Crunching the numbers for 2015

It may be frigid outside, but my mind is filled with thoughts of spring's pastures and baby animals and money.

So far this morning I have done research on lamb ear tags since we have experienced a high number of tag failures. Buying the tags will be the easiest part of the equation, figuring our what coding best suits our management system is a bit trickier. Although the cost of each tag is small, once coupled with the time needed to retag lambs, our production costs rise.

I have also been looking at the cost of production for poultry. Some costs are fixed, such as the price of peeps, shipping and processing. The price of feed can change, and since we have opted to raise the fast growing birds with local, certified organic grain, the starting point is almost twice that of conventional feed. With exercise and low caloric pasture as part of our birds' diets, our poultry has never achieved the advertised feed conversion rates listed in poultry catalogs. The numbers, especially for duck, are steep.

As a farmer,the stark financial realities of small farm food production are impressive, yet we are still committed to growing high quality, humanely raised meats. As a cook, my efforts to extract the most food value from the fat, bones and meat of our products is renewed.

Wethers to the butcher

Yesterday I drove two wether lambs to Gensemer's in Bloomsburg. Caroline was correct, Katahdins gain weight when the weather turns cold. Selecting for calm ewes, building efficient handling systems to limit stress and rotational grazing across our improving pastures seems to have fostered my developing shepherding skills. Hopefully this experience will translate into higher finished weights. The two lambs in the back of my Subaru looked good; there is a certain amount of satisfaction in a job well done.

Managing the Buckeye roosters

Lilac Hill Farm is going into winter with 5 Buckeye roosters, plus a banty roo' that arrived with 3 banty hens. Over the course of the last year we raised two more Buckeye family groups to add to our Lilac Hill Buckeyes. With three breeding groups, I hope to improve our flock following the Livestock Breeds Conservancy guidelines.

That goal is lovely, the reality right now is that I have a larger flock than usual going into winter.  I added feeders and spread fresh bedding in the coop more often. All the birds eat greens harvested from the lightly frosted gardens.

My original, Lilac Hill rooster is in with the hens, he seems to help maintain order in the coop. Lots of hens means I can gather hatching eggs from the girls that get through winter best. I saved two roosters from each new breeding line (NC and hatchery) and will select the best fellows in the spring.

The NC and hatchery roosters reside in their own pens near the garden, tearing up the ground for next year's new vegetable beds. When the weather turns very cold, the roosters will move to the outhouse coop. I am sure the feathers will fly on moving day.

The banties? The hens are here to hatch and rear chicks in the spring. Besides being a pretty farm ornament, the rooster watches over the hans and adds an interesting soprano "cock-a-doodle-do" to the farmyard choir.

Six roosters , it is noisy out there.

Pork Chop Cook Off

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Last weekend I had the opportunity to man the pork chop station at Owens Farm  pork tasting event. After a walking tour of their dynamic farm, Caroline and Dave  served pulled pork, ham, bacon and baked goods produced with farm rendered lard. The pork chop tasting offered visitors an opportunity to compare grocery store chops and farm raised Tamworth chops.

As a disclaimer, I am a home cook, my favorite meals tend to employ simple, rather old fashioned cooking techniques which highlight whatever is fresh or in abundance from our own or nearby farms. Even though this was not an America's Test Kitchen trial,  I tried to treat both meats evenly. Armed with two non-stick skillets, I trimmed a bit of fat from each chop and rendered a bit of liquid fat to fry up the chops. 

The Owens farm chop sizzled and developed a lovely caramelized crust, surrounding the moist meat.  Even without a resting period, the cut up samples were moist and full of flavor.

The grocery store chop was frustrating to cook, I just could not get that rich caramel color. Initially the grocery chop did sizzle but I believe that was the " added broth" listed on the label, cooking away. Once the broth cooked off, I could not not develop a rich crust and risked cooking all the moisture out of the chop. The store chop had little flavor.  I wonder how much of the flavor and weight of the store chop came from the added broth?

Beyond its intense, beautiful flavor, farm raised pork requires more effort and resources. Arranging for a pork share, managing the freezer so there is enough bacon for summer BLT's, flipping to the back of the recipe box for a picnic roast recipe, and paying for the yearly delivery is an investment.

As a farmer, of course I believe it is worth the effort. I love what I do and I love the food we grow. I believe that small farms, like Owens Farm and Lilac Hill Farm are good not only for our tables but benefit our land and support our communities. But honestly I am conflicted; how do families with increasing demands on their time and wallets make room for my products?  For that I do not have an answer, I am just working towards making a place for our farm raised foods at the table.

Freezer Management- How I handle stew hens

After butchering I do not always have time to cook the stew hens. I have the butcher leave the necks on the birds that need to be slow cooked so I can find them easily in the freezer. I have not come up with a way to id parted birds that need slow cooking as some unfortunate guests discovered this past summer.

Planning 2014, part 2

During this winter planning time we evaluated the pros and cons of all farm ventures, especially poultry with its high labor and feed demands.

Buckeye chickens

Beyond their eggs and meat, our heritage breed Buckeyes earn their keep by voraciously seeking out pests, avidly tossing around the compostables and efficiently setting eggs and rearing the next generation of birds.

In an effort to increase the size of our Buckeyes for the table, we purchased another breeding line this year (ordered chicks to start another for 2015) and will follow the protocols of the Livestock Breeds Conservancy’s, Chicken Assessment for Improving Productivity, . Heritage breeds grow slower, do not need higher protein, more expensive feed and raise their own replacements. Buckeyes work year round, allow me to control more of the input costs and if correctly managed, I can add breeding stock to the list of products we can sell. My biggest challenge will be in finding a market for non-broad breasted heritage breed chicken meat.

So, the Buckeyes stay on the farm with a plan to improve the quality of our flock and add breeding stock to the products we produce.

Cornish Cross meat birds

The Cornish Cross meat chickens I raised last year were delicious and added to the fertility of our fields but  after 8-9 weeks of daily moves of the open bottomed pens and organic feed, they were not large. Cornish Cross birds are very efficient at converting grain to meat, but with the slower weight gain, possibly due to their consumption of lower calorie grass and exercise in the uncrowded pen, and the fixed costs of purchase and processing, they did not pay for themselves. I am on the fence about raising Cornish Cross chickens again. The meat was tasty and the bones produced beautiful stock, but there are plenty of local farms raising broad breasted hybrid chickens more efficiently than Lilac Hill. If I have enough customer interest, I will raise one batch of meat birds but will  commit to raising them for 10 weeks to attain a larger size rather than crowding them in a pen or restricting their access to pasture.

Ducks

We like ducks. They are comical additions to the farmyard and with less feed than chickens, produce meat and eggs that  are tremendous.

As a saleable product, duck has drawbacks. With their 28 day incubation period (chicks incubate for 21 days) and sometimes seasonal laying period, hatchery purchased ducklings cost at least $2 more than chicks. Processing a duck costs $3.50  more than a chicken and if the timing is not correct and the bird is starting to molt, the product is not as pretty.

Beyond cost, many cooks do not have experience with preparing duck meat so finding a market for pasture raised duck is harder than for chicken or turkey. My kitchen has been my lab as I search out approachable recipes for cooking duck that is tender, crisp skinned and not greasy. Thanks to my latest recipe book purchase, Duck, Duck, Goose, my cooking  results have become more foolproof.

Locally sourced, pasture raised, organic grain fed duck meat is limited, so if  I can find cooks interested in trying duck, ramping up our duck flock may be a good venture for Lilac Hill.

As much as we appreciate our rare Saxony ducks, they may not fit  our future production needs. As much as I would like to continue in conservation efforts for Saxony ducks, I am not sure if I can afford to keep a purebred flock.  I do have a new Saxony drake who should give us a few years of service, which combined this year’s best Pekin drake, selected from the meatbird ducklings I ordered for this season, I may be able to breed a “farm duck” that lays reliably and hatch out our own Pekin x Saxony duck eggs in an effort to control costs.

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White Pekin Ducks

In spite of the greater costs of raising duck, I have ordered Pekin ducklings with the hope of finding interested customers. With daily moves in opened bottomed pens, the ducks will fertilize the pastures as they feast on bugs and greens. I’ll feed the ducks organic feed. I assume that  like the meat chickens I raised last year, our grow out time will be longer than advertised due to our ducks’ exercise and varied diet. Unlike the Cornish Cross hybrid chicken whose quick growth limits its longevity, a Pekin duck is a sustainable breed that can be kept as part of a home flock. As the ducklings grow I will select the best Pekins to add to the Saxony flock. If all goes well we can experiment next year with crossing the faster-growing-Pekin with the more-egg-laying Saxony.

If you have any interest in poultry from Lilac HIll Farm, please contact me.

Planning for 2014: Part 1

Over the winter we evaluated some of our long and short term goals for the farm.

Each farm enterprise must improve the soil on the farm, to increase the future carrying capacity of the land and provide nourishing food which we can profitably sell.

The most difficult decision I have made is to move the Belted Galloways off the farm so the increasing Katahdin sheep flock has access to more pasture and purchased winter hay.  To retain the important benefit of breaking the sheep’s parasite cycle, a neighbor’s beef will visit our fields and  rotate over the grazing paddocks. Blair will move to a nearby farm, Harper will head to the butcher this summer and I am looking for a farm interested in purchasing Josie, our Belted Galloway heifer. Formulating the grazing plan should be more straightforward with only ewes, meat lambs and the occasional beef visit; managing water, shelter,manure and breeding should be less complex with just sheep; and transporting animals off farm is achievable with our own trailer and old Subaru Outback.

Grazeable land, money for infrastructure and human energy are finite resources that I need to manage well as we develop into a financially sustainable farm. Electing to move beef off the farm, in spite of my affection for them, is just one of those “pull on your Muck boots”  choices that will hopefully lead to our success.

Dinner over a year in the making

"I had delicious fried chicken at work. Can we make fried chicken?'.......
"How many chicks should we order from Joe?"....
"What are dimensions of this portable coop? When can we pick up the metal roofing? What size welded wire should we buy?"......
"Are the chicks feathered out yet?"....
"Did you already move the chicks ?"
"Did you already move the meat birds?"
"Do they need more water?".....
"Can you pick up another bag of feed?"...
"Do you want any birds cut up?"...
"What issue of Cook's Illustrated had the recipe?"....
"Is it ready yet?".....
"Yes it is!"
The results of this yearlong quest for a delicious plate of fried chicken was totally worth it.

Roasted duck

With roasted duck on the Christmas dinner menu, I was able to try a recipe from Duck, Duck, Goose, by Hank Shaw. I already knew that roasting a whole duck is more complex than roasting a chicken because duck legs and thighs must cook to a much higher temperature than the breast meat. Hank Shaw states that the difference is about 40'. To deal with the difference the breast meat is cut off the bone in the middle of roasting the bird.

After bringing it to room temperature,trim the excess fat and remove the fat pockets from between the skin and meat. I will save and render the fat later.

Pierce the skin all over without damaging the flesh. This will allow the skin to crisp during cooking.

Rub with lemon and salt. Place the lemon and a trimmed garlic head in the body cavity.

Roast on a rack in a 325' oven.

Remove from the oven when the breast meat reaches 130-140'.  It took about 45 minutes to reach 130". In the future I will probably allow the temperature to reach 135'. 

Carve off the breast meat and tent with foil. Return the roasting pan to the oven and cook until the thickest part of the thigh reaches at least 165'.

Using some of the rendered duck fat, sear the skin of the breast cutlet until evenly browned.  Although the recipe did not call for it, I cooked the meat side of the cutlet too.  

Salt and slice.  Since there were only four of us at the table, we did not wait for the legs and thighs.  The recipe recommends cutting them off the carcass and searing them too.

If other recipes in Hank Shaw's book are as delicious as last night's roasted duck, Lilac Hill's plan to increase the size of our duck flock is a good one.

Murphy's ears

Saxony Ducks: Winter 2013

It is easier to keep the ducks within the fenced vegetable garden over the winter. It is a short, fairly flat walk from the water spigot to the garden gate. "Short" and "flat" makes my twice daily trips with buckets manageable during the iciest part of winter. Ducks submerge their bills in water to clear their nostrils after they gobble feed or sift through dirt. Eventually their water buckets are a muddy mess, demanding twice daily water changes.

Within the garden they are separated from the four-leggeds who would be happy to push through fences to eat duck feed. The garden soil and mulch offers tasty tidbits for the curious ducks too.

It took a couple weeks to find straw bales to edge the lower garden fence. These bales will act as a fence this winter and a mulch for the asparagus next summer.

Two pens rest on raised garden beds. The ducks can seek shelter in these pens, but if they are like our previous Saxonies, they will  settle in the open air. Once breeding season begins I will use the pens for breeding groups.

To keep the Saxonies busy I'll lace the pile of garden trimmings with corn kernels, putting the ducks to work turning the compostable waste.

Early winter water

Nights can get cold enough to add a layer of ice in the troughs now. Even though I can still break this layer, I have decided to add the tank heater to the larger trough. When the water is warmed a bit, the sheep and cows drink more which has to be better for the newly pregnant ewes and Blair, the still-nursing Beltie.

Easy beef vegetable soup

With cold weather here, a pot of beef vegetable soup was on the menu.

To start I sautéed half a chopped onion, 3 stalks of chopped celery and and 3 peeled and diced carrots. To that I added 4 chopped mushrooms and 5 chopped cabbage leaves and gave the vegetables a sprinkle of salt . For soup I like the diced vegetables to be small enough so that each spoonful of soup will have more than one vegetable piece. I tend to reach for a bit of lard for sauteing when the flavor of my olive oil will be masked by the stronger flavors of the soup. Unlike other fats or oils, this lard is from a nearby farm, a valuable byproduct of the effort of that farmer and rendered at the local butcher shop.

Once the onion was soft I added three handfuls of diced chuck roast. I trimmed the roast of fat, saving the bigger pieces of fat for when I grind some lean top round for burgers. This chuck roast, from a grass-raised, grass-finished beef is beautifully marbled and is very tender when simmered or slow cooked.

I stirred the beef around, making sure the pieces were separated then added enough water to cover the vegetable beef saute and scraped up the browned bits from the bottom of the pan. Then I poured in the juices from a quart of tomatoes. (I find that the liquid in my home canned tomatoes is thinner than store bought so adjust with water when necessary.) I usually just squeeze the tomatoes to break them up rather than chopping the juicy tomatoes on the cutting board. I simmered the soup for 20 minutes . About twenty minutes before I served the soup I added some diced potatoes and cupcake pack of corn.

In the summer I always cook a couple more ears of corn than we will eat. Once it is cool, usually the next morning if I have not used it for fritters or eaten cold for breakfast, I cut it off the cob and wrap it up in little packages that fit in my cupcake pan and pop it in the freezer. Once frozen, those wrapped corn cupcakes go into a gallon sized zip bag, making room for the next leftover corn. 

 I thinned the mixture with some water since I wanted a soup and not a stew and served. This is not fancy fare, even though I added a handful of chopped parsley at the end, just a basic soup. It is the kind of soup that my mother made to warm to feed six squirmy children. Like many soups, it will probably taste even better tomorrow.

Galloways in winter, pigs in spring.

This year, during the coldest days and nights of winter, the Galloways will be sequestered in a deeply bedded paddock, out of the wind and facing what little bit of sunshine is available. We plan to add layers of corn to the fresh layers of carbon rich bedding.
Per Joel Salatin's example, the cows should eat through fewer round bales in an effort to stay warm and the Barn Field should sustain less winter damage from too heavy hooves on mostly frozen ground.
Once the beef are turned out to pasture, the corn should be fermenting. The rooting action of pig snouts in search of corn will turn the manured bedding into compost for the gardens and fields.
In a future post I will talk about the other tasks I have planned for the pigs.

Settling in for winter

With the wind starting to blow, the water tote near empty and the North Field grazed down, it was time to move the cows into the Barn Field with the sheep. The two shelters, hay ring, unfinished hay from the ram pen and troughs were also dragged into the field. After a bit of jostling for position, the sheep, donkey and cows are content. The Barn Field is protected from the wind and quite lovely, especially on this sunny day.

Barn pedicures

 We wormed the flock earlier this week and today we trimmed hooves.

Usually trimming is physically challenging: herd the sheep into a corral, catch one, turn it over and restrain the moving leg and trim hooves as the sheep sits back on your legs.

Fortunately I borrowed a sling chair from Caroline at Owen's Farm in Sunbury, PA earlier this week. Instead of flipping and resting the sheep on our legs, we backed the sheep into the chair. Secure within the sling seat, the sheep were relatively still.

In addition to trimming I made sure the gland between the toes (sheep are cloven hoofed, the hoof is split into two toes) was clear. 

The new ewes we purchased earlier this summer were ear tagged too.

Ear tags are a mostly permanent way of identifying sheep. Record keeping is an important tool in building a healthy flock. Armed with data I can select the most successful sheep on our farm with an eye towards reducing worming medications and birthing complications and increasing butcher weights and overall vigor.

I say mostly permanent because my oldest ewes have lost their Lilac Hill tags. Their original farm tags are still intact. I may purchase the more secure tags in the future.

 On Lilac HIll Farm, I ear tag the ewes on the left ear and the rams and wethers on the right.  With the left/right tagging, I can identify the girls and boys from afar. Why left=girls/right=boys? I am the only leftie in the house so it makes sense to me.

Because well trimmed hooves are so important to the well being of our pasture raised and bred sheep, I view this as the beginning of our lambing year.

2013 Buckeye review and planning for next year

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I like Buckeyes. 

Even though our gentle Buckeyes are not prolific egg layers they have proved their usefulness to the farm.

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This summer Buckeye hens set and hatched out 19 ducklings and a handful of chicks. Filling our freezer with delicious duck and developing a market for duck meat is a  goal of the farm. Using broody hens to set the eggs and brood the immature birds before they feather out  frees me from attending to the incubator and brooder. Rather than managing the young poultry’s manured bedding, the ducklings move over the field in open-bottomed pens under the guidance of the protective hens

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This winter the hens will turn compostables from the barn, kitchen and gardens. Within  a makeshift enclosure of odd pieces of fencing, on a steep section of the barnyard, the Buckeyes will turn the waste into compost for the vegetable garden beds.

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In an effort to improve the carcass quality of the flock and hopefully add slow-raised, heritage birds to our products list, I bought a breeding trio of Buckeyes from East of Eden farm in Huntersville, NC. These NC birds’ genetics are from the Buckeye Recovery Project of the  Livestock Breeds Conservancy. 

My plan is to add one more unrelated trio of Buckeyes and to improve the size our PA Buckeye flock.

Butchering day

Today one of the heifers went to the butcher.

We eat meat and we sell meat.

Rotational grazing of ruminants is a key component  of returning fertility and productivity to our farm.

Today was one of those bittersweet, wrenching days on a small farmstead.

Our cows are not  loaded and transported to the butcher in a strange trailer, away from the security of herd and pasture. For our Belties, the end is quick and like their birth and life, takes place within the herd, on pasture and on my watch.

Getting to know our Cornish Cross chickens

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Cornish Cross chickens are not genetically modified organisms (GMO's) but hybrid birds developed by crossing different parent birds with the goal of encouraging specific characteristics.   Our CX birds have strong beaks, white ear tufts and since this is a rooster, a larger comb than the pullets. 

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Over the years, hybridizers have focused on creating a chicken that has a broad breast and rounded leg.  To support the quick growth, CX chickens have very stout legs and broad feet. Since CX birds are not overwintered and because the goal is a nice meat portion, they do not have excess feathers. Since these chickens do not have the protection of a feathered breast, it is very important that they sit on a clean, fresh surface free from excess droppings or wet bedding.  On grass, with daily pen moves, we have avoided sores and ammonia burns.

Even though the Cornish Cross hybrid was developed to grow meat quickly in a broiler house setting, they adapt well , even thrive in a pasture setting.  Natural day/night cycles, fresh air, plenty of space in the pen, bugs and clover to supplement the organic feed  and daily moves onto fresh ground  all contribute to a healthy and perhaps a smaller broiler.

Chicken tractor dolly

With tutoring and shared welding equipment, thank you Steve and Pat, the dolly to lift the end of the chicken tractor and roll it is complete. Unfortunately the pen is still too heavy for me to lift. Until we make design modifications I will remove the tops to reduce weight.