I'm Moving

Following the advice of my wife, I've decided to move my blog to another provider, homesteadblogger.com. I've been happy with Blogger, but the theme of my blog seems to fit in more there, and maybe I'll have more strangers, who are interested in homesteading, visit it and comment.

All of my old posts will be saved on this blog for however long Blogger wishes to keep it active.

You can see all my new posts at http://www.homesteadblogger.com/promisedland/

See you there!

Farm Tour - Garden

A friend of ours recently showcased her garden on her blog, and inspired me to do the same. I thought I'd start a short series picture tour of our farm, so I'll post other aspects of it later. (By the way Nola, if you're reading this, I would love to get a photo tour of your farm as well as I'm sure I'll never see all of it.

The place we put our garden was an old emu pen that was erected by some previous owner. According to my neighbors, they used to have upwards of 100 emus on this property. The entire fenced area is 40' X 148'. It was completely overgrown with weeds and small mesquite trees when we moved in, and it was a lot of hard work to get it prepared. Needless to say, we have a major weed problem in our beds. It will be years before the perennial weeds are under control. For now we just try to stay ahead of them.

The large pen was seperated into two smaller pens by a fence down the middle. We cut down sections of it to plant climbing veggies like peas and beans. It has worked out perfectly. This picture is of the the right side and you can see the middle fence on the left. The shed at the end was the emu's shelter, but makes a perfect garden shed too. We have tilled 9 seperate beds in this half.


This is the left side of the garden with the middle fence on the right. In the foreground is a sand box we put up for the kids. We spend enough time in the garden that they needed a place to play while we worked. As they get older, they'll transition from playing to helping with the work. We also have 9 tilled beds in this section. We let some of the bigger mesquite trees continue growing in this section to provide a bit of shade for us and the kids.


This is our strawberry bed. They are perennial strawberries that should come back every year. We added straw around them to keep down weeds and keep them from sitting in water after a rain.

This is a picture of some of our first potato plants coming up. The other green stuff in there is the weeds that grow in the paths. We have to constantly keep it mowed or they'll bloom and produce seeds.

Here are some of our peas growing up the middle fence. Some rabbits got into our garden and knocked some back before we could plug the holes they were getting in through, but they're doing fine now.

This is one of two raised beds we have. We eventually want them all to be raised beds because it really helps keep down weeds and helps standing moisture drain away.

Here's some of our lettuce.

Our garlic.
Onions

This is the other raised bed. It is Regina's herb bed and she is in the process of weeding and filling it with cooking and medicinal herbs.

This is some of her comfrey, which is an excellent healing herb. It grows pervasively, which is good because the cows love it.

Lastly, this is our mountain of manure/compost. We collected so much over the winter that it has quite obviously spilled out of the compost bins I built. We get about a wheelbarrow full of manure everyday, just from cleaning out the barn. If anyone wants any, just let us know.

That's the garden.

Mouse Hunt

This is a picture of what I can only assume is an insane woman. She moved probably 1000 lbs of sheet metal in search of one mouse and her four babies. Is the mouse a nuisance or causing trouble of any kind? Nope! She is minding her own business.



After removing sheet metal last weekend to put a wall up on our barn's overhang, I casually mentioned to my wife that my FIL and I had spotted a mouse with babies underneath the pile of metal. I should have known better. My wife LOVES baby animals, and raised mice in college just for fun. I still remember the time one of the mice got out of its cage in her car. A month later I was rifling through some papers on her floor board and out zooms a mouse. Yikes! I don't know what became of that mouse. It might still reside in that car at the junk yard.



Anyway, after spending 30 minutes scavenging through all that metal, she found 3 mouse babies but could not catch the mother. After refusing to help with the first try, I got sucked in to helping resume the search for the mother. I must really love that woman because I have no desire to have pet mice. We were unsuccessful, so she's trying to nurse the babies and keep them alive. We'll see. She's excited about having the babies because if they know us from a young age, they can be tamed.



As insane as I thought she was being, it sure is cute to see her get so excited about mice.

Flying Feathers

And Fabio is no more. I'm happy to say I'm not sorry. He was asking for it. He made a pretty big bird, and weighed in the same as our meat chickens, who are supposed to be bred for good meat qualities. He came in a 4.5 lbs. I know his skin doesn't look as pretty as the store bought kind, but that's because I scalded him too long. There is a way to scald them so they look prettier, but it's too much trouble for me. As long as the feathers come off easily, I don't care what the carcass looks like.

My church friends were disappointed we didn't bring him for lunch today, but we're not so sure he'd make a good roaster. He might be too tough. I told DW to cook him in the crock pot and then we'll be sure to have tender chicken.

All together we butchered 6 chickens, including Fabio. We have six more to do next weekend that we wanted to let grow a little longer. The chicken plucker worked WONDERFULLY! It stripped the feathers right off the bird so easily. My plucking time went from 40 minutes to 4 minutes. Quite an improvement if you ask me. I think anyone who gets a mechanical plucker should have to hand pluck at least one chicken so they really know how much better it is.

My father-in-law and I also added a metal side to the overhang we store our round bales under. It will help block the rain during storms and hopefully keep the hay a little drier. Less moisture means less waste.

I'm taking off three days from work next week so DW and I can plant the last of the garden. I'll take pictures of how it's looking sometime next week.

Execution Day Set - April 29, 2008

This character, Fabio, is our head rooster, and has been found guilty of multiple crimes. They include: assault of an infant (said infant was safe in her play pen and unharmed), multiple counts of assault against children, countless assaults of a woman, stalking, and noise violations caused by incessant crowing.

The sentence of death is to be carried out at 9 a.m., Saturday, April 29th.

Seriously though, he's been asking for it. Now that we have 4 roosters, his "services" are no longer required, and he didn't make it too hard to choose who was going to get the ax.

Turkeys!

I went to the feed store yesterday to get some chick grower and chicken feed and low and behold, they had their turkeys in. This is a picture of the type of chick we purchased. I believe it is a Broad-Breasted Bronze. It takes about 14-20 weeks to grow them to weight. The toms finish off at about 20 lbs and the hens at 16 lbs. Sure, they turn out ugly, but oh so tasty!

Breeding Meat Chickens

+ =

Dark Cornish + Barred Rock = SUPER CHICKEN!

DW and I are always looking for ways to save money on our farm. We started buying meat chickens from a mail order hatchery, but we don't save any money on them vs. buying from the store. We do it anyway because we like being self-sufficient and our chickens are "free range" and "organic" which fetch a higher price than store-bought chicken.

After doing a little research, I may have found a way to save us even more on our meat birds...breed our own. The meat chicks we buy from the hatchery are basically a cross between two breeds of chicken: a White Cornish rooster and a White Rock hen. The result is called a Cornish X. The Cornish have broad breasts, but lack thickness. The Rocks have thick breasts that lack width. Put them together, and you've got the ideal meat bird.

The problem is that no hatcheries sell White Cornish and White Rocks. Why would they? If everyone started their own meat flock, they wouldn't have a market for their own crosses. (By the way, if you're wondering why you can't just breed a couple of Cornish X's, it doesn't work. Cornish X's grow so quickly they likely wouldn't live to egg laying age, and if they did, they don't lay consistently.) So, what do we do?

Well, the hatcheries do sell two very similar chickens: a Dark Cornish and Barred Rock. They don't mind selling these, because many people don't like the dark plummage. It doesn't make for as pretty a dressed bird because some of the dark pin feathers are still visible. These two breeds are almost exactly like their white brethren, so why not breed them here and have our own meat flock? We don't mind the dark plummage because we're not selling them to picky customers.

The next time we order a batch of Cornish X, we'll have them throw in two or three Dark Cornish roosters. We already have the Barred Rocks. Talking to a chicken breeder on-line, he said we'd be "pleasantly surprised" with the results.

I love farming for fun.