‘Tis Done, The Great Transaction’s Done

In no way do I mean to minimize the true meaning of those words, taken from a song about the gospel, in which a sinner’s sins are traded for Christ’s righteousness. But the same words took on a new meaning for me today. The chickens are all butchered. The task is completed. And it was done here. And a further step was taken since last week in that I, lil ole me, the Aspiring Agrarian, was the senior member of the processing team.

Last week we had the assistance of this noted expert (Micah) as well as his lovely bride (Natalie) who also has much experience in this undertaking. Between Micah’s dad, and Joel Salatin's book, I have learned most of what I know about raising chickens. This week, we did not have Micah & Natalie’s expertise. I was the one with the most experience. And I was amazed how well things went. I got the scalder started on time. And despite being a little late getting everything else together, we still got started much earlier than last week. We still had problems with the first scald, but got it corrected with the second batch and the scald and pluck were wonderful thereafter. It was dark by the time we finished bagging and weighing. But it is finished. And the weather could not have been better. It was cold overnight, so the water in the chill tanks got very cold. But the temperatures through the day were warm enough that we did not suffer in the least. It was actually very ideal.

A big thank you to Elliott and his sister Kelsey, who helped both weeks, and their sister Lorisha, who helped today. Also, Aaron got his baptism of fire today, with his very first experience in the process. His wife (Eph1:6Beloved) had him believing he would be covered head to toe in blood and guts. I played along with the story as long as I could, but he finally realized that, although it is a messy job, he was not going to be that messy. And also much appreciation is due to Michael who loaned me the propane burner and stand which became the base for my scalder.

I have a long way to go, and a long way to grow, in reaching my agrarian aspirations. But last week and today are a big step forward. It gives me further confidence that as I walk the path the Father has set before me, I can succeed. And speaking of that agrarian vision, let me recommend again the writings of the Deliberate Agrarian, particularly this recent post, and the linked blogpost about the recent article in Christianity Today about Christian Agrarianism which he cites.

JFC

I Wasn't Kidding ...

... when I said the chickens were eating like pigs. Last Saturday was processing day, and their finished weight told the story. The average weight of these birds was 6.6 pounds after processing.

This is the first "dis-assembly" done at home. Previously we had taken our birds to a friend's farm on their processing day, and pitched in to help with theirs, and then they helped with ours. (Of course I received a lot more than what I gave in those transactions!) This time we stayed at home. I just finished building my very own Whizbang Chicken plucker. The fellow who designed the Whizbang, and wrote the book, is right there to your left in my blogroll. Herrick Kimball - the Deliberate Agrarian. Herrick, the Whizbang worked wonderfully. I look forward to using it for many years to come!

We got started about 9 AM on Saturday morning. Except ... we didn't get started. Unfortunately, I did not start heating the water in the scalder until about a quarter till nine. So it was past 10 AM (I believe) before we really got started.

What was my scalder? It was a 55 gallon metal drum which had held foodstuffs, cut off just above the ridge about 2/3 of the way up. The ridge was folded over to form a fairly smooth surface around the top. It sat on top of a propane burner and stand which a friend loaned me. He uses it with a big stainless steel container to brew up to 20 gallons of his famous beverage. It worked great at heating the water in the barrel. Except that it took a long time to get started. And when it finally got to the optimal temperature, it suddenly quickened its pace, and went up another 20 to 30 degrees in a matter of several minutes. What did that result in? Birds that started cooking in the scalder. The first couple of batches that went through the scalder were in bad shape. After that, things improved muchly.

Oh, and how, exactly, did the birds get "dipped" into the scalder. Well, we cut off the bottom half (or so) of a 30 gallon plastic barrel, filled it full of holes so that the water would freely flow through it (but not so full of holes that the chickens would fall through), and dipped it down into the water. It was raised and lowered using a pulley system and a rope, rigged up by the Teenager.

Another problem I had was ... my chickens were so big that they would not fit inside the "killing cones." We ended up using 5 or 6 gallon buckets with holes cut in the bottom, instead of the traffic cones. But those buckets had too much room for the birds to flop around in, leading to a higher incidence of broken legs and wings. Not too bad, but still, it could have been better. We are planning to clip the legs to the sides of the buckets the next go-round, hoping to minimize the flopping around.

I wish we would have got some pictures taken. We were too busy processing (and our hands were covered with "stuff") so we didn't get any photos. Maybe next time.

This being our first time, we didn't progress as far as I wished. However, we processed 50 birds. (At least 50 had been put into the pickup and brought to the processing area the night before. Somewhere along the way, we have lost track of 2 of the 50. Maybe they escaped ... Yikes!) There are about 65 left, and the plan is to "dis-assemble" them this coming Saturday. Just in time for Thanksgiving, and I think they will be big enough that they could pass for small turkeys. :)

Just a note: It took me long enough to get the plucker built that most of the birds were over 9 weeks old. That's another reason they were so big. This Saturday, they will be over 10 weeks old. But from what I hear from others who have let them grow this long (and even much longer), the tenderness is not compromised. (The typical processing date is at 8 weeks old for Cornish Cross. In the summer, those who are kept past that time tend to have problems from the heat and their weight, succumbing to heart attacks, and other problems. In the autumn, this is not nearly so big a problem. In fact, I think the only bird I lost in the field pens was one that got run over when I was moving the pen.)

One more thing. Unlike when I have assisted at our friends home, this time I was the one responsible for the initial step ... slitting the arteries (or veins?) in the chickens' necks to drain the blood. I suddenly felt like I understood for the first time what a Hebrew priest must have felt ... for they engaged in this business day in and day out. It takes a little while to get used to it. But there are unpleasant aspects to providing food for ones family. I think we have tended to forget this when we think we can just go to the grocery store, and that is where food comes from. But food has a history that precedes the grocery store. And, as was noted to me when all was said and done, there is a lot of work involved. I'm thankful to have the opportunity to do that work. I fear the day is coming when a lot of folks that don't expect to will have to do that work. And I'm not so sure they'll be ready. I am not so sure I'll be ready, and I've been aspiring and working toward this for a while now.

Okay, one or two more notes and then I'll quit: Rick Saenz (Dry Creek Chronicles - should be on the blogroll to your left) has written a heap of good stuff related to agrarian thinking. He talks about providing food for your family, plus a little bit extra give away or to sell. I don't anticipate that I'll ever be a big-time chicken farmer. But I do want to provide this food for my family, and a little extra for charity and for cash income. PLUS, it makes a dandy business opportunity for the nine-year-old, who is perfectly capable of feeding, and almost able to carry the 40+ pound water buckets. He needs help moving the pens, and lots of help in processing. But he is capable of doing much of the day in and day out work, and is learning responsibility and earning a little cash doing so. I didn't have any opportunity like that at his age. I'm glad he does.

Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life, to mind your own business, and to work with your own hands, as we commanded you, so that you walk properly toward those who are outsiders, and so that you may lack nothing. (1 Thess 4:11-12)

The chickens are starting ...

... to get really plump. I'm not sure, though, but I think there has been some genetic engineering going on with my chickens. They are eating like pigs.

Seriously, we feed them a ton (okay, not literally) in the morning, then in the afternoon when the boys get home from Grace Academy. But I was off work on Wednesday and so I fed them two additional times through the day, and they ate it all. I've been trying to get them to say "Oink, oink," but they are too busy chowing down to work on their speech lessons.

Speaking of being off work, I got a lot done. The barn was needing a real good clean out to get ready for hay storage, and even animal shelter during the coming winter. It was full of this-and-that, plus a lot of parts from an old Honda that I got from the Missouri Rev. after it had been wrecked. It will supposedly save me on used car parts on the 1990 Honda that I still hope to get some more miles on. (It presently has about 500,000 ... kilometers, that is. About 310,000 miles or so. I'm hoping for a few more years ...) Anyway, I got a whole bunch of cleanup and restructuring done, and then when the teenager got home from school, we managed to get the doors, bumpers, roof, and trunk lid up into the attic of the barn. I tell you, that teenager is strong. And a monkey. He routinely grabs hold of the rafters and swings from place to place, way above the ground. When I was his age, I could run. Played good baseball, and had good hands for catching a football. Even played decently at basketball. But I didn't have anything like his upper body strength. Anyway, with his help, we got it to where there is lots of open room for hay.

And this morning when I was out taking care of the animals (before daylight ... I wish the sun came up earlier so that I could see what I'm doing out there), I did notice that the neighbor from down the road had finally got by and mowed the pasture. It is very difficult to get someone to make hay on a mere 3 acres that isn't totally flat. But I think (at least I sure hope) that what he is charging me is less than I would spend for the hay if I bought the hay. Hopefully if the weather holds it will be hay in the barn very soon. And if the weather doesn't hold ... God has some purpose.

Growing into agrarian things is not easy ... especially since I have spent a quarter century in jobs that are mostly office related. Exercise is measured in keystrokes. But there is a joy in accomplishing things that will provide food for my family. And as the Missouri Rev. noted in the last paragraph of today's post, there are more health benefits in it than just growing healthier food. May God be gracious to us and bless us and cause his face to shine on us, so that the earth will yield its increase, and all the nations praise him for his kindness. Amen.

When I was last blogging regularly ...

... I mentioned that we were getting a few eggs from the layers that we had started raising in August (or so) a year ago.  Their production went steadily upward for a few weeks, and then levelled off at a fairly good rate.  Until ... one of the chickens turned predator, and started eating (and thereby teaching the others to eat) the eggs.  We still were getting quite a few, but also losing perhaps half of what were being produced.

 

I did some inquiries among the older and wiser agrarians at church, and found out that I could obtain ceramic eggs that looked just like the real things, but which the chickens could not crack.  Once their habits were broken by them trying to eat eggs that could not be eaten, then I would have my full production back.  So I ordered the eggs.  And that worked to some extent.

 

I had been keeping them in a pasture pen that we had also used for Cornish cross meat birds, which I moved daily in the pasture.  I decided that it would be better if the layers had a little more freedom, so I started letting them out of the pen daily, and penning them back up at night.  This seemed to have a positive effect on egg production ... at first.  But then several phenomena began to take precedence.  One, they started laying all over the place.  And often I was able to find the places they had laid, but in other cases, I was not successful in locating them in a timely fashion.  And two, another predator besides the chickens themselves began to partake of the lovely farm fresh eggs.  Our dog decided she liked chicken eggs.  Despite being from a breed that reportedly likes to eat chickens, she had been very good about not eating them.  But she did eat eggs.  And not only did she eat eggs, she also ate, or at least chewed until they were broken, the ceramic eggs.  Thus I also lost one of the methods which had helped keep the chickens from eating their own eggs.

 

We continued through most of the summer with impaired production (or at least impaired preservation of the production), but still getting enough for the family and several dozen a week to trade for other goods and services.  And then as autumn approached, a new spectre raised its ugly head, and ultimately resulted in the demise of the laying flock.  A predator.  (Or perhaps predators?)  We began to lose one (or more) per night to some animal that somehow managed to get into the pen and kill and eat the poor fowl.  I figured out one possible entry, and dealt with it.  But the problem continued.  To be sure, it stopped for several nights, but it resumed shortly.  The teenager and I sat out several nights with a firearm, ready to blow said predator to "kingdom come" but the fearsome beast never showed itself while we were there.  I was given some advice about traps, which I didn't have the time to follow up on.  The teenager talked about building one ... but he has been extremely busy, too.  Finally, after I thought I had solved the last of the pen issues, we lost the final 3 layers in one night.

 

I found out a week or two later what the predator was, and how it was getting in.  We had moved the pens from one pasture to another, and were preparing to move meat birds into them.  I got the first batch into the smaller pen.  (They had to be moved out of the brooder hut; age and daily manure output, etc.)  The first night, I lost 2, but caught the predator in the act.  A feline, fiercesome and certainly not felicitous.  Which I caught, and dispatched to the next world.  And I discovered the unseen entryway.  The tarp on the top of the pen didn't quite reach all the way to the front edge, and the dastardly perpetrator had been squeezing through that small opening on the top.  And I, with all my attention turned to the bottom of the pen, had failed to see that problem.

 

In the days since, we have run a hot electric fence wire around the pens at night, and covered the small opening.  And it appears that our losses have ceased.  For the moment, at least.  We are presently eggless, but have another 4 dozen (or so) pullets in the brooder hut so that sometime late this winter, or early in the spring, we will once again have eggs.  And, hopefully, we will be fully prepared to deal with the problems that brought an early demise to last spring's layer crop.  And, God willing, we will have lots of extras for barter or selling.

Right in My Own Back Yard ...

... there is an agrarian festival that draws nearly 100,000 visitors for its annual occurence.

Okay, perhaps I have overstated a bit. I refer to the annual Fair Grove Heritage Reunion Festival. It runs Saturday and Sunday of the last weekend in September each year. Kick-off is a parade beginning at about 9:00AM on Saturday morning.

The parade is replete with marching bands, emergency vehicles, tractors, horses, mules, donkeys, buggies and wagons, historic automobiles, and tons (probably literally) of candy. After the parade winds through our town (population barely one thousand), the crowd moves to the various craft and food vendor booths. There are over 300 of these. These include everything from modern trinket sales to historic blacksmithing demonstrations.

Perhaps the highlight of the festival is the old mill. It was built sometime around 1880 (a Google search would probably yield the year), and runs off of a huge steam engine which is revived annually for a demonstration. The engine runs a number of belts (each about 12 inches wide) which run the various machines in the mill. The primary one which is in action during the festival is the mill itself, which takes shelled corn and grinds it into cornmeal.

Outside there are demonstrations of an old threshing machine, and other historic agricultural practices.

The crowd comes in shifts, with an average stay time of approximately two hours according to someone I talked to who seemed knowledgeable (who, I cannot remember). The police have estimated the total crowd over two days to be near 100,000 although there are probably no more than 10,000 or 15,000 maximum at any given time, and perhaps far fewer during some portions of the weekend.

In the first paragraph I confessed that I may have overstated a bit. Howso? Well, I said it is an agrarian festival. And it is a celebration of an agrarian heritage, but it is far from focusing on agrarianism only. Nevertheless, there are probably between 100 and 200 tractors and horses, mules and donkeys in the parade, and a strong undercurrent of agrarian memories being recalled. And 100,000 visitors may be somewhat overstated. But not a lot.

I guess this probably means that there is a bunch of agrarian knowledge out there to be tapped into. I am just not sure who all those wise people are. And, unfortunately, much of the agrarian wisdom has been adulterated by big-ag industrialism. But I bet a person with a careful filter could pick up a heap of good ideas if he got his head in between the right group of whittlin', 'baccy spittin' old-timers. Hmmm ... sounds like a plan.

P.S. - The second photo in this blog entry was taken during the 2004 Festival.

I Had Hoped ...

that I would be posting more frequently. Alas, it did not happen. So, once again, I am trying to gather my resolve from wherever it has gone, and try again to keep a regular presence at the Aspiring Agrarian.

Much has happened since I last posted. I was about to tell you everything, but I think I will wait. Perhaps if I save some of my choice morsels of story, then I will have something to write about tomorrow, and the next day.

So I will only talk about one thing. I bought a cow/calf pair. Though this cow is part Holstein, it apparently does not have enough Holstein in the blood to be a milk cow. So it is to be a beef cow. I bought it from these fine folks who agreed not only to breed it back for me, but to deliver it for a very small charge. So my cow and calf have been boarding with them over the summer. Trouble is, it has been so hot this summer that the cow has not been cycling (didn't know they rode bicycles, did you), and so it is not yet bred back. So I have a pasture full of grass that is going to waste. The pasture is small enough that it is difficult to find someone willing to come and mow, rake, and bale it for me. But since I will need some hay for this winter, I hope to have this taken care of soon. Matter of fact, if you would, take a moment to pray that God will direct me to the right person as I try to find a willing hay-maker. Thanks!

Catch ya' on the flip-side ...

Today is the Big Day

My little birdies are eight weeks old. And in about 8 to 10 hours they will be undergoing an Extreme Makeover.

This past evening after getting home (I had to stay late at work since I will be out today) I constructed a top for my pickup truck's bed. The frame is wood, and it has chicken wire and a billboard vinyl 'tarp' affixed to it. Thus there is part that is ventilated, and part that offers at least a little protection from the rain. And it keeps the birds securely in the truck.

After completing this task, I went to the pasture and started loading the chickens. They are not so little anymore. Some of them are downright heavy. I loaded them 4 at a time in an 18 gallon Rubbermaid tub, and then carried them to the truck. Instead of putting them into the truck via the movable chicken-wire on the new bed-top, I just dropped the tailgate and dumped the tub, and then used it to gently coax (push) them away from the tailgate and toward the front of the bed. Other than the last tub full of birds, I had no problem. I even left the tailgate open, and the birds stayed put. (It was after their bedtime, and they weren't very active.) A couple of the last bunch decided they wanted to escape, but being the more lethargic Cornish Cross birds, it was no problem to catch them and get them back where they belong.

When I was finished loading the chickens, I pulled the truck back from the pasture and into the driveway, and then came in to clean out the freezer and make room for the Made-Over fowls that will be coming home tomorrow. Meanwhile, the birdies are peacefully sleeping.

And speaking of sleep ...