Re-Purposing

The farm is in full swing!  We are shaking off the ache of the cold, cold winter and working hard to make the soil bring forth new life.  We have started some seedlings of Pak Choy, Tomatoes, Green Peppers, and Zinnias.  We are planning on transplanting those seedlings into our rubber lumber, raised beds.  (More on that later.)  We like to get the most out of the farm, so everything has to have multiple uses.  As you have read from other posts, we still have some heritage turkeys wandering around the farm.  They do not like to stay in the yard we have fenced in for their protection, it seems they enjoy our company too much.  Due to their wandering ways, we have our own egg hunts searching for where they have laid them most recently.  Once we find some of their eggs we use them for breads, muffins, and brownies.  As for taste, there is not much difference between turkey and chicken (wink, wink), but the shape of the turkey egg has a more pronounced point at one end.  They also have a much harder shell, so breaking them into mixes can be a little tricky.  So far that is the only thing keeping them around on the farm.  I want to go ahead and slaughter them, but the family has me out-numbered on touting their usefulness.  I feel like the Dread Pirate Roberts - when I see the turkeys at evening I tell them, "Goodnight!  I will most likely kill you in the morning."  Maybe the next time the kids leave for the day, I might just act with decisiveness.    

Two of the most recent Turkey eggs.

As for the rubber lumber, raised beds, we discovered a great site concerning sustainable agriculture.  Check out the Noble Foundation here.  Our newest venture is building raised beds from rubber lumber.  Did you know that most tire places will give you old tires?  I've heard old farmers tell me to plant potatoes in old tires by planting potatoes in one tire, then stacking another tire on top and filling it with more dirt.  One older guy told me he had stacked four tires high with potatoes!  Our plan for the raised beds is to cut the steel belting off and use the tread for "walls" on the raised beds.  We will post some pictures as soon as we get some tires.  It doesn't take a farmer to re-purpose items, you can do it at your home as well.  It just takes some interest and desire to re-purpose something rather than throwing it away.  Take a small step towards being more sustainable and environmentally responsible.  If you have any ideas to share with us, please either comment or email us with your ideas.

Spring is here

With the warm weather we decided to start some spring planting. I hope we haven't jumped the gun, since we planted everything the temperature has dropped down to the mid 30's. So far everything is still alive, but we are watching them closely. The kids all pitched in and helped to plant lettuce mix, spinach, and brussels sprouts. The kids worked together with a minimum of fighting and with only a few leaves of lettuce missing. Hopefully, I can sell all the brussels sprouts so I don't have to eat any.

Battle against nature

When God created Adam, he charged him with a mission. He was to take dominion over the birds in the air, the animals upon the ground, and the land itself. (Gen. 1:26) Sometimes it feels that those things didn't get the message that we are to have dominion over them. For example, we tried to grow some broilers over the winter, because I AM MAN! That turned out to be a horrible failure. So we waited until the weather got warmer, in February mind you, and tried again. The first week of their little lives, we had a huge snow storm, we actually had snow on the ground when they came in the mail. But they survived the week and I started to think I actually knew what I was doing. Then during their second week of life, I realized that I in fact did not know what I was doing and the chickens started dying in bunches. Birds tend to pile up and crush the ones underneath the pile. It's like a chicken version of king of the mountain, only instead of a hill of dirt, they get on top of one another until they form a pile of chickens. It's really sad when you come out in the morning and there is a pile of them crushed down. Usually at that time it's warm enough that the survivors are just milling around like nothing happened.

A fellow farmer once told me, "Once they start piling up, ain't nothing you can do to stop 'em." Now I just assumed he was exaggerating - he was not. I put waterers and cans and various objects and they would just pile as close to that original spot as they could. It's like they just wanted some warmth, just for a moment until the weight of their brothers slowly crush them. As I have stated before, I don't really know what I'm doing. So I started reading about hovers and I built one out of an old, slightly broken plastic crate.

Here is the basic approach. The chickens need about 90 degree ambient temp or they get too cold and die. One of the hardest things to do is to heat up a room to 90 degrees, especially when the outside air temp is in the low 30s. So when it gets too cold they huddle, wouldn't you? They also tend to dig into the bedding a little which will make a slight depression. More chickens want to get into the middle where it is warmer so they keep jumping into the middle and piling on top of one another. The little guys in the middle get warm, but usually get crushed as an end result. The hover does two things: it reduces the amount of air you have to heat up and it allows the chickens to move in and out of the warming area. I used a large plastic crate and cut holes in the side for the heat lamps. I turned it upside down and set it on bricks. This allows the heat lamps to heat up the air inside the crate, and since it is upside down the heat is trapped in the crate. It's up on bricks so the chickens can come and go - in and out of the crate without piling.

Here are a couple of pictures to help you see what we're doing. The first picture is in the daylight, so not many are under the crate. The second one is at night, so they are almost all under there. The last one is a bird's eye view.