Winter Farm Happenings

Winter is in full force here in Ohio.  The last couple weeks we have had very frigid temps.  It was going down to sub zero temps at night and only in the single digits during the day.  It has made keeping the animals warm, fed, and watered a real challenge.  So far, we have only had one winter calamity.  The Tom turkey with the brown tail met his demise in the cold.  The turkeys won't stay in their coop during the day, no matter how cold it is.  They want to free range, and they generally end up by the house.  JoAn noticed the other afternoon, that one of the toms was down and all the other turkeys were gathered around it.  I went to see and found that the tom was freshly dead.  I had T-Bob come and help me start the butchering process.  It was still fresh enough that it bled out cleanly and was able to be eaten.  I debated skinning it, which is easier, but then it can't be roasted.  Fortunately, JoAn was home that day and she helped me get the water to the right temperature (147 degrees) so that we could scald and pluck it.  Once we had the outside cleaned, I finished the job.  It went pretty easily.  

We cut the bird in half and enjoyed our first roasted heritage turkey for Paul's birthday dinner.  It was DELICIOUS!  The dark meat was almost as dark as beef, and the breast was like dark meat on a commercial bird.  It was so moist!  It cooked very quickly and wasn't tough.  I roasted it like you would a game bird.  I stuffed it ( with gluten free stuffing) and roasted it at 425 for a couple hours in our electric roaster.  That worked very well.  We still have the other half in the freezer.

We did move the turkeys into a barn stall so they wouldn't freeze.

One more note on the turkeys... I am sad to announce that indeed I only have one hen left.  It turns out that the other two birds which I was hoping were hens, are toms.  Since the other tom died the two late-bloomers have been gobbling and strutting.  I am sad about that.  I was really hoping I had three hens and one tom.  This means that I will have reorder turkey poults in the spring.

Levi, my talented nephew who can walk on water!

Winter time is the time to plan and educate yourself about future farming projects and things you want to try and do different the next year.  Some of my ideas to try include mushroom farming, and getting more of an orchard going.  I have been reading 'Eating on the Wild Side' by Jo Robinson.  This book teaches you how to select the most nutrient varieties of food, both in the grocery store, a farmer's market or to plant in your own garden.  She tells you which are the closest to heirloom varieties.  If you are going to eat something, it might as well be the most nutritious available. I have also been reading 'The Holistic Orchard' by Michael Phillips.  He teaches you how to care for your fruit trees so that you don't need to use the chemicals, except in the most dire of situations.  After reading the book, I decided that I need to spend the next year in prepping the soil before I even think of buying and planting trees.  Everything takes time.

T-Bob checking on the pigs

The pigs seem to be doing well.  The barrow (A fixed male pig) is now up to about 280+ pounds.  The sows are both about 180.  We are planning to take them into the butcher as soon as the feed we have is gone.  The feed won't keep until we get our next batch of pigs.  Might as well use it up now and turn it into bacon.  For those wondering how we weigh the pigs.... There is a calculation based on their physical measurements that allows you to calculate their weight pretty closely.  My cloth tape measurer gets used more on pigs, than on people.  

T-Bob has had to work very hard during this cold spell caring for the pigs.  The metal spigot on our waterer freezes up almost as soon as the pigs stop drinking.  He has to go out every hour or two in the coldest weather and unfreeze the spigot and let all the pigs drink.  This also involves chipping the ice away in the barrel and pouring hot water over the spigot.

One of my other reading projects is to learn how to make my own sausages, cure my own bacon and hams and how to utilize all of a pig to the greatest of my abilities.  I am reading the books 'Beyond Bacon' and also 'The River Cottage Meat Book'.  I am really excited about eating our own pork.

Pigs do have that magical ability.... They can turn vegetables into bacon!

Frozen puddle in the field

 There are multiple family conferences these days as I dream and plan and they (mostly Paul) try to dissuade me from taking on too much.  My DH is supportive of my ideas so I try to use common sense and not take on too many new projects, albeit, more than Paul thinks I should.  Our goal is to raise really healthy delicious, nutritious food for ourselves, and have enough left over to sell to those looking for similar things.  We have to make enough to cover our expenses and a bit for labor.  The farm can't be a charity.  We are working hard to do a better job keeping track of our expenses this year so that we can see how we are doing.

Elizabeth, Our hot blooded child

 We have enjoyed a very healthy winter.  We are all outside a lot!  Elizabeth is the child who never seems to get cold.  She rarely has shoes on her feet, unless there is a lot of snow.  Even then she often has only crocs on and no socks underneath.  Brrr.  She and T-Bob were outside sledding behind the ATV when it finally warmed up to 8 degrees.  They don't seem to feel the cold.  They have definitely embraced being country kids.

Chicken Tractor Chickens

The chickens seem to be managing well in the cold.  I see a little bit of frostbite occasionally on their combs but nothing very significant.  The chicken tractor seems to be warmer than the run-in coop.  These chickens won't come outside unless it is above freezing.  The run-in chickens are outside everyday.  They have a protected area in the run-in that they take their dust baths and enjoy the afternoon sunshine in no matter how cold it is.  They have been laying better also than the tractor chickens.  We love our eggs with their orange yolks, even in the middle of the winter!!!

Golden Buff Hen

 We have thoroughly enjoyed the meat from our broiler chickens.  We have already ordered our next batch which is supposed to arrive in the middle of March.  The broth from these birds is "oh so good"!!  They were a big success in our first year of farming!

The Run-in Chickens

Ice on the pond

As I close this post, I thought I would also update what is going on in our lives.  I never did get a Christmas letter out this year.

JoAn would appreciate prayer as she is in a VERY busy time of life.  She has her normal job doing all the financial stuff for a local Christian school, and she also decided to do another year at H&R Block.  She is very busy with her other activities as well... She teaches at AWANA on Sunday nights, heads up a girls Bright Lights group,  and works with Paul teaching a kid's club on Friday nights.  She also is involved with a College and Career group on Saturday nights.  It is a very full schedule.  Fortunately, it only lasts until April 15th, cause we miss her!

Paul starts back to school on Tuesday.  He is studying Mechanical Engineering.  He is a very diligent student.  He works hard and does help out here on the farm.  He also teaches at AWANA as well as other responsibilities.

Michelle has been struggling with some health issues.  She is doing some better.  It is a process not an event.  She is working taking care of my brother's children 3-4 days a week at our house. That keeps her busy for now.

Funky ice picture

Thomas has been busy studying for speech and debate season.  He  was very pleased with his PSAT score.  He is starting to visit colleges.  He also has spent a lot of time playing basketball this winter.  He has really enjoyed it and has done quite well, especially for never having played before.  He has started every game on the JV team.  He has that unteachable thing called height in his favor.  He has a lot of decisions to be made in the next year.  He is leaning to preparing for a career in law.

T-Bob lines up his free throw

T-Bob thinks that he should be allowed to skip debate and just play basketball.  That is not an option in our family. He has really worked on his jump shot and spends a lot of time practicing with the JV team.  He enjoys the extra time working on his skills and it definitely helps with his conditioning. But debate will go on.  Thomas has been tutoring him in good debate arguments. The boys' first Debate Tournament is in the beginning of February.  They are both doing sweepstakes in speech.  It is good to see them growing physically,spiritually and mentally.

Elizabeth is a sweetheart and is always a good helper.  She enjoys shooting baskets with the boys and crocheting doll clothes for her younger cousins' dolls.  She can butcher a chicken and she enjoys spending time with JoAn.  They have been working diligently memorizing the book of Proverbs together.

When we are home, we enjoy the quiet of the farm.  There is a sense of peace, whether we are inside or out.  We thank God for his faithfulness in every aspect of life.  Enjoy the quiet of winter.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from the Farm

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!  This post is written in honor of my dear mother-in-law who gently reminded me that I have been neglecting writing on my blog.  I will try and do better!

 

This year we once again made our annual pilgrimage to Red's Tree Farm to select the family tree.  We brought along two additional helpers in the form of Miss President and Car.  We were watching them that day.  This year we found one in the first three minutes of looking.  Of course, we still had to make a long circuit through several acres to make sure that we had found the one we liked the best.  We had so went back near the entrance and cut down the one we had found early on.  Tradition!  We are thinking of adapting our tradition and to start planting our own spruce trees in the spring so that we will have our own here on the farm in the future.  It won't happen for another few years though.  They have to have time to grow tall.

The children decorated the tree and did a fine job.  It looks really nice.  

We had our traditional Christmas Eve dinner.  We had filet mignon (one of the perks of buying a side of beef) crab legs, and a plethora of side dishes, all very yummy!  After dinner we had the traditional opening of the gifts.  We went from the youngest to oldest, each opening a gift and going around until the gifts are gone.

 It is so nice to see my DH relaxing again. He has been home and is once again participating in family life.  We were able to sell our original Old White Farmhouse just before Christmas.  Such a relief!

Michelle and Thomas enjoyed their corresponding shirts.

I gifted my DH a tractor with lots of attachments.  It is something we could really use.  Unfortunately. it was 1:16 size.  The boys really enjoyed laying with it.  They get bigger in size, but they are still boys at heart. 

Christmas morning was our traditional brunch breakfast for the family.  Our family makes and serves a big breakfast to all the family.  Mom gives everyone a stocking filled with small gifts.  We open those at the table.  We made an amazing broccoli quiche, baked apple and baked berry pancake, grits, homemade nut rolls,  scrambled eggs, sausage and OJ.  Very Yummy!

Miss President is a big 'Little House in the Prairie' fan.  She was super excited to have a dress that was like Laura Ingall's. 

My kids missed their cousins in the Philippines.  The rest of the cousins are significantly younger and, although fun, don't enjoy the same activities.  They were very excited as they were going to be moving to a new house the next day!

My baby sister and her husband were very tired as they had spent the last week packing up their house to get ready to move.

The two Mr. Readers.  They both personalized their plastic water glasses with the phrase 'Dad Reader'. 

Elizabeth loves being a country girl!  She can't wait to get a horse of her own!

The family then gathers around the tree.  Everybody gets two gifts.  One from Grandma and Grandpa and one from either a cousin or a sibling, depending on which group they fit into.

Grandpa helped Elizabeth figure out the walkie-talkies she got.

In the afternoon, our friends the Morrises came over.  It was good to see Dan the Man again.

The men sat around discussing theology and other important topics.

T-Bob looks so short in this picture.  Actually, he is almost the same height as I am (5'9").  He is growing quickly, but so is Thomas.  He is quickly passing up Michelle.  We had a lovely day and played lots of games and enjoyed good fellowship.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from the Mangos at the Old White Farmhouse and the Red Barn Farm!!!

(If you were here today, it looks completely different.  We had about 4" of snow overnight!)

Butchering Chickens and Turkeys on the Farm

Monday was the big day!  The day we had our first big butchering extravaganza.  We butchered 95 broilers and 9 turkeys.  We were blessed to have lots of friends come to help us with this big project.  

NOTE: I did my best to keep this post approved for sensitive viewers

 

We had a family of ten people come on Sunday night, they were traveling through, and stayed to help us with our butchering.  They were experienced which was a great help.  The weather was about 30 and snowy when we started.  The driveway was slippery, but I am aware of only one wipe out.

The snow was pretty as it lined the trees.  The young guys went back and collected the broilers.

Paul was outside early getting the scalding pots heating and the plucker set up.

We had worked very hard to get the garage all cleaned up.  We knew the weather was predicted to be cold and snowy.  We set up all the things we could inside.  Unfortunately, the heater broke the week before our butchering frolic.  

Here is how we set it up.  The small table by the door was for removing any feathers the plucker missed.  The white table with the cutting boards on it was raised up so that the eviscerators could stand and work.  We had one person who just removed the legs and the oil glands.  We saved all the feet for broth.  I am planning to can it. The brown table on the lower right was for the older people who prefer to sit while working.

Paul did an amazing job with our sink set up.  He ran a water  hose to the beams over top and put on a splitter.  That made it so that we had two hoses that the QC  (Quality Control) people could use to clean the birds.  We used two old stainless steel sinks in a metal frame and had room to set in two roaster pans, one at each end to hold the birds to be checked and then the ones to be weighed when they were finished.  The sinks had pvc pipes underneath that were angled and connected  then the pipe ran out underneath the garage door to an area which could absorb the water.

We had brought up two picnic tables which were covered in plastic.  They were for the cleaning of the birds before they went into the scalder.  We used an enzyme cleaner and a hand brush.  The birds needed very little cleaning.

The boys brought up the broilers in our trailer which they pulled with the ATV.  The broiler pen was a couple hundred feet from the butchering area, so this was the easiest way.

Everybody stood around and watched as the first birds were done.  We were so blessed to have so many people willing to help.  We had a couple friends from church as well as a couple families that we have gotten to know through other butchering days we have helped with.  Our birds were treated well.

The boys built a little holding pen that the broilers were put in as they waited their turn.  Then they could be getting more while the rest were processed.

The young girls wandered around the farm and enjoyed the softly falling snow.

Dad stopped by to inspect our set up.

Karen ran the plucker.  The plucker pulls off the feathers very gently and in about 45 seconds you go from a fully feathered chicken to a bird that looks like this.  Such a labor saving device!  It eliminates the most tedious part of bird processing.

My DH, as a farmer, who would have thought it?!!!, He stuck around most of the morning and helped carry birds.

The evisceration table

We had a big container outside the garage to cool the birds as they waited for further processing.  We had frozen a lot of ice before our butchering day. 

Evisceration is the process of removing the birds insides.

The QC station was where all the birds are double checked to see that everything that should have been removed was actually gone (feathers and internal pieces and parts).  The birds are also given a good washing at this point.

'Grandpa', part of the overnight contingent, did the job of weighing.  He was meticulous in trying to get everything weighed out exactly right!  The birds were given a number that was attached by rubber band to their leg.  The number and weight was then recorded on the computer so that we could see how much yield we actually got and what our price per pound actually was.

The birds went from the weighing station into a large can lined with plastic filled with ice water so that they would chill.  We started at 8:30 in the morning and all the birds were cleaned and cooling by 3 PM.

We really appreciated the inside help as well.  Several people heated hot beverages and put out snacks, heated lunch and kept an eye on the younger children.

Our help left about 4 PM.  The temperature had dropped throughout the day and everyone was worried about icy roads.  We still had to cut up the birds that we wanted in pieces, and put all of them in bags.  It took us until after ten to get that done.  We all felt like human popsicles by that time.  It was down into the low teens.  It was a long day but worth it.  We are now really looking forward to having our own chicken wings for part of our Christmas Eve dinner appetizers.

For those interested:  We raised Freedom Ranger Broilers that were second generation raised on non-GMO feed.  We got them from the JM Hatchery (AKA as Freedomrangerhatchery.com) out of Pennsylvania.  We bought 100 poults and ended up with 95 birds.  They seemed really healthy and were excellent free range birds.  They were still able to fly a few feet off the ground, and would range for several hundred feet from their pen during the day. We only put food in their pen at night, the rest of the time they were on their own.  We butchered them at 11 weeks.  They yielded 4-6# carcasses at that point.  When we do them again, we will get an earlier start.  You really don't want to be butchering chickens in November in Ohio.

Family Night on the farm

This will be a rather unique blogpost.  I am writing at 1 A.M. and I don't have any pictures to illustrate my story, for which you will be grateful, and I smell like very wet chicken.  Poor me!

Here is my story.  Tonight my DH and I were arriving home at the farm after a very nice date night.  We had gone to hear George Barna speak on parenting and then went out to Aladdin's for dinner.  By the time we arrived home it was after 10.  My DH commented to me that one of the black chickens was lying by the end road.  I said that that didn't make any sense.  I wasn't questioning his veracity just the fact that a black chicken was by the road made no sense.  He went out to look while I stayed on the driveway to keep my shoes dry.  When he came back he reported that the chicken was still alive.  That was really strange.  My DH is a "city slicker" farmer and doesn't touch chickens.

I went and got some boots. a flashlight, and Michelle.  We went out to the road and Michelle picked up the rooster and looked at it closely.  No blood and it seemed intact.  But why was it by the road?!!  The roosters always head to the back to be near the hens and not towards the road.  The rooster chirped and snuggled as we headed back towards the coop.  Alas, the fence was broken down and there was a dead rooster caught in it.  Another rooster was missing altogether.  The fence to the broilers was also broken down.  Fortunately, there coop was buttoned up so tightly that the fox or coyote couldn't get it.  As we were examining the broiler pen, we noticed that all the broilers were sopping wet.  Chickens don't stay healthy when they can't get dry. The place where the pen had been moved to last night had become a swamp with all the rain!

What to do?!!! We called for reinforcements and went and cleared out one of the stalls (My DH and T-Bob used their big muscles to do that) that was filled with junk and covered the floor with hay.  We also cleared out the road trailer, got the ATV out and went back to the broiler pen.  Do you know how long it takes to chase down and move 100 broilers?!!! These are Freedom Ranger broilers and they can move fast.  Thomas was in his documentary mode, meaning he is putting together evidence for future political campaigns that indeed he was raised on a farm and is a real farmer.  He made Elizabeth, (Poor kid, she was in bed sleeping when all the excitement broke out and so she was recruited to come help. Second night in a row that she has been up past midnight), hold the flashlight and video tape him catching the broilers while standing barefoot in the broiler pen full of mud and bird poop.  He is not afraid of hard work or dirt- as long as the camera is on -  LOL.  He continued working though once the camera was off.  We loaded the wet birds into the trailer and hauled them to the barn.  There we reversed our human chain and unloaded them all.  The chickens seemed very happy to be in a warm dry place.  

T-Bob and I went back to check on the roosters and fix their fence.  When that was done we went to move the electric power to the fence so that if the robber comes back he will get a real surprise.  T-Bob made sure that the power was off, but when he moved it there was still a power reserve that jolted him as he walked.  These electric fences are very powerful and give you a real "kick-in-the-pants" and not just a strong tingle.  In fact, he almost fell over from the strength of it and the battery charger went flying.  He thought I had thrown a brick at him and hit him.  At least that's what it felt like.  I would never do such a thing!!!  My DH was once again called out to set the fence charger back up.  Both T-Bob and I wanted nothing to do with it after that.  I think the fact that the ground was soaking wet was a factor in the shock.  By  the time we got in the house it was almost one in the morning.  Michelle was finishing butchering the dead chicken that was caught in the fence.  Don't want to waste the meat on one of my primo roosters.

So what did your family do for 'Family Night'?

Did I mention that we love life on the farm?  It is definitely character building!