Many Hands make Light Work

Pam, Merry and Sunni cleaning and wrapping the birds

Pam and I planned on butchering our remaining 26 broiler chickens last Saturday along with three old layers.  Some friends of our wanted to bring four birds to our place to also have butchered that day.  We ended up doing 32 birds and completed the job by 3 pm.  Bruce and I dispatched the birds, removed their feet and feathers while Pam, Merry and Sunni clean, wrapped and weighed them in preparation for the freezer.  A good day for us; not so for the birds.  Oh well, life here is short but sweet.

The newest mother warming her ducklings

The older mother with her nine ducklings after being moved to the bird area

We had another Muscovy hatch some ducklings (7), her second batch this summer - she had 14 her last hatching.  When the ducks come out of the nettle forest with new ducklings I catch them all (including the mother) and put them in a separate pen with their own house, with a small water container and free choice grain. When the duckling start to get their feathers (about four weeks) I move them all back into the bird yard with everyone else.  This time she had less ducklings because I found her nest while she was still in the duckling yard of 12 eggs - no drake in this yard so the eggs were not fertilized.

Runner Beans with the summer fog rolling in

The garden is way behind this year due to a cold spring, a very cool summer, and my busy schedule.  Between working on the new chicken coop and real estate being very busy I didn't do a very good job of starting our spring vegetables this year.  I'm not very hopeful about the corn but the runner pole beans might still ripen their crop.  Cool season crops have done very well.  We had great garlic, broccoli and cauliflower crops, potatoes are yet to be dug (another couple of weeks but before the rains return), but I planted the onions late so they are way behind.

Our typical summer day this year has been fog or a low marine cloud layer every morning with afternoon sun.  The sun has been warm once it burns off the clouds with highs in the low 70's.  Yesterday was a treat with the temperature in the 80's most of  the day.

I have the third part of my beekeeping class this afternoon and several questions for the instructor.  How do I prevent swarming?  How do I combine two hives?  What are good flowers to plant for the bees?  I want to combine two of the swarms I captured late in July and I want to build a bee garden near our house.

Pooh Bear with his best friend, Surely

We are milking two of our goats and have been getting about two gallons of milk each day, 3/4 of a gallon from Alure and 1.25 gallons from Nettle.  The boys are doing well, Surely is bred (due in the beginning of January), and Pooh Bear is living with his best friends, the goats.

Our Compost entry in the Island County Fair won first prize

We entered 16 items in the Island County Fair last week and won 14 blue ribbons.  Our compost and mint won best of the show in their groups.  I watched as the judge for compost used ours as an example of how she judge compost.  We have great compost, with our garden debris, goat and chicken bedding (with manure), leaves and the debris from my landscaping business.  We have three piles, never turn them - just let them rot.

August on the Farm

Surely is in heat and has moved in with our buck

Yesterday Pam and I cleaned out the buck/kid barn and noticed that EV, our Boer buck was starting to smell like a buck in rut.  It's a strong, sweet odor, the first sign that fall breeding time is around the corner.  This morning Surely, our best milker that didn't take last year and is dry, was at the buck gate, her tail wagging (called flagging) and talking to EV.  I let her through the gate and sure enough, she was in standing heat.  Standing heat is where the doe will stand still and let the buck mount her.  Ovulation (the dropping of the eggs to be fertilized) in the female occurs 12 to 36 hours after the onset of standing heat.  I saw EV mount Surely three times but we'll let Surely stay in with him for 10 days or so.  Sometimes the eggs don't drop and she'll go into standing heat again - and I don't want to miss that.  If she settles this time we should have her babies January 3rd.

Pooh Bear taking another nap

Pooh Bear wasn't interested in the racket, just wanted to get more rest.

Mother Muscovy with 10 ducklings teaching them how to grab flies out of the air

Our Muscovy duck has 10 ducklings that are about ready to be sold.  We get $7 each for them at this age, $15 when they are fully feathered out, and $20 at six months.  If we sell a laying duck we get $25.  What we don't sell we'll butcher.

One of our new Sex-Linked hens

Egg production has really fallen off, from the peak of 12 eggs a day to three or four.  Our layers are going into their third year and they need to be replaced.  Our new flock should start laying next month and we'll butcher the old girls next spring.  Our plan is to add 15 each year and remove 15, keeping our laying flock at about 30.  Next weekend is our butchering day for the remaining broilers and we plan on including our two Rhode Island Red roosters.

A Sex-Linked Rooster - sex-linked is a cross of Rhode Island Red and Bared Rock

A nasty weed growing around here is Tansy ragwort, an invasive, toxic biennial weed from Europe most often found in pastures and along roads and trails.  It is a Class B Noxious Weed in Washington State and control is required.

Tansy Ragwort with the Cinabar larva eating away

When prevalent, tansy ragwort is on of the most common causes of poisoning in goats, caused by consumption of the weed found in pasture or hay.  Milk produced by affected goats can contain toxins.  Most goats will reject it, bukt some will eat it, especially if it is in their hay; its poisonous alkaloids are unaffected by drying.  Honey from tansy ragwort also contains the alkaloid.

They will strip the plant of leaves and flowers

The good news is the appearance of a moth that lays its eggs on tansy, called the cinnabar moth.  Spectacular success has been achieved controlling tansy ragwort in the Pacific Northwest region by releasing this animal, and we have it occurring naturally around our place.  In places where we don't see them we just pull the plant when it is flowering and compost the plant after cutting off the flowers.  Our compost pile is very hot with all of the goat manure and urine, so it can probably take the complete plant.

A Very Good Life on the Farm, and One Bad Day

EV, our Boer Buck with two of his Nubian/Boer kids in the Buck Yard

An interesting day Sunday was.  It started off separating the goat kids from their mothers.  I finally corrected the drainage problem around the buck house, putting in a curtain drain and gutters on the structure.  The day before I cleaned out all of the old bedding straw, putting in fresh material.  I put in EV, our Boer buck, and the four weathered boys this Sunday morning.  Between the boys screaming for their mothers and their mothers screaming for the boys, we had much noise and little peace.  Pooh Bear, our guardian livestock dog, slept through it all.

Alure and Nettle, our two Nubians that we are milking this year

Sunday was also our chicken butchering day, with our goal to process all of the male broilers.  The night before Pam and I picked up the chicken plucker from our friends at the Blue Feather Farm in Clinton.  The set up takes me about a hour, which we did near the house where we have outside hot water.  Then the process of going up to the broiler house, grabbing a rooster and walking down to the processing area.  About 300 feet each way - 20 round tips.  The chicken I would grab was very upset, but as I made the trip down to the house I talked to each one, holding him close to my chest, thanking him for sharing his life force with us.  By the time I was half way to the house they would be totally calm and accepting of their fate.

The Killing Cones set up for 4 birds

We had a setup of four killing cones on a sawhorse, I would put the chicken in upside down, allowing the blood to rush to their head.  I then use an X-acto-knife to cut the throat and bleed into a bucket.  By the time I had the next chicken brought down the one before would be dead.  When I got three dispatched, I then submerged them one at a time in a pot of water, 140 degrees, for one minute.  Then into the chicken plucker where I removed their feet (the feet are reserved for future chicken stock).  About one minute or so and all of the feathers are gone - then into a metal trash can filled wit ice water.  Pam comes out and takes them one at a time into the house where she cleaned, wrapped and weighed them before putting them in the freezer.  20 chickens took us just about the full day.

My set up

The inside of the plucking machine

The birds averaged 4.5 lbs, down a pound from last year.  We changed feed this year and last year we let them grow longer.