No Power at the Farm

I am lost in the morning without a computer (I'm writing this at work and only have two minutes) as we have not had power for 36 hours now.  A viscous storm came through Monday night with 60 mph winds, heavy rain (at one time the hourly rate was 4.5 inches), and the power went out for the south half of Whidbey Island.  Almost everyone had it back by 9 am but we did not.  We have a generator that runs the barn that I turn on so we can have water, but the house is in the back.  More on this tomorrow.

Another evening without power - our Aladdin Lamp allowing me to read, a wood stove keeping us warm

Tomorrow is here and the power finally came on at 1 pm on Wednesday, 40 hours this time.  We have not had a power outage like this one since the winter of 2006-07, when we lost power for at least 8 hours seven times.

Because our deep freezers are 100% full, and we didn't open the doors during the outage, everything stayed frozen there.  I'm worried about the goat milk in the refrigerator so this morning I made Panier with five quarts.  Because I heat it to 195 degrees F. for 10 minutes it will be ok.

Slicing Panir

Panir just removed from the oven

Those people that have learned to live without electricity are a hardy bunch.  We have a neighbor that has two solar panels that have to be adjusted several times a day to have electricity as they live in the woods.  They have been living without running water or electricity for over 30 years!  I would like to put solar panels on the pump house roof so when we lose power we would still have water with pressure.  A long term goal of mine.

Daylight Saving Time Ends

Today is Wednesday, now the fourth morning since we changed the clocks back.  How does it affect our farm animals?  Not at all as they are ruled by the sun and stars.  But for me, I usually can adjust within a week or so.  We always go to bed between 8:30 pm and 9 pm during the school year and I get up at 4:30 am.  No alarm needed, it's just when I wake up, no mater what time I go to bed.  Now, with the clocks changed, I'm going to bed a hour later but still get up at my usual moment, now 3:30 am.  So I'm losing an hour of sleep each night.

Double Digging a winter bed with some help from our friends

Why do we do this?  "Adding daylight to afternoons benefits retailing, sports, and other activities that exploit sunlight after working hours, but causes problems for farming, evening entertainment and other occupations tied to the sun." - Wikpedia. There is no way with my current lifestyle I could go to bed at 7:30 pm, too much to do.  Last night in that last hour I sliced up a batch of pears to dry in the dehydrator, put away all of the dried runner beans into large glass jars, and made a batch of Kefir cheese.  

Fall and Winter have become two of my favorite seasons.  I remember last Spring showing our goats off to a friend, she asked how do I do it?  I sighed, and said that I'm looking forward to December when I don't have to go out to the barn until 7 am and have everyone put to bed by 5 pm, and no milking the goats (they usually stop producing milk in late November until after they give birth in mid-February).  We are almost there, at least with the timing.  Two of our goats I am still milking and we love the fresh milk.

Lots to do today, real estate meetings from 9 am to 1 pm and then I need to get home and winterize our water system.  The irrigation system in the orchard needs to be turned off and drained to protect the pipes from deep freezes, I need to change the oil in the generator and run it for a little bit, and install a new frost free water hydrant near the buck yard.

Fall Harvest

When we harvest our garlic, onions, squash, and fruit (apples and pears) they go from the garden to our covered deck.  Then we have to take the time to deal with them, and yesterday we finished!  Yahoo!

We have 1/2 of a 5-gallon bucket of pears to dry and then are completely finished with last year's garden.  Our winter garden is doing well and provides us with stir fry vegetables and all of our salad greens.  We might get about month or so out of it before the deep freezes strike, killing everything but the chard and kale.

Our Fall Garden just after planting

We start our Fall-Winter garden plants in little starter blocks we make with a starting soil we purchase at the feed store in August and planted them in a bed I prepared in early October.  We have been harvesting greens for about three weeks and just started eating the lettuce last week.  It should produce into December unless the weather stays mild without the nighttime temperature going below 25 degrees, and then longer.

Carrot Bed and Fall Garden Bed all covered to protect from frost

We moved all of the garlic, onions and winter squash into a spare bedroom yesterday, a dry, cool place that will keep the garlic and onions until next summer, and the squash until January or so.

Garlic, Onions and Winter Squash put away for future use

I am still milking two goats, Surely once a day and Nettle twice a day, and are getting about 7 lbs. (about 8 lbs. per gallon) of milk each day from them.  I'm concerned about Nettle as she should have gone back into heat three days ago but no signs from her.  Did a buck get her when I wasn't looking?  If so, how and who?  They are in different pastures but have a common fence.

Quite a rainstorm yesterday with nearly an inch of rain at our farm - which is a lot as we only get 18 inches a year.  Yesterday was my day to clean the buck house and yard, two duck houses, the goose house and the chicken house - so I got a little wet!  Warm though, in the low 50's.  We still found time to take a walk with the dogs through the State Park that borders our land.  Mushrooms loved the weather, popping up just about everywhere.

Raw Goat Milk - is it safe?

Healthy and Happy Goats!

I'm often asked if it is safe to use raw goat milk?  Michael, who parks near our homestead and walks a mile through the woods to his little house, once told me that it is either the best food in the world or the worst - I believe ours is the best.  Washington State Department of Agriculture has rules for licensed dairies on the handling of milk and requires the operator to get the temperature of the milk lowered to 42 degrees (F) within two hours.  To accomplish this we store our fresh milk between milkings in the deep freezer (in the barn set at -22 degrees F) until we are ready to bring it in the house to strain.  We strain the milk into quart Mason jars that are stored in the deep freezer (in the house) and then let it cool in an ice bath for another 1 and 1/2 hours before putting it in the refrigerator.

All of our milk containers are either washed in the dishwasher on a high temperature sani-wash cycle or washed by hand using soap, Clorox and scalding hot water.  Once a month we use a special chemical on all of our milk pots to cut the milkstone (the milk protein that builds up on the metal pots).

Quart jar of goat milk sitting in bath of ice cold water - be sure to bring water to top of the milk level.  A bucket of crushed ice would be best but I don't have an ice maker.

Barn cleanliness is also important.  We remove all of the straw bedding from the goat barn weekly and clean the milk stand after every milking.  We work hard to keep the rodent population as low as possible using barn cats, poison, and traps.  All feed buckets are stored in a way to keep rodents out of them.  We store our grain in metal cans with tight fitting lids and besides humans, no animals are allowed into the milk room other than the goat being milked.  We are not a licensed dairy as the rules for that are beyond our financial abilities.  We have a friend in Freeland who just went through the process to be licensed so she could sell her goat cheese to the public and spent over $200,000 building a State approved dairy for just 20 some goats.  We are talking multiple enclosed  rooms with special walls, special ventilation systems, concrete floors...People have been drinking raw milk throughout the world for 10,000 years without even using the safeguards we do and have thrived, so that is really overkill for us.

Our goat milk is strained through a new filter, never using cheese cloth or pillow cases.  The filter is rinsed out and thrown away after each batch of milk.  When we make cheese using raw milk, the cheese is strained in a clean cheese cloth (again, NEVER with a pillow case).  The cheese cloth is rinsed and washed in the clothes washer, and then before being used for cheese we sterilize it in boiling water for a few minutes.

Straining goat milk before going into ice bath to cool

Our goats are kept healthy, eating mostly organic products (grain, hay and bedding straw are certified organically grown) and have a large pasture of grass, stinging nettle, and brambles.  We only treat our goats with antibiotics if they have a problem and our vet recommends such treatment.  We use a chemical to treat for worms, but again only if they have the symptoms.  Before milking we wash their utter, teats, and belly with a chemical wipe specifically made for this.  After milking we use a teat dip to sterilize the teat.  We test monthly for bacteria in the milk and annually for four goat problems: CAE virus, Johne's disease,  Bruelloiss and CL - the four nasty goat diseases.  All of our goats have tested negative.  We check for lice on a regular bases (the usual problem time is spring just after they give birth), and treat if they are infected with a powder insecticide. And, of course, we wash our hands on a regular basis, in between milking the individual goats, and always when returning from the barn.  It's a lot of work keeping dairy goats and lots of responsibilities if you are going to use raw milk. 

I put a couple of links to raw goat milk up top and if you are interested in raw milk, they are good reading.

Our Chicken Crop

In April of 2009 we introduced chickens to our farm.  Why did we wait so long?  We started with ducks because Pam had an allergy to chicken eggs AND ducks are so much easier to raise.  Ducks are dirty (they can foul a bucket of water in five minutes or less!) but have few diseases and will thrive on little grain along with bugs and grass, of which we have an abundance of both.  Chickens need nest boxes and roosts, clean water and lots of food, so we waited.  In time Pam's allergy to chicken eggs ended so the next phase of our animal care began.

Rocky the Rooster with some of his girls

But what is a farm without chickens?  So in 2009 I built a chicken coop on a very limited budget.  We put an ad in the local weekly looking for a free, old truck canopy to use as the roof and received so many calls that we then demanded free delivery.  We ended up with one that came with a galvanized hanging feeder and waterier.  I did have to purchase some lumber but I had it completed before the chicks arrived.

One of the local feed stores we use were giving away day-old chicks if you purchased items from their farm store, so we saved our receipts and got 15 free Rhode Island Reds (all girls) on April 15th of 2009.  They began laying their first eggs in late summer.  We chose the Rhode Island Red for a couple of reasons: they are considered a duel purpose bird, a very good egg layer of large brown eggs and also an above average meat bird.  Our plan is to keep the layers for three years and then butcher them.  We eat about a dozen eggs a week and were getting a dozen eggs a day so I went into the egg selling business and have been able to sell all of our excess eggs to co-workers.

We have lost a couple birds to who knows what, finding them dead on the floor of the coop or in their nest, and we lost one to a hawk, but over all they have done well.  We wanted a rooster so we ran an ad on Craigslist for a Rhode Island Red rooster and got a young one who the owner called "Boy Model" - we renamed him Rocky.  Yes he is a beautiful bird and is very good with his girls, but Rhode Island Red roosters are known to be mean to people, and he and I have had several fights.  Pam won't go into the area without a spray bottle of water to squirt him.  That seems to work well.

Even with nice nest boxes the girls like to find hidden places to lay their eggs, often adding the to the duck nests.  When one of our ducks became broody this last spring it seems she also had several chicken eggs in her nest and one day hatched a Rhode Island Red chick.  Chicken eggs hatch about 15 days before the Muscovy so our duck had this chicken to care for.  The nest was under the chicken coop and I could watch the going on.  As "Chick-Chick" grew she would roost on the head of the duck, whose duck eggs never hatched.  So cute!  Chick-Chick has grown into a fine bird, a rooster and has been renamed Junior.  He looks just like his Papa.  Last week he started to crow, if his crow matures into one we like it's the stew pot for Rocky - there is no place here for a mean rooster!

"Chick-Chick" with his mother the Duck

This last April we ordered our first set of meat birds.  I took a class at the local Grange on raising meat birds and much of the discussion was on what type of bird to select.  The standard is a white bird, Cornish x Rock, which has been developed to EAT and put on weight.  It's what all of the commercial chicken growers use.  Six weeks from hatch to the freezer, but they have major problems.  They are said to be so dumb that turkeys look like Einstein and have been known to die of thirst because they won't walk three feet to the water.  Free range is a joke as they won't eat grass or bugs, just grain.  Because they grow so fast they are known to have problems with their legs and 15 to 20% often die for unknown reasons.

The instructor had success with the Red Rock (aka Red Ranger), which is what we ordered.  They take three months to mature but over that time eat about the same amount of grain as the Cornish Rock.  We received 50 in the mail one fine morning and I put them into the new meat bird house I built.  They grew into a fine looking bird, somewhat like the Rhode Island Red but with a little more black in them.  The instructor also had built a chicken plucker and would rent it out for 50 cents per bird.

Our day old Red Rock meat birds

In August of this year we rented the plucker for a day and processed all of the boys, 22 of them.  We lost four birds to who-knows-what and three to a local fox, leaving us with 43 to butcher.  We waited two weeks to do the girls, giving us and them a break and also allowing the girls a little time to put on more weight.

The meat bird house

Slaughter day was not very difficult.  My job was to get the bird, bring it out to the barn area and dispatch it.  We had a 4x4 board with four feed sacks on it, I put the bird upside down in the sack and cut its juggler vein with an exacto knife (with a new blade) and bled it out.  The idea is to keep the heart pumping the blood out of the bird before it dies, giving it better meat than cutting off the head, which kills it outright.  I would then remove the dirty feet and could put three at a time in the chicken plucker.  The plucker has rubber fingers in the tub which removes almost all of the feathers as the birds gently tumbles.  Plucking takes about one minute per three birds!

We had a table set up with two large trash cans filled with ice water.  Once Pam gutted and cleaned the birds they went into the ice water.  We processed 22 birds in about four hours from start to finish.  The boys dressed out a 6.5 lbs, the girls at 4.5 lbs.  43 birds went into the freezer for our year's supply of chicken. Our cost was about $10 per bird.  Free range, organic chickens in the local supermarket sell for about $20, and are shipped in from across the country, and who knows if they are really "free range" or just have the option to go outside.  Ours spent all day in the tall grass in a pasture that has never had pesticides sprayed and ate only organic grain.  The only change we'll make this year is to do a better job on grounding the electrical poultry netting I used around the pasture.  I didn't do a good job on that this year and the jolt from the fence was not strong enough to keep the local fox out.  One of my spring projects for sure.

Winter Projects

My to do list for this winter is large.  My first project is to finish enclosing the goat-buck house.  I converted an old deck my children and I built for the trailer Pam and I lived in while we built our house.  We lived for two plus years in a large travel trailer and the porch was a life saver, giving us a clean, dry entry way plus a place to story things.  After moving into our house we used it to store firewood and when we started keeping male goats, I enclosed three of the sides for the boys.  Too much rain gets in so I'm going to enclose more of it.  They need a dry place somewhat out of the wind for when the weather is nasty.  Because they spend so much of their time under the eve of the barn near where the girls live, I'm also going to make a little shelter there.

Our old home while building the house - the deck is now the buck house

Our old deck with the year's squash harvest

Next on my list is a greenhouse.  Today I will go to the county planning department in Coupeville to turn in our plans along with the paperwork for the building permit. The greenhouse will be attached to the east side of our barn, 24' wide and 18' deep.  The site has very good sun exposure.  My estimate for the cost is about $2,000.  Covering will be a product called Soleex, a flexible, insulated twin-wall polyethylene product which is said to last over 20 years.  We'll have inside raised growing beds along the east and south sides of the greenhouse to allow us to grow tomatoes, peppers and basil (crops we have not been able to grow in our garden) and benches to start all of our vegetables and Pam's flowers.  The county planning department told me it takes six to eight weeks to get the permit, so I have a little wait on that.

Our barn after completion - the greenhouse will be on the right side

Next on the list is a new chicken coop.  Our girls are entering their third year of life and even though their eggs are getting really large, production is dropping off.  We need a place to grow the next set of girls so we think a new wing to the existing house is the way to go.  If we get chicks in the spring they will be laying by fall.  We'll then butcher the older girls, making stewing hens out of them.

Meat Processing at our Farm - the Muscovy Duck

We raise Muscovy ducks mainly for their eggs and to sell the ducklings.  The Muscovy duck is considered duel purpose, laying a lot of very large eggs and the male (called a drake) grows very large and is coveted for its dark, red looking meat.  The hens start laying in February, usually about five eggs per week, and the eggs are just as good as a chicken egg but much larger.  We gather all the eggs we can find but once the nettle begins to grow and gets large we start to miss some of the nests.  After a duck get about 15 eggs in her nest she becomes broody and disappears, sitting on the eggs for the next 35 days or so, until she emerges with 10 to 12 ducklings.  We then try to sell all of the ducklings we can, usually 70 or 80 in a year, along with most of our grown hens.  What we are left with becomes our new flock and meat birds.

Two ducklings waiting their turn

Yesterday I butchered six young drakes.  The feathers are very difficult to pluck so I skin them.  Most of the fat is in the skin layer so it also makes for a lean meal.  We do not feed our birds any corn so they don't put on much fat (I believe the commercial growers finish them on corn to bulk up their weight, corn being cheep and selling the birds by the pound adds to their profit).  I remove the wings as they are too difficult to skin and we lose a little weight and meat because of that.  Ours dressed out at 4.5 lbs, not bad for no skin or wings, and they are considered "ducklings" - they are not full grown.  Full grown Muscovy drakes will dress out around 8 lbs.  We slow cook them all day in a crock pot and the dish will give us four meals or so.  We have another four to process but will wait another 30 days or so as they are younger.

"Dispatched" duckling with the box I used in the background

My job is to catch the birds, dispatch them from this life, and skin them.  I then bring them into the house and Pam cleans and wraps them for the freezer.   I believe the best way to dispatch them is to put them in a box I constructed that is attached to a pole, head down.  Their blood runs to their head and it kind of makes them drunk; I then cut their juggler vain with a very sharp blade to bleed them out.  The complete process takes me about 30 minutes per bird, and we ended up with 25 lbs of meat for the freezer.

Pam not only cleaned and wrapped the ducklings yesterday, but made a batch of goat milk/oatmeal soap.  All of this accomplished and we still made it to a Halloween potluck dinner by 4 pm.  At the outdoor fire ring we talked of our ancestors who have passed before us, I talked of the six ducklings that gave their bodies to us this day for nourishment.     

Pam making goat milk/oatmeal soap