Mid December- Part 1: An Egg update

So what's going on around here the week before Christmas?

After adjusting to the newness of snow, the chickens are doing really well and enjoy getting out in the yard every chance they get. One of us goes out every morning around sun-up to check the girls and open the coop, and by that time they are very ready to be up and about. The cold doesn't seem to bother them a bit, only the really windy days keep them cooped up. We've opened up the chicken run to the garden and they really like pecking and scratching around and in the garden beds.

The coop is a much calmer place since we removed the two other roosters, these days it's downright pleasant. The hens are laying about a dozen eggs a day thanks to the heat lamp which keeps them warm and lighted despite the cold short days. Some people say that the hens need a break in the winter, but we've yet to read a good reason for that and ours seem to be doing fine. We did notice that there were very few hens using the upper boxes, so we added a perch to give them a place to climb in. That seems to have fixed the problem for the most part.

We collect eggs once or twice a day, often reaching under the hens to get them. The hens are generally agreeable to this, although at times one will let you know she's not happy with a sharp peck.

Selling the eggs is going very well too.  Thank you very much to everybody that has bought eggs from us! Lately we've been able to buy chicken feed and scratch using the egg money which was a goal of ours. 

 As near as I can tell, the honey bees are wintering well also. I check them every few days by putting my ear to the box and giving it a quick tap. The bees buzz in response and then go back to their business. What is their business? Keeping the queen warm! The colony forms a tight ball and everybody works together to make heat. The ball moves gradually as the bees consume honey for energy and cycle from the inside to the outside of the ball. Both colonies have access to sugar syrup, but the consumption has gone way down since the fall. Since it's hard for the bees to move far this time of year, I need to switch from the syrup to sugar cakes or dry sugar feeding for the winter. I need to check on them, but hesitate to open the hives because exposure to the cold can kill them. In a well established hive there is enough honey that you don't need to feed, but mine are not that well prepared since we got a late start. 

 Feeding sugar cakes involves making hard sugar rich patties and placing them in the hive, while feeding dry sugar can be done by placing newspaper on the frames and pouring a few pounds of sugar on newspaper. The humidity in the hive will cause the sugar to harden and form a cake.

 I found a very good beekeeping blog with lots of pictures and how to's at http://mudsongs.org/. These guys keep a very neat blog devoted to beekeeping in St. John's, Newfoundland. I am encouraged by reading about their success in a climate worse than mine. Last year they made and fed sugar cakes and I may need to do the same. Mudsongs.org/making-candy-cakes.

Also, http://www.beesource.com/ has a good (lengthy) USDA text explanation of winter feeding at http://www.beesource.com/resources/usda/supplemental-feeding-of-honey-bee-colonies/

I'll keep you posted on my bee's progress and what I decide to do about feeding.

Update: Mid December - Part 2: Emergency feeding 

Until then, Happy Holidays to everybody, Merry Christmas, keep warm and stay safe. 

KJ 

Thanksgiving and early December

This year for Thanksgiving we traveled to California to visit my family at my childhood home, the GHJ Tree Farm . It was wonderful seeing everybody and spending time together. 

The weather was fantastic and we had a blast playing outside.

While we were there, it was fun to help sell trees with my Dad. His is a choose and cut operation where families come and pick a tree to cut and take home. For many of the costomers this is a long standing tradition they love. I grew up on the tree farm and that experience is  probably where my interest in Forestry stems from. These trees are planted and cared for for years all with the purpose of someday being chosen to light up someone's holiday.  

Back here in Plains we have a few traditions of our own. We're lucky enough to live in a place where you can choose and cut a Christmas tree off of public land with a permit. Removing trees of this size from areas that are actively regenerating improves the conditions for the rest of the trees in the stand. This year's tree is a beauty!

Whitney really enjoys sewing and quilting in the winter and recently completed this baby blanket.

She made this for some friends of ours who are expecting their first baby soon. 

What would December be with out football? This year the UM Grizzlies are again in the FCS playoffs and doing very well. Maybe it's a championship year? Whit made this sign and did manage to get on ESPN, but only for an instant. 

Hope everybody out there is having a good December. Until next time, Kyle and Whitney.

Filling the Freezer

Whitney and I don't take butchering lightly. It is an important part of the fall, securing the meat that we'll use for the next year, and beyond. Very little gets given away and only to people who appreciate what goes into preparing it.
Why do we Hunt? the plain and simple reason is for meat. Yes, there are many other reasons too, like: recreation, commrodery, exploring new areas and excercise, but you can do all that with out killing animals. Likewise, you can eat meat your whole life and never kill anything personally(this is a subject for a whole different conversation). To me, a true hunter places just as much importance on the meat as he does the trophy. That said, I enjoy a large rack as much as the next guy, but never at the expense of the meat.
For that reason, we clean our meat to a point some people find ridiculous. Many guys I know claim to be able to process 5 or more deer in a day. It takes us a full day to process one animal. However, many people I know also claim venison is gamey, tough and a struggle to eat. In comparison many people we have served venison had no idea it wasn't store bought beef until they were told. We also aim to get every ounce of meat we can from the animals we kill, honoring the animal's sacrafice as much as possible.
Clean meat starts with a clean shot. It continues through dressing and caring for the animal in the field and proper handling at home. We always strive to kill on the first shot, although at times it takes more. In her four animals to date, Whitney has yet to shoot any more than once, always hitting a vital spot. I can't claim this impressive achievement myself, but most of mine fall to one shot, and I have yet to loose a wounded animal. I don't write this as a boast, simply to point out that good stalking before the shot, and followup after are a part of hunting that should never be down-played. A long range or unsure shot that wounds an animal is far less impressive than a long sneek ending in a good shot and clean kill.
All of our game gets hung for seven to ten days, allowing the meat to pass completely through rigor mortis and begin to age slightly. I have skinned animals "hot" before aging and "cold" after the aging. The only real difference I have found is that skinning hot is much easier. It does dry more meat than cold skinning, but use of a game bag to cover the carcass can help keep in the moisture.
The pictures below are from a recent weekend of butchering. We had our good friends Mac and Alyssa over, the Montana State Bobcat Vs. University of Montana Griz rivalry game on the tube, and two bucks to keep us busy. The following is our style of butchering. It is not the only way and I can't say it is the best way, just our way.


Mule deer hind quarter

    The first thing I did was go out to the barn and separate the front quarters from the hanging carcass. We start with the fronts, then the backstraps (loins), neck and ribs and end with the hind quarters. The pieces were brought in and cleaned completely of hair. Next the dark dried out meat was trimmed off and the muscle groups separated from the bone. Venison fat is not enjoyable to eat, it taints the flavor of the meat and ruins the cut. All fat, tendon and sinew gets trimmed completely.

cutting trimmed meat into usable pieces

 Once the muscle is totally cleaned, it gets cut and sorted into various products. We aren't big on roasts, so we don't wrap any. We have found that it is much more enjoyable to pull packages from the freezer that are 100% ready to go, so nothing gets wrapped until it's totally ready. As our friend Alyssa pointed out, we tend to do the work upfront, while some people put off the final trimming until it's time to cook. That's just a personal preference.

the sort top to bottom: meat to grind, jerky strips, steaks.

One product we really enjoy eating is venison jerky. This year I applied for and filled an extra tag, just so that we'd have extra meat to devote to things like jerky and sausage. Otherwise we would have been using steak or stew meat for jerky. In this photo you can see how we sort the meat: bits to grind all the way down to good steaks (stew chunks aren't pictured). In the middle are strips that we'll dry into jerky. These are cut with the grain of the meat as opposed to steaks and stew chunks that are cut across the grain.




Once the meat is cut and sorted, it's time to wrap. This usually falls to Whit, while I keep cutting. First the meat is arranged on plastic wrap, in groups of like cuts one to two pounds at a time. The plastic is wrapped up and all the air is pushed out.  

Then, the package is placed on freezer paper and wrapped again. This double wrapping has never failed us, even with meat staying in the freezer for more that two years at time. However, you should aim to use the meat within a year.



 Finally, the date and cut is written on the package. We also name our deer and write it on the package. This sounds odd at first maybe, but it is a simple way to remember what deer it was and recall the hunt.

At the end of the day, the packages were loaded into the freezer and the jerky strips were loaded into the dehydrator. The meat for grinding was stockpiled in tubs and frozen, waiting for a day this winter when we'll make burger and sausages (future blog post?).
The Griz beat the Cats soundly, making it a good day all around. Thanks very much to Mac for help with the cutting and taking these great pictures.
KJ

Snowbirds and Blue Eggs

These past couple of weeks came as a surprise to the chickens, as this has been their first taste of winter. With daytime highs only in the mid teens and a healthy 6" of snow on the ground the girls turned quickly in to coop potatoes. It wasn't until the weather warmed up some and I shoveled a bare spot in the run that they would venture out. The weather has been a learning process for us too, as the shortened daylight and cold weather meant less eggs and frozen water. We overcame these obstacles by adding a heat lamp to the coop and a heated stand for the water. Now we are back up to 10 or 11 eggs a day, and have recently celebrated the first of our Araucana eggs!

These are the smaller multi colored hens that have been the slowest to develop. They are special because each has a unique coloring and they lay eggs that can vary between blue and green.

Besides trying to keep the chickens from freezing, we have been very busy butchering the two mule deer and one whitetail that we got this year. More on that coming later.

Until then we hope everybody has a happy, warm and safe Thanksgiving!

Kyle and Whit. 

Hunt 2011

It's been a great hunting season!

 Early on in the season, we enjoyed a really fun camping trip with friends, and I took some rides looking for elk. While these outings didn't turn up any game, they were both very worthwhile hunting trips. Hunting is about a lot more than bagging a trophy. A big part of the experience is spending time with great people in the places that we love. This season we were really excited to have Whitney's Dad here for a couple of weekends.

We've had a great time with Gary revisiting some old favorite hunting places and trying out some new ones. We took long hikes, at times not seeing anything. Other times we saw many deer, and even a herd of cow elk. One day Gary and I saw nothing but some mountain lion and really large wolf tracks.

 Eventually, Whitney and I were both successful filling our buck tags, each taking nice mule deer. We got to share the experience with Gary which made it even more enjoyable.  We've both shot deer with larger racks in years past, but we are meat hunters first and foremost, and these will be good eating. These two deer will keep us well fed for the next year, I'm really looking forward to the tenderloins! We'll let them hang for a week and then the work starts. Until then we still have some time left to look for elk, and I'm looking forward to hunting with  a good buddy next weekend.

No matter what the outcome, when you spend time in the hills with great people it's a great season!

3 Roosters is 2 too many

Today was a sad day for our flock. Two of our "girls" had to move on.
For a while now we've had a couple larger chickens that we were watching, hoping they'd be hens. Because there was supposed to be two breeds of black and white chickens, our hope was that one breed was significantly larger than the other, and that we only had two of that large breed. It seemed reasonable. Also, while the Colonel has been crowing and acting quite rooster like for months, these other big birds were rather docile. But sadly, recently these other two have shown their true rooster natures. They grew combs and spurs and began harassing the hens. This apparently caused Colonel to harass the hens with renewed vigor. All of a sudden the chicken yard was getting pretty out of hand, and some of the hens were getting pecked to the point of bleeding. This can become a real problem because chickens are very attracted to red and blood can cause chickens to peck one another to death.
So as a solution first we thought maybe somebody local would like a 4H rooster. Youngsters often show roosters at the fair and we know a few families that do, but they were not interested. Next we hoped somebody may just like to have a rooster, but that turned out to be a long shot also. Finally it became clear that our two barred rock roosters were enough of a problem, they were leaving one way or another. While this was going on, we had also heard about the recent trend of using chicken feathers for earrings and decorating girl's hair. Chicken feathers are quite valuable it turns out, and one of our local hair stylists has gotten in to feather dyeing. Whitney and her are good friends, and they will use these feathers to try some different earrings and things.
I asked around and found a friend that was interested in having the meat, in exchange for skinning the birds. The usable part of the skin is called the saddle, and extends from the back of the head to the top of the vent (Google it if your not sure what a chicken's vent is).  He has a lot of experience with this because at one time he raised chickens for meat and feathers, although at that time the feathers were for fly fishing flies. This option worked well for us since we weren't prepared to butcher and skin our roosters, but didn't want to see the birds wasted. The meat for a clean saddle was a fair trade.
So, tonight I went and learned how to dispatch a chicken. This didn't turn out to be nearly as traumatic as you may imagine. None of the chopping block and cleaver and headless chickens running around that I was imagining. A simple, quiet slit with a small kitchen knife while holding the rooster upside down was all it took. A few seconds later and they were done.
Sad as it is, that turned out to be the best option. The meat will be used, the feathers will be used, the hens can take a break and we don't have to feed extra mouths. Sometimes it's not fun but as animal owners we had an obligation to do the right thing for the hens. Also if we are going to take these chickens seriously at all, we can't feed extra birds for no reason.
On a lighter note, the hens are producing 6 - 8 eggs a day now. And as it is now honest to gosh winter (19 degrees the other day) we've put a heat light in the coop to keep the water from freezing. This should help with our egg production to, as we should be closer to a dozen a day and right now demand is exceeding supply!
Thanks for reading. KJ

The first $2.50

This was truly a big day. We've sold our first dozen eggs!

We're now gathering six eggs a day, and every other day or so a new hen starts. By next week we should be up to a dozen a day. So, for the first time we've sold eggs. One of Whitney's coworkers bought the lucky dozen, for the sum of $2.50.



The egg money jar


Why $2.50?  We're not trying to get rich here, but the chickens didn't need to be a money sink either.  We believe there is a economic side of hobby farming, it should be able to provide and support it's self. Not buying eggs will save us money, but chicken feed ain't free! From the beginning our idea for the chickens was that they should pay for their own feed. $2.50 is the going price locally and should pay for feed and and fresh bedding every few months. 
And so just like that, after months of planning and waiting, we are in the egg business!