for her opportunity to devour the thirsty baby chickens the first time I space out and leave a door open,

d) a dump truck in my front yard that is digging some fabulous, giant holes with its slipping and spinning tires and still not going anywhere. 

e) zero point zero percent blood sugar/circulating caffeine in my system.

Can I dig a hole and crawl into it now? 

Finally, finally, the dirt-guy got his truck out, Rex wandered back up to the porch and eventually back into the house, the chickies seem to have settled in a little - drinking lessons are still forthcoming, Penny hasn't visited death upon anyone/anything yet today, and I've made a dent in my great, highly-tragic caffeine deficit. 

Still, I think this will be a PB&Js for dinner kinda night. And woe unto the child who dares complain - WOE UNTO THEM. 

Serenity now!

How to: Paper Snowflakes

Now, I know that making paper snowflakes isn't rocket surgery, but some of us learn better with a visual aid, which is why I'm posting this here How to.

Paper snowflakes in the front windows during the Winter months are a long-standing tradition in my family. My sister and I grew up with a single Mom and a tight budget, so we learned to make our own fun when we could. Mom's office had a ginormous dot-matrix printer that used 15 inch(?) wide green and white striped, accordion-folded reams of paper. For some reason, the printer would always spit out two blank pages after every print job. My Mom's boss gave her the green light to bring the wasted sheets home for us kids to use as coloring paper. I still have some of that pretty epic artwork scratched on those place mat-sized pieces of paper. I could draw ducks like nobody's business back in the day.

Those awkwardly shaped, oddly-striped pieces of waste paper ended up being our first snowflakes too.

Nowadays, the girls and I just rob the printer in my husband's home office blind. But we're doing it in the spirit of the SPREADING JOY, dang it!

Monkeys against a backdrop of snowflakes, Christmas morning.

What you'll need-

*standard printer paper (or re-purposed wrapping paper scraps, sales flyers, etc.)

*scissors

*scotch tape for hanging them

Step 1: Squaring up your paper -

Fold bottom edge of page up to touch a side. You will have made a large triangle. See that extra bit that wasn't folded? Trim that piece off.

Now you have a perfect square!

Step 2: Fold the square in half along the same crease you made when making the initial fold to square it up. It is now folded in half.

Step 3: Fold it in half again. Now it's in 4ths.

Step 4: Fold it in half one last time. It is now folded into 8ths. You should have one side of your triangle which is a single, solid folded edge (side one), a side that has two folded edges (side two) and a side that has all cut ends of the paper (side 3).

Each of the facets of the "flake" need to be treated differently. This is where a small mistake can lead to a giant pile of pretty scraps instead of a gorgeous finished snowflake.

Side One - This is the side of the folded paper that holds things together. If you go to bananas with the scissors, your snowflake will either be very fragile or will fall apart completely. I try not to cut away too much more than 50% of that edge.

Side Two - This side also contains folds that hold things together, but isn't as critical as the connections on side one. I'd probably cut a maximum of 75% of this edge.

Side Three - This edge is all cut ends (what will be the outer edge of the snowflake), so there are no folds to preserve. Go crazy and cut 100% of it if you want.

First cut on side one. I want this snowflake to be kinda-sorta frilly, rather than strictly geometric, so I'm going with bends and curves.

Finished cutting. I cut maybe 30% out of side one, 75% out of side two, and 80% or so of side three (a very subtle dish shape). Now the unveiling begins!

Open slowly! You don't want to tear your lovely creation.

Et viola! A lovely, festive, one-of-a-kind paper snowflake.

This is a great craft for those long, cold days of Winter break at home with the kids. Be creative and have fun!

Meat Birds

Today I, along with my fellow farm nerdess, Lisa, finally decided on a breed of meat chickens to order. We're going to go with the highly recommended Freedom Rangers.

According to what I've read and what we've heard from folks in the know, Freedom Rangers have many of the benefits of the Cornish cross (an F1 hybrid bird produced by breeding an Indian Game {also known as a "Cornish Game"} with a Plymouth Rock) - rapid growth, good feed/weight conversions - without many of the drawbacks associated with the ultra fast growing Cornish X's - leg deformity, organ failure, skin splitting and poor foraging/self preservation instincts.

We considered trying "slow birds" (more traditional meat varieties, such as Plymouth Rocks and Delawares) to avoid the pitfalls of the Cornish cross. But then, you end up with a smaller bird that takes at least a good month more to grow. That's money and time that could be saved!

And so, we kept coming back to the Freedom Rangers. They sound like the best of both worlds - quick turnaround and great flavor, minus the scary health issues. No franken-chickens for us, thanks.

I'll be interested to see if they really do live up to their glowing reputation. For better or worse, I should have an answer to share with you on the matter by the first week of December, at the latest.

The Chicken Whisperer Chump

You all know by know that this is house is Casa de Nerd, right? We're nerds in the conventional sense - we're all rather socially awkward and covet and hoard books like they were bars of gold - but we're also farm nerds. We're the kind of goobers that do things like hang around in the poultry barn at the county fair ogling exotic ducks and chickens, or who relentlessly pick the brain of the poor lady selling goat cheese at the farmers market. What kind of goats do you have? How long do you leave your feta in the brine? Are your goats fed pasture or pellets? We collectively, can be a little intense.

We were budding farm nerds even when we still lived in city limits. Expanding our geek horizons was part of what lead us down this path to buying our 3 1/2 green acres. We wanted more chickens, turkeys, and maybe something with hooves, the more exotic, the better. Olivia with her Asperger Syndrome's signature laser-like focus on a narrow, often obscure topic, was the queen nerd when it came to birds, especially chickens. She literally memorized field guides and encyclopedias about all things bird, and coveted, above all things, fancy chickens.

So, when we moved to Boggy Hollow, one of the first items on our farm checklist was to greatly expand our flock of chickens. We pored over books, the Murray McMurray catalog, and asked our 10-year old resident bird nerd to weigh in. We decided on a mixture of some of the lower-maintenance, high-yield breeds like Australorps and Ameracaunas, with a couple of silver laced Polishes thrown in to appease Liv's appetite for fancy birds.

The workhorse breeds thrived. They started laying right on time, and most of them even laid through the winter. The Polishes... we're down to two.

We've done a little experimental breeding to see what we could see, and ended up with a goofy little fancy-pants brood of babies that we call the "Policaunas". Crested, jet-black hens that lay pale, pale blue eggs. And half of them are frizzled. Pretty funky! Still, Liv longed for the truly fancy birds; Suramas, Brahmas, Silkies, Silver Spangled Hamburgs, the fluffier, more feather-footed and floppily-crested, the better. Explaining to her that only no-nonsense chickens would work on a farm such as ours fell on deaf ears. Repeatedly.

So we finally gave in, a little.

Today I brought home 5 chicks from the feed store - 2 light Brahmas, 2 Silkies and one that we *think* is a white Ameracauna. Liv was on cloud nine.



With the altogether too fresh memory of our last clutch of incubator chicks' poop-funk smell permeating my back room, I sought an alternative way to brood this small clutch without sacrificing our indoor air quality. We decided to try a method that I'd heard of other folks doing with great success - sneaking days old chicks under a broody hen while she slept. Easy-peasy!

Not exactly.

Bill put our notoriously broody girl, Huckleberry in a separate run just before nightfall and set up a heat lamp as insurance in case the transfer didn't go so well. Then about an hour after dark, I went out to slide the babies under Hucky.

Huck, unfortunately woke and began wandering around in a daze. She sat on the babies a few times, whether or not by complete accident, I can't say. When I tried to pop an errant chick back underneath her, she rattle-clucked at me, which is a good indication that she is feeling protective of her nest. I watched them as unobtrusively as I could from outside the run. Things seemed to be going ok, when one of the Brahmas popped out from under Huckleberry and sat right next to her head, wailing out a panic peep that got the attention of every bird in the coop. Huckleberry gave the little one a few rather vicious looking pecks, and the complainer turned tail and burrowed back under Huck's breast. I'm assuming that she's going to be a no-nonsense, spare the rod, spoil the child-type of Mama, and not an annoyed biddy who will have run all of the babies off by morning. I'll be checking on them every few hours tonight as quickly and quietly as I can, just to make sure that no one is being picked on or left out in the cold. I'm already worried about the little black silkie. He's just a little too floppy for my liking. Hopefully some time sandwiched between his reluctant new Mama's breast and a bed of fresh straw will perk him right up. Morning is going to be make or break time for this little experiment in avian foster parenting.

The things that we do for our kids... just keep getting weirder.

Pikshurs of my Baybeez

Sorry, I get all mushy like that when it comes to the little ones. Also, I've been spending maybe a little too much time on the Corel PaintShop software that came with my camera, tinkering with pics of the babies. For your viewing pleasure-


One of the babies (a hen, we think) from the clutch hatched on 10/1/11. Mama was a red/brown Ameracauna and Papa was a White Crested Black Polish Frizzle. We are tentatively calling this mix "Policauna". ;)


I want to go outside, but I'm a little chicken. (BWAHAHA!)


A non-frizzled Policauna. This little dude/dudette is always very curious about visitors.


My Oreo-girl snuggling up to her Mama, Fritzen. It will be hard to see Fritzy move on to her new home, but I know that they are going to treat her like a queen.


Sisters :)

Los Bebés

These little fuzzles are now about 4 days old. Most of these pics were taken on days #2 & 3. We ended up with 27 chicks, 10 of whom (by Livy's count) are "naked necks" - potenial frizzled polish-naked neck crosses. :)




A black Australorp chick. These little babies are as hardy as the day is long!


A wider shot of the gang of peepers.


I want to name this bird Liza Minnelli so bad. Seriously - do you see the resemblance too or have I been spending WAY TOO MUCH time around chickens?


Livydoo & "Liza" :)

Mixing two funny looking breeds to make a new and different funny looking breed is pure bird-nerd nirvana. Behold our first Fall hatch of babies, the Americauna/White-crested Black Frizzled Polish crosses -



This little frizzled dude reminds me of what a crow/stellar's jay cross might look like.


I am IN LOVE with this girl's wacky crest. It reminds me of a peahen or a quail of some sort, maybe? I dunno, but I do think she's durn fancy!


The heap o'babies. Suddenly, they are camera-shy.

Chicken & Egg Trivia

On the eve of yet another, possibly our biggest ever, hatch of baby chicks, I find myself so wound up by the whole process that I have made the executive decision to fly my geek flag and fling some baby chicken trivia your way. Enjoy! ;)

*Chicks start to peep before they even hatch!

Mine have just begun doing so, with less than 24 hours to go in their gestation.

*Hatchlings do not need to eat or drink for as many as 2-3 days after hatching.

The yolk that fueled their development within the egg continues to provide the baby with sustenance until the babes learn to find and consume food and water, with the help of their Mama.

We never wait that long. They get food and water just as soon as they make the move from the incubator to the brooder.

*Baby chickens (and turkeys too) need to be taught how to drink.

The babies are born with a particular attraction to "shiny" things, which helps them seek out water. However, a Mama bird or surrogate Mama like me needs to actually show them how to dip to get a beak full of water, then extend their neck up and back to let the water run down their throat. They don't so much gulp liquid as they do scoop it and "knock it back". ;)

*The nearness of voices (chicken or human) encourage a chick to hatch.

The babies, if sat upon by their Mama hen, would have been listening for her clucks and bocks, as well as those of their fellow nestmates, as a sort of "all's well" sign that encourages them to hatch. In the case of my babies, since they've been hearing human voices for the past three weeks, will go from dead silent to a peeping frenzy upon hearing my greeting - even while still in the egg!

This is also one of the reasons that we leave the hatched babies in the incubator alongside the unhatched eggs for about 24 hours. All eggs that are going to hatch, should do so within that period, and the encouraging peeps of their siblings, as well as the occasional helpful peck, improve the hatch rate of a given clutch, in my experience.

Annnnd back to the bums-bums...

I seriously had thought, nay, prayed, that my days of wrestling kids & critters for the sheer joy of getting to wipe their butts for them were over.

They're not.

We have a couple of pasty-vented babies in the brood, and they are none too pleased with my minstrations, whereas I, of course, am having the time of my life.

If you've got a morbidly curious streak, check out A Posse Ad Esse's entry on dealing with messy bird bums.

And now I must go, and return to my decadent lifestyle. Attempt to contain your jealousy.

Baby's First Photos

12 out of 20 eggs have hatched so far. 11 of those 12 chicks have survived so far. Not the world's greatest hatch rate, but we have another 24 hours left in our 21 day time frame during which we may get a few more peepers hatched out of the 8 remaining eggs in the incubator. In the mean time, enjoy the pics of the miracle of life, poultry style, as it unfolds on my dining room table.










And last but most definitely not least, is Scarlet, reenacting the hatching process while wearing her sister's old big yellow chicken Halloween costume. She later explained that she was wearing the costume primarily so that the chicks would imprint on her as their Mama Bird, and that her dramatic interpretation of the hatching process was purely for entertainment/educational purposes. I told you my kids were special. ;)

The Early Bird...

...scares the crap out of Mommy!

These little buggers weren't supposed to hatch for another 3 days! I went to take them out of the egg turner and lay them directly on the screen in the incubator, when I saw this jive turkey pipping and peeping away.



Apparently Huckleberry had been sitting on these eggies for 3 days before we found them. Does anything ever go according to plan for us? Yeah, no.

More pics to follow as the babies hatch! :)

Obsessive Egg Watch: Day 3

Blood vessels! We have blood vessels!

AND - I think I'm seeing one heart in the double yolker. Fingers crossed that chickie #2 is just lagging behind a touch.

I'll try for some candling pictures tonight, when it's good and dark.

YAAAAY FOR CHICKIES! :)))

Holy Hidden Huevos, Batman!

Each night at around dusk, we lock our chickens in the coop for the night. Walking out there, you never know what exactly awaits you. Will there be 10 hens roosted up in the rhododendron that you have to fish out, flapping and fighting, in the dark? Will this be the night that you come around a corner to see a coyote or a raccoon (God forbid!) making off with your favorite hennie? Will anyone have collected eggs yet that day, or will it be time for the lightning round of huevo-seek? You just don't know.

Well, with 23 hens, 18 of whom are new layers, we've been having to go the extra mile to track down and collect all of the eggs that they've been laying hither and yon. Those gals are crafty! They'll lay their eggs in the weirdest, most impractical places, just for a shot at motherhood.

Case in point, young Miss Huckleberry.

I knew that she was up to something, because each day when I went to feed the chickens their bread, she'd always show up a full 30 seconds after everyone else. Peeling out on her way in from somewhere down by the bog, doing the run-flap-fly-hop thing in an effort to reach the feeding frenzy before all of the goods were gone. I had my eye on her, but for the life of me, I couldn't track down the hidden nest that I knew must be out there somewhere.

But that's ok, I didn't have to, Bill did.

He heard a bit of clucking under some holly/ivy/who-knows-what bushes and stooped to investigate. Very well hidden among the greenery was our girl, Huck.



Gotcha!



Bill thought that we should go ahead and put her in the coop with the others. It isn't safe for her to be out all night. So he picks her up and...



ARE YOU EFFIN' KIDDING ME?

Eighteen eggs. EIGHTEEN EGGS. This little mama has been squirrelling these puppies away for half a month. Sneaky monkey...


The clutch, just before going into the incubator.

Bill & Liv collected the still-warm eggs, and quickly brought them inside where I hastily set up our incubator. Those 18, plus 2 more that I found in a separate nest on the other side of the chicken yard are now "cooking" away. We have no way of knowing whether or not these eggs are fertile, and if so, how far along they are, etc. We also don't know for sure who the Papa bird is. It could be Curlie, the white-crested black Polish frizzle, or possibly King Kong or Rockstar, our Australorp roos. Maury Povich, where are you when I need you?

So approximately 3 weeks from now, we may have the pitter-patter of little chicky feet in our hot tub room, once again. These chicks will either be Americauna/Polish or Americauna/Australorp mixes, so they have the potential to look... interesting.

I'm kind of hoping for a 'Lorp/Americauna mix, as you could have the best of both worlds in one chicky - great temperament, hardy as all get-out and a blue egg-layer. Ok, I'm a little excited now. :)

I've got a Lorp-A,
A Lorp-Acauna.
The coolest chick,
West of Botswana.
Got a Lorp-A,
A Lorp-Acaaaaauna.
Blue eggs,
and black legs,
and something else that rhymes here.
There's a Lorrrrp-Aaaaah...
down in, my boggggg.

Setting a Feed Budget - A Work in Progress

It's hard to believe it, but it's not quite been a year that we've been goat owners. We've come a long way, baby! Last night's milking was yet another record setter - 72 ounces total from our two milkin' Mamas, Chardy & Fritzen.

In the event that you don't follow the day-to-day deets of our little farm over at The Bog Blog, you may not have been privy to a few goaty change-ups that we've made lately that have increased our milk production and simplified our lives just a smidge.

First of all, all the boys are together at the moment, and in spite of Spike being the devil incarnate, it seems to be working out fairly well.

Secondly, we finally separated the doelings from their Mamas. The wee ones were not at all pleased by the new arrangements, but the Mamas seem to have taken it in stride. The amount of milk we're getting per day has more than doubled since the babies no longer nurse at all. I hadn't thought that they were really nursing all that much anymore anyway, but apparently they were still getting a good bit. The Mamas produce enough milk now that we could actually milk them twice per day, but since we are approaching breeding season and will soon begin to work toward drying them off, we're not going to bother with twice a day milking.

Anyhoo, now that you're up to speed on our ruminant living arrangements, I'll now get back to the original point of this post - feed costs.

The cost of good quality, local hay, alfalfa, minerals and treats adds up. It is not uncommon for us to spend $120 on a hay run, and we buy hay on average 2 times per month. Ouchie. I can assure you that we're not getting $240 worth of dairy products out of our goaties (not that that is the entire point of our having them), which means that the money being spent on them lands under the heading of "pet food". Love them though I do, these goaties are not technically our pets, they are our stock. Stock are supposed to earn their keep. We're not there yet.

So constricting the outflow of dough spent on feed and other critter essentials - even just a little - has the potential to put us leaps and bounds closer to our eventual goal of having an affordable, self-sustaining farm set-up. So Bill and I (mostly I) have decided to buckle things down and attempt to grow, forage, glean and trade for as much of our fall and winter critter feed as possible. Here are the angles I'm working right now -

*I've been posting to CraigsList, seeking windfall and slightly damaged/bolted fruits and veggies for critter food, and actually scored a few wheelbarrows full of bruised apples that way.

*I've told all of my friends with gardens that I will gladly accept their buggy, wilted and gone-to-seed produce and repay them in kind with eggs and dairy. Got a nice big bag full of bolted lettuce for the goats & bunzos just the other day.

*I've been picking berries for my family like crazy, and after weeding through them, keeping the weird/mushy ones, leaves, etc. for the critters. I've both fed them to the critters fresh, and started dehydrating some for winter supplements & snacks.

*I've been eyeballing abandoned and unpicked fruit trees and making a mental list of the places I need to hit to forage and glean. I'm wondering if folks would be more apt to let me scoop up their windfalls and/or pick their unwanted fruit if I came a-knocking with some eggs in hand to trade?

That's as far as I've been able to get with this. I wish we could have hayed our own pasture this year, but the layout of our property would make it hard, if not impossible to get a good-sized mower and baler in here. And for maybe 2 acres of harvestable grass, it hardly seems worth it.

I've toyed with the idea of doing the old school scythe & stack with our pasture, but for one thing, we have no idea of what sort of grass we have, or what nutrient content it has, and for another, with as soaking wet as this place gets, there is really no great storage space for great quantities of hay until we get our pole barn built.

So I'm scavenging, bartering and stocking up when and where I can for now. I hope to put together an official critter food budget THAT WE ACTUALLY STICK TO for this coming fall and winter.

What about you? If you can't grow your own animal feed, how do you source it? What do you do to trim costs?

I'd also love to hear how you store and use any produce, grain, etc., that you put up for your animals. I'm pondering trying a homemade rabbit pellet/treat. Are there any good recipes out there for homemade farm animal treats?

Babies having Babies

Having eighteen pullets and five roosters all "coming of age" at the same time makes for a whole lot of crazy.

Can you believe that these little fuzzballs are laying eggs of their own now?


March 6, 2011

The puberty wave has brought with it a few strange new experiences -

*Waking (and sometimes going to bed) to the sound of 5 frisky boys trying to out-warble one another. Thunder is the undisputed crowing champ. His crow is like a scratchy air raid siren, especially when unleashed within the confines of the coop. Eardrums bleeding now!

*The chicken edition of "I didn't know I was pregnant" playing itself out daily. Some of our ladies' nesting instincts have not quite caught up to their ovaries, catching them off guard and thus necessitating...

*...a daily Easter Egg hunt. A high-stakes game of find the egg, if you will. The challenge being to find every egg every day without fail, lest you should find one that has somehow escaped your notice for a day or two and sat baking in the August heat. No es bueno.

*Squabbles and kerfuffles over the "good" nest box. Sometimes there's a line. Sometimes the gals don't quite make it, and you find an egg or two where the queue had been. Sometimes desperation takes over, and two hens will squeeze their fluffy booties side by side into a one-hen nest, or, even more rarely, one will sit on top of the other, sidesaddle.

The gals do not always maintain a dignified air while waiting either. If one hen is perceived as taking too long to get the job done, the others will BOCK! their everlovin' heads off until they get their turn in the hot seat, or scramble to find a suitable last-minute replacement for the coveted nest box. Sometimes this is in a corner of their coop or a batted down tuft of grass in the yard. There have been a few times that they have laid eggs under the new coop or, mysteriously, on the "wrong" side of the fence. (Are they escaping the yard, laying, then coming back? Or do they simply aim their derrieres to the south and pop an egg through the 4x4 fence, and into the great, wide world?)

Who can say? All I know is that chickens are generally under-appreciated for their entertainment value. Romances, bitter feuds, babies out of wedlock - it's like an episode of All My Children over here.

A Sampling of our lovlies ~


Curlie, the frizzled Polish Roo, looking, err... not his best.


Amelia the Americauna, in the highly-coveted nest box. Amelia is our super-jumbo egg layer. We're talking 4 oz eggs! Go Melie, go.


Beanie, one of our two Turken hens. Her sister, Vulture, looks the same, but has greenish black feathering like the Australorps.


Thunder, mid-crow, as ever.


Chick-Chick, our only white Americauna and the leader of the pack.


Blackberry, an Australorp pullet, one of nine. Her sisters, Agnes, Rockstar, Pinky-Pinky-Pinky, Skateboard and a few others are not pictured. Could you ever have guessed that I had the help of my friends' preschoolers when naming my chicks? ;)

A Package of Peepers!

My chickies are here! All 28 of them! That's a lot of chickens! What was I thinking!?!



They are Uber cute, I will give them that, but the peeping. Dear God in heaven, I'm going to lose my mind.



One of these babies is a free, exotic chick, variety unknown. I can barely tell the difference between the various types that I specifically chose, so I have no idea which one is Mr. or Miss. Mystery Bird.

The few that can be identified clearly from a mile away are the Turkens/Naked Necks. The expression "So ugly, it's cute" comes to mind here.


Does this little guy/gal look like a baby vulture or what? I almost had my friend's 4 year-old convinced that we had a baby pterodactyl. Almost.

As you can see in the video, all of these babies came in a surprisingly small box, and are still adjusting to the relative wide-openness of the trough, but tending to clump up together. Every so often a brave soul will wander over the water dishes and give them a tentative peck, with some of the more quick-witted and worldly among them successfully managing to master the skill of drinking. Shortly I'll have to sit down with them one by one and show them the dip-and-tip maneuver to get everybody up to speed on drinking.

The hot tub room, home of the broken hot tub, and previously the most useless room in the house, has now become our makeshift nursery. It is presently inhabited by 7 bunnies and 28 chicks, and will shortly be joined by my seedlings that I will be planting any day now. Things are really humming along now - this Spring is going to be NUTS!

Kids & Critters

So... I've been meaning to post, meaning to upload pics, meaning to do a whole lotta stuff that I haven't gotten around to doing. And now I offer you just one word in defense of my slacking - kids.

When I'm not running them from birthday parties to saddle club and all points in between, we're at home where they are hanging on me 24/7. Scarlet has been my little, very curious shadow. The isolated life of a hermit suddenly has an incredible amount of appeal...

Anyhoo, lots of things have been happening. The garden is starting to crank up, the "baby" chickens are growing like weeds at almost 8 weeks old, I've been knitting like a fool and I'm trying to physically and mentally prepare myself for the onslaught commencement of canning season.

Finally some new photos of the "babies" -

Scout, the oldest, then and now.




Scarlet, holding Snowflake, who we suspect might actually be Mr. Jeffries


Livy holding the soon-to-be renamed, Wilbur, our only Americauna chick, who we believe is a pullet.


Rocky, the original wiggler, who will also probably be renamed shortly, as he appears to be a she.


Can you believe how much these little stinkers have grown in 8 weeks? They are voracious little beasts! They finally graduated from the brooder to the coop after a very scary near-fire in the garage, involving the heat lamp and the pine pellet bedding. It wasn't good, but luckily everyone came out of it unscathed, if a little traumatized.

We still have not introduced/mixed the babies with the "big girls", as our 1-year-old hens are now known, since the babies are bantams and roughly the size of a fat pigeon, and the big girls weigh in the neighborhood of 5 to 8 pounds each. I'm curious about how much the babies weigh these days, but not curious enough to lose an eye trying to wrangle one onto the scale.

Bill says that it is time to start finding homes for some of the babies, seeing as this whole buying-a-farm business has gone on much longer than anticipated, and our backyard can only take so much assault in the form of scratching and pooping. I know he's right but I just don't want to let any of them go! I want to build my laying flock from (in as much as it will be possible) chickens that I have hatched and hand-raised myself. You know, that whole "provenance" thing. Oh, the trials and tribulations of being the Crazy Chicken Lady.