Cranky n Stinky.com

I've been thinking a lot about organic food recently, as several topics have crossed my path over the last week or two. On a mother's forum I read the views of moms who buy organic milk versus moms who do not. A farmer friend sent me a concerned email about the recently introduced bill to remake the functions of the USDA and FDA into one concentrated food safety agency. One of the main fears around this bill is how it will affect small scale producers and organics. And just today, Aaron sent me a report of different organic milk brands, painstakingly rated by the Cornucopia foundation on criteria such as involvement in dairy operations, pasture available to cows, herd cull rate and more. This led me to do some checking out of the Cornucopia site and other information available there.

There is no mistake that interest in organic and local food is increasing, and overall, this is a great development. However, certainly for most consumers buying organic doesn't mean they have any greater transparency about where their food is coming from, or that it is being produced with any of the notions often attributed to organic food, notions such as production resulting from a small family oriented farm, free roaming happy animals, and so on. This is not to disparage the organic industry, because there are many small scale farmers doing exactly what we as consumers associate with organic farming. But as this market sector has grown tremendously, big food companies haven't wanted to miss the boat. One of the ways they've protected their economic interests is by getting involved - buying or creating organic brands, and lobbying through industry associations to alter standards that ostensibly will favor their interests more. Over at the Cornucopia site, I found this graphic to be particularly compelling. Many major organic brands have been acquired by a top 25 food company (such as Coca Cola, Kraft, Heinz and Cargill), and many organic brands are private label brands of larger supermarkets and food distributors (such as WalMart, Safeway, and Whole Foods). With the interest in and consolidation among organic food producers, it is nearly impossible for a consumer to really know what kind of entity is behind the food in question. Amazingly, at least as of 2007, there were a handful of brands that have held out as independents.

My own revelation was that of the organic milk brands we prefer, only one rated 3 cows in the survey. That brand is owned by HP Hood, not by the company we thought it was (they licensed the name). I am not totally dismayed by this; both are New England companies that I think have reasonable business practices, but there is still some level of deception here. The others rated no or one cow due to lack of information on the actual production methods. I still believe in and prefer organic milk, but this certainly removes any idealistic impression of who we are supporting when we buy these brands.

This in turn brings me back to the localvore movement. I know where I am now getting most of our meat and produce from - real people we have talked to, real farms we have visited that are nearby, real relationships we will cultivate this year. Before we'd really started this effort, about this time last year actually, I didn't even think it'd be possible to get half of what we've found locally or done ourselves. It's been an incredible journey and one in which I keep looking for the next steps.

Got milk?

There's another blog that has posed a chicken survey. So, Aaron suggested I blog the answers... here goes.

1. Do you have a particular favorite breed of chicken, and if so what is it and why do you prefer it? Or if more than one, which ones, etc?
Fairly new to chickens, so I have no strong preferences. Our black sex links are laying like crazy, and our Blue Laced Red Wyandotte roo is quite the looker. Though he is a big baby. The Easter Eggers lay fun eggs and are pretty chickens, too. If I were going just for volume, the black sex links would win.

2. Do you use your chickens for your family, to sell, or both? Meat, or eggs, or both?
We have our layer hens and we only plan to sell the excess (to friends, coworkers, family). We subsidized the raising of 10 meat birds at another farm, and we've had 1-2 roasters a month since they were processed in July. This usually translates to several meals for 2 based on a 5-6 lb bird. The meat birds were able to enjoy fresh pasture and were fed w/organic feed.

3. What advice would you give to anyone wanting to start out raising them, other than reading some good books on the subject?
Backyardchicens.com, and build a strong run. Don't skimp on the housing and fencing, though the very resourceful can get a lot of building materials through yardsales, Craigslist etc. Just make sure it will be a clean and dry home. Overestimate the size you need, you can always add chickens if you want to later!

4. Do you primarily keep your chickens in a coop/enclosed chicken yard, or do they roam your property?
Our chickens stay in the run area for most of the time. We let them out only when we are ourselves outside doing work around the barn, yard, etc. We usually do this late in the day so twilight gets them back in the run. However, a cup of scratch tossed in the run will usually work too!

5. Do you ever let them into your garden? If no, do you have a fence or something to keep them out?
Uhm, yes, they have gone in our garden. It is not fenced from them. But our garden was not a wild success this summer. Next summer may be different.

6. Do you ever use a chicken tractor, and if so, is it for meat birds only? do you use electric/ net poultry fencing? I'm interested in which has worked for you and which has not. What has been your experience with pastured poultry 'a la the Joel Salatin sort (follow behind the livestock grazings at the optimum time), if that applies?
We do not use a tractor for the layers. The meat birds were in a tractor for much of the time.

7. Do you keep chickens year-round, or raise them for seasonal processing?
Year round; it'll be our first winter with the hens.

8. How many chickens of a certain type do you raise at one time (what works best for you as far as how many to raise at a time?)
I think this depends on your goals. If it's just family eggs you want, a half dozen may be enough. We have 12 hens and 1 roo, in part because I figured a few wouldn't make it. They all did! But we're happy anyway, a dozen seems like a good number for us.

Inquiring minds (me!) want to know. I've seen so many folks with their own styles of chicken raising, and I'm so curious to know what works best for you...
Raising them from chicks is very rewarding!

That is how long it took for our chickens to start laying. Yes, they've started! I couldn't be more excited!
Aaron and I have joked about the $1000 dollar egg, and we're already to the $500 dollar egg. But having your own produced eggs is a great feeling. It's a relief to know that they are capable, and the time we've put into them is coming to fruition!

Tonight, I came home to let the chickens out with just a hint of light left, and all but two hopped down off their roost for treats (yep, 6:25 and they're roosting, it's so sad - pretty soon I won't see them at all at night). This is pretty normal - there are two girls who are early to roost and they value their sleep over treats.

Anyway, as the rest were having their cracked corn treat, after days of looking in the nest boxes only to see nothing, I said to myself, well, maybe because I cleaned them out yesterday there's an egg in there... It was just yesterday I had calculated their age to see if they should be laying, and yes, they were at the magic mark. But it was dark in the coop and a little hard to see. Is that a bunch of feathers, I wondered? Put my hand in, and not one, but TWO eggs, one each in the top nesting boxes. One is a brown egg, which means from one of our Black Stars, and the other an olive colored egg, so, from one of our Ameraucanas! I thought for sure the Ameraucanas would be a while longer. They are tiny, but solid shells, so they are healthy eggs! Now I can't wait to see if all the girls start laying, or maybe more importantly, if they'll keep laying as it gets progressively darker and colder...

We'll have to add free choice oyster shell to their diets, which gives them extra calcium they need to keep producing healthy shells. Next, we'll have to get an inside the coop waterer that will not freeze. We could be getting as many as

Picture below:



I will maybe get one compared to a real egg next.

Edit: Ok, here it is, middle egg is from a mature local hen (bought).

I promised some photos of our boys and got the chance this weekend. I took some of the chickens, too. They are now maturing and maybe just a month away from laying. They look like adults.

So, here are the pics:

Canon at the fence:


Wally (Emerson) looking for anything tasty near the barn:



The boys in the paddock:



Here's one of Charlie, and you can see he's growing into being a rooster:



Life is good!

More pictures are up at Flickr

This is going to be pretty short as I am feeling fried from work. Of course, during the day I have all these great thoughts I want to blog about but after evening tasks and dinner, I'm now feeling sluglike.

But, I think we are a real farm now. We both have mucked the poop to prove it. On Monday, two of our alpacas arrived and are managing to settle in now. Tonight they even had some fun running around after the chickens which were out for some early evening grazing. It's nice to let the chickens out in the evening because they will return to the coop on their own - so I take advantage of that! Anyway the boys haven't been around chickens before so they spend a lot of time studying them. When the chickens are out, they try to follow them and the chickens get all scatterbrained. Really, the chickens are not very intelligent creatures. But still adorable.

I don't have pictures yet of this momentous event, in part due to our continuing afternoon rainy/stormy weather. This weekend I hope to have the time and inclination to snap some pictures and I'll post them up here.

I'm amazed at how quickly the presence of the alpacas has caused that sweet alive pasture smell - and I mean that in a good way. Alpaca pastures smell really pleasant to me.

Aaron picked a few more quarts of blackberries, and fought the weed whacker (it'll be going back to the store for a return) to get the back split rail growth cleared up. Our paddock almost looks nice again. And there's no way the two boys will run out of greens anytime soon. We could have all the boys here and still have plenty.

Speaking of boys, yep, we had our fourth and final cria for the year, a fawn male. He's looking really nice so we're holding on to hope that at least one of our 8 boys will blossom into a special herdsire.

This weekend will feature in no particular order: barn office cleaning, coop muck out, hanging with the boys, blueberry picking, exercise at some point... that's been the real casualty these last two weeks, minimal exercising. Not ideal for race preparation... oh well - the farm has to come first.

I'll be back with more updates soon!

I've been meaning to post photos for some time, and haven't... like of our fences, our veggies... so with no further ado, here are some select photos captured on or around the farm recently.

First, an awesome rainbow we got amid one of the many thunderstorms we've had recently. This is from our front door.


Next, this is our raised bed which probably needs weeding already from the time I took it (last weekend). It has our tomatoes, pumpkin, and Cubanelle peppers. We have three types of tomatos - Early Girl, Mountain Frost, and Mr Stripey heirloom. All are doing very well and we even see a few tomatoes budding. Yes, I am surprised by our ability to get anything at all to grow out of the ground.... We have other beds growing things too but sad to say they don't look quite as nice (but so long as they are growing, we'll take it). At least I haven't had to water at all with the nearly daily storms (and it really does pour when it rains these days).



What you're supposed to see here is the new fence that we dropped around the existing split rail. Woven wire, pounded posts, hi-tensile, and hot wire at top. We have a couple of spots we need to pred proof around gates and such, but otherwise we are almost ready to keep out most of the unwanted visitors...



Last one for tonight, Aaron has returned to working on the coop and run, and has dug the trench, started putting down the hardware cloth, and sunk the other post needed for the run door. I have a strange feeling we may have a run soon! That would be outstanding. I will need to get back to finishing the paint, floor, and roosts... So here's a picture of some of his progress (and one of our chickens - big now, but a post for another night). I'll have to take more w/whatever weekend progress we make.



I have posted many more recent photos to flickr, so take a look here:

Flickr photos

And on a different note, I went for a quick ride tonight. Got about 17 miles in before dusk. I noticed on the walk back up the drive that the raspberry bushes are bearing fruit now (all wild). So, maybe this weekend I'll do some collecting of any ripe berries. And of course it's pick-your-own season, so we're now in the prime time of fresh local produce. Hooray!

There's been so much going on I don't know where to start. First, we've been in a heat wave and had a near tank disaster. As it was we lost our goby and shrimp Monday, but the clowns hung in there and we think they'll be ok. No idea about the corals. Hopefully the tank will be back on track soon. The 4 day heat wave of 93-97 temps and humidity (before it is even summer, mind you) is expected to break with t-storms later tonight.

The chicks are doing well. They get very excited to see us and especially are enjoying trying to fly up to the top of the brooder. The don't appear to enjoy the dark, but, it is the natural way and there is 0 reason for me to have the heat lamp on... they all squawk when we go in there. To keep them cool we've been using a barn fan and frozen gatorade bottles in the brooder. We have taken them out a few times but they don't seem to get the outdoors yet. Hopefully that will click in when they are older. They have most their feathers, minus some spots on the wings, the tail, their head... Maybe 65-70 percent feathered. The coop just needs some touch up paint, the floor done, and insulation (at some point, may not do that right away). We haven't started the run.

Here's one of our chicks (actually an older picture because I haven't photo'd them recently - they are not this small now):



We have three new cria on the ground, three boys. All are healthy and well! I will be out to visit some of them later this month. I need to get ready for the fall already. We've found someone to do our fences and that work should be starting next week. So we are making progress on the pacas as well.

We have the garden fully planted for this year with: acorn squash, cucumbers, 3 varieties of tomatoes, pumpkin, green peppers, hot peppers, cilantro, sage, dill, rosemary, basil, oregano, tarragon, and spearmint (last two inherited). This is using 4 of the 6 beds, 2 will be fallow for this year... I think I'll be busy enough keeping the rest weeded. And I have lots of bug bites, because every evening I get a few more...

But with all the business and even chaos at times, I get glimpses of the payoff - a few nights ago, in the warm sunset, I walked outside in my bare feet, across the patio, into the barn, to enjoy some quiet time with the chicks. Just that basic moment, with the quiet of the dusk and feeling at home, I felt that feeling of being home, taking care of our land, our animals, our future... and it was extremely fulfilling.

Just getting started, but yesterday I planted:

Mr Stripey heirloom tomato (1)
Early Girl tomatos (6)
Mountain Frost tomatos (6)
Acorn squash (1)
Pumpkin (1)
Cucumbers (2 hills)

also need to plant sage and coriander aka cilantro herbs we got, but the herb bed is a bit of a mess right now, and needs some reclaiming.

We have two more veggie beds we could plant... but I don't want to have too much in our first year of gardening. We'll see. maybe leave one of them empty this year.

Today, I went to a fencing workshop in Chesham, NH. It was freezing and raining for much of the day. But being on a working farm is something else, and I never get over that feeling of wonder. Wellscroft is a pretty well known fencing supply in this area, but they are an active farm with cattle, sheep, chickens, working border collies, and they even have a guard llama. The goal of the workshop was to give an overview of different types of fences which either serve one of two purposes: keep certain animals out, or keep certain animals in. We're looking for how to keep certain animals out, since alpacas rarely challenge fences.

We walked around on the property and saw different types of fences, gates, and latches. I could talk of what I learned about post pounders, high tensile electric tape, or even solar powered battery chargers. But what struck me as I was trying to absorb all this information was the variety of people attending, who were everything from prospective farm animal owners to existing beef cattle owners. One person in our group was a produce grower who wanted to keep deer out of his fields to prevent crop damage. But we were all there to add to our agricultural knowledge, and had common understanding of being tied to the land and ways of animals.

It amazes me how most people I am in contact with on a daily basis have little understanding of life around farms, and when I am back in this environment, how much it feels like my home, like a more comfortable environment than that of the cubicle, sterile, electronic corporate world I also inhabit. While I didn't grow up on a farm, I spent a lot of time on them until I went off to college, and this imprinted my tangible senses: the smell of fresh sweet hay, the heat of summer sun drying out the earth, the jagged edges of a corn leaf cutting against my skin, the soft bleats or moos of a sheep or cow contentedly munching away, the quiet of the dawn or twilight. These are the things that seem real, and meaningful, to me.

Life as a farmer is hard. It's often operating on a shoestring, and it's often long days ending in complete exhaustion. I know this, and yes, at times I worry I am not cut from the same cloth, that the stresses of the life will be too much... You can see them on the wizened faces of the folks who've stopped worrying if every blade of grass is where it should be, if every piece of equipment is working let alone put away clean. But you also see something else. That these people have learned something maybe more basic - and the hint of irony, that quirk of humor many farmers have - gives it away. That what become the farmer's ways, what so many others search for and may never find, or find late in their years, are indeed what life is - a series of beginnings and ends...

Well it has been a very, very long time since I've shared any thoughts on farming and food. Since it is finally starting to feel like winter may end (it did snow today, but the days are getting long now) Aaron and I have turned our thoughts to making some progress on our farm. Our objectives for this summer are fairly simple, yet also complex enough that we will be taking on a lot of new changes. We want to have a garden, establish a chicken flock (egg layers), and at least as of now, get the boys (alpacas) here. I think the girls will continue to board for a bit longer so we can acclimate to alpaca care without having baby arrivals enter into the mix.

There are many steps for each of these activities to occur, but this wasn't meant to be the focus of this entry. But I will say as a side note we'll be starting with our chickens first with a brooder set up, and chicks in April. It will be about four months, so let's say August, when we will get to egg production, but in the meanwhile we'll be enjoying seeing the chicks grow up.

Given all our conversations of farming and food, we share a desire to be producers of some portion of our food, and where we cannot be, to buy local well produced food. Well doesn't necessarily mean organic, but more importantly that food is not overly mass produced, and is raised/grown in a way that is considerate to the animals, plants, and environment. There are other advantages to local food as well - we contribute to the local economy, our neighbors and communities. We cut down a little bit on the environmental impact of moving food around. We also get food that is usually much fresher and flavorful than corresponding store shipped food. It's true we can't know the source of all our foods, even the local ones, but knowing for example that we are buying milk from VT farmers who're milking hormone free cows makes a difference to me.

Getting local isn't easy, especially from the months of November to May where fresh vegetable and fruit just doesn't really exist from local sources. Even so, we are trying to be more attentive to the food supply chain, and in some cases we have gotten foods directly from remote growers such as our annual order of Texas grapefruit and avocados. This, plus some stores of produce we dried in the fall help us make it through the winter. I think it would be extremely hard for me to do the 100 mile challenge year round, but I think we get reasonably close to this in the summer time, and I'll be curious to try and keep track of how we do this summer.

So, here are some of the foods we think we we will be able to get as locally produced over the next year. I am defining local as roughly an area 150 miles from our house. We will probably join a CSA but Aaron is still researching them. A (P) means we think we will produce this ourselves sometime during the year. I'm sure the list will change, but I'd like to get your feedback.

Fruits/veggies:
Raspberries (P)
Blackberries (P)
Strawberries
Blueberries
Apples(P* - we won't grow em but will dry them)
Cranberries
Tomatoes (P)
Corn
Peaches
Pumpkin(P)
Beans
Squash
Zucchini
Turnips/Radishes
Beans
Cucumber (P)
Broccoli (P)
Potatos

Dairy/Ovo:
Eggs (P)
Milk
Cheese
Ice Cream
Sour Cream

Meat:
Beef
Chicken
Turkey
Lobster
Clams
Fish
Bison
Lamb

Prepared foods:
Bread
Potato chips
Pita chips

Other:
Maple syrup
Honey (we'd like to produce but not this year)
Herbs (P)
Wine

I'm sure this is not an exhaustive list but I would like to think about this as the year goes on. Obviously we don't have a lot in the way of local whole grains but even looking at this list there are a great deal of staples here. There are also foods I love and I would be reluctant to give up if I really did a 150 mile challenge, but having a list like this at least ought to keep me thinking about getting local options first. In fact, because we have a good local meat supplier, we really ought to be able to avoid most western grown meat, with their attendant large scale moving, feedlot, and slaughter operations. If nothing else, I think our venture into being small scale food producers will bring us closer to the food supply chain on many levels.

What will you be buying locally this year? What will you be producing? How do you feel about where your food is coming from?

We have moved to our new farm, now, several years (and then months to actually get thru the process) in the making!

We moved on Friday and are still getting settled. The barn is quiet without the alps yet, but they will be here in the spring, so it won't be too long. We have to work on the pastures before then anyhow.

It will be a while before we are operational, but our new farm has so far provided us with a good crop of blackberries, beans, and the tomatoes are plentiful and green so we'll have those soon. We have two wild turkey families that are coming to visit frequently, and I found the most beautiful feather in the woods today, where I was fortunate enough to be walking with my parents who were able to see our place this weekend. This is no small feat since they are from away (as any good Mainer would put it, though, I am not in Maine).

It is going to be so great here! We are finally at the point where we can look around and be excited to be settling in.

A few odds and ends left to take care of, but we are here, and ready to engage in our land stewardship! My parents even gave me a pitchfork as a farm-warming gift!

Pics to come soon!