Monthly Archives: November 2013

A Brief Moment of Sanity

Posted on by

Most days I love being a farmer. I get to work outside, usually by myself or with a faithful dog or two tagging along. I keep my own pace and follow my own schedule, within reason. I understand my cows who like to keep to the same routine, day in and day out. Things go smoothly that way. And life is peaceful.

And then, some days I think it would be better if I weren’t a farmer. Those days when the morning starts off iffy and heads downhill picking up speed before you realize you should have gotten off when you first had the chance.

It started as soon as my car cleared the top of the driveway before the sun was even up. I could see the light was on in the milk shed. It should have been off, because I turn it off each night after haying the cows. That meant one of the cows, probably Violet,  had pushed her way through the stall, snapping the chain and forcing her enormously pregnant body into the stall. When I didn’t show up to give her a treat she used her tongue to flick on the light. Signalling me that I’d better hurry up and feed her. Sometimes she will use her tongue to flick on the switch that turns on the pump. Kind of like Pavlov- treats happen when the pump is on. If I turn on the pump I’ll get treats. Cows are clever that way.

So I parked the car and jogged out to the shed. Sure enough, the chain was snapped and she had left me a huge calling card in the stall. Luckily I keep extra hooks on hand for just such an occasion and I was able to quickly fix the chain. Score one for the farmer.

But wait- what is that snapping sound I’m hearing? Electric wire. Electric wire that is now wrapped around and under the giant metal hay feeding ring. The cows had pushed the feeder to the very far corner and then flipped it partially up, just enough to get it tangled in the electric perimeter fencing, before dropping it back down. Hmm. This one is tricky. I look down at my shoes. I look over to where I need to unplug the wire. A lot of mud between here and there. And a lot of grumpy cows who now can’t eat their hay. I’ll be back.

A few hours later I glance over to my raised beds. The garlic is coming up nicely. I spent hours planting it over the last few weeks. Already there are lots of green spikes poking out of the dark soil.  I look again, is that a calf? Two calves? Are the stinking calves really in my raised beds? How did they get over there…the hot wire is supposed to keep them out.

Jubee ate the Bok Choi

Jubee ate the Bok Choi

Now I’m stomping mad, because the calves just look so darn happy running all over the place. I arm myself with a section of PVC pipe so I can shoo them back across. Only it’s not that easy. When they broke through the hot wire on their way over they got a good shock. It wasn’t enough to keep them on the right side but it was enough to make them hesitant to go through again. So there we were. Two calves with no sense to stay on the paths and out of my beds. And the farmer who had had just about enough cow antics and nowhere near enough coffee.

Around and around we went. Me chasing, them dancing, the dogs barking. Me praying no one would drive by and see me completely losing my cool, jumping up and down, waving my arms and yelling at the two cute little calves. I couldn’t get them out of that area for anything.

That was it. I’d had it. I was long past questioning why I had decided to keep the pair. My husband had told me they were awful. But I thought I was the calf whisperer. They just needed training. They needed more time to get used to me. They needed to get out of my garden.

I finally called my husband needing him to tell me how to load the gun so I could put them down. At some point on my way back to the house to fetch the gun, after I lost my cell phone, I had a brief moment of sanity and realized the last thing I needed in my hand was a gun.

So I took a few deep breaths, punctuated with a few well-chosen words and stopped. I stopped torturing myself thinking about the damage they were causing. It really wasn’t all that bad and I was making it worse by chasing them. I stopped shouting because it was really starting to worry my dog. I just stopped everything. And instead of a gun, I put a steaming cup of hot coffee in my hand and welcomed a brief moment of sanity.

trouble 2012

Trouble, faithful companion.

Poop Happens

Posted on by

Dairy cows are funny creatures. They like their routines. Same time for milking twice a day. Same order to file in to the stalls. Same person milking them. You get the picture.

But every now and then one of the cows gets to feeling a little impish and decides to throw off the routine for their herd mates.

Today it was Bessie. Bessie is a Jersey and the low cow on the totem pole. She is the last one to come in for milking, the first one to get pushed out around the hay feeder. Usually she doesn’t seem to mind. She will wait patiently for everyone else to eat their fill. Bessie hangs back and watches. Once the coast is clear she makes a mad break for it, just in case another cow decides to go back for seconds before Bessie takes her place.

Bessie (1)

Every day, twice a day, Bessie has to wait for Snow White to finish in the milking stall before she can go in. Snow White is a Brown Swiss and an amazon woman in the dairy cow world. She is simply a giant. And she is always the first cow. Always.

So early this morning, when Bessie was feeling a bit puckish and decided to race Snow for first place, Snow did what any self respecting dairy cow would do in the same situation. She backed up and pooped all over Bessie’s side.

Poop, it’s a language the cows use to express their feelings. Waiting too long for a treat? Stamp the foot and poop. Getting nudged too much by an eager herd mate? Lift your tail and poop. Another cow challenging you for first place? Yup. Poop.

poophappens

Poop happens. A lot.

One Little, Two Little, Three Little Piggies…

Posted on by
Little pink piggies

Little pink piggies

“Hey- I found a guy with some pigs I want to take a look at.”

This was the beginning of our pig raising venture. At the time we were still living in a typical suburban neighborhood and waiting to close on our farm. The only farm animals in this neighborhood were the ones I was hiding in my backyard. And if you’ve never tried to hide two goats and more than a handful of chickens then you really can’t imagine just how desperately I needed a farm.

My husband is always the practical one. “Why do you want to look at pigs when we don’t have the farm yet?”

Well, I had to look at these pigs because I’d spent the last week or so researching every aspect of pig raising imaginable. I was ready. I knew what I wanted, what breed, how many I needed. I was already deciding what cuts of pork would be filling our freezer in the next 6 months. And now I’d found the pigs.

We arrived at the pig farm. The farmer took us out to the back where the pigs were being raised on pasture (this was good- I’d read about it) in wooden huts with a “yard” enclosed with electric wiring. This was good too, the pigs were already trained to hot wire. After showing us around for a few minutes, I pointed to a large Duroc sow “I’ll take that one.”  I turned around, pointed to one of the other huts and said, “and 5 of those wiener pigs” and then, before my husband could say a word “And can you get the sow pregnant for me?”

This was late August. I had no idea what I’d just gotten us into. We were still waiting to close on our farm, so no place to house the pigs. The farmer agreed to keep them at his place until we were ready to pick up as long as we paid to feed them for the duration.

None of the books I had read mentioned that I just set myself up for the worst pasture raised pig scenario possible. I would be taking home 5 wiener pigs to raise on pasture at the end of summer and heading into the hard winter. It normally takes 6 months to raise a pig to market weight, if you know what you are doing and you are doing it before the weather turns bad. Along with that, I was bringing home a grumpy sow that would farrow in December. On pasture.

We did end up closing on the farm that weekend. And we immediately moved pigs, goats, and chickens to their new home. It was a crazy time. We had to learn about fencing with electric wiring, building huts, setting up automatic waterers and the list goes on.

Lucy the sow farrowed in December. She gave us 11 piglets. The 5 wiener pigs escaped the electric fencing every chance they got. On more than one night we were catching pigs with headlamps and nets in the pitch dark. Those 5 pigs never did make a suitable market weight. But we were more than happy to have the mobile slaughter guy come out late January to take them off our hands.

Since that first experience with pigs we have learned more than any book could ever cover regarding raising pigs. There are some things that you just have to jump in and do on your own because you really won’t know until you do it yourself.

Farming is like that in many ways. You can talk to all kinds of people, read all kinds of books and blogs, but still- until you do it yourself you can’t truly appreciate what it’s really like. At the same time, there is a certain rhythm in farming. There are good reasons that old time farmers had their pigs farrow in the spring, not the end of the summer. It’s good to try out new ideas, but also to remember how things were done in the past.

Chicken Feet Stock…It’s What’s for Dinner

Posted on by
Fresh Chicken Stock right off the feet

Fresh Chicken Stock right off the feet

I finally did it. By “it” I mean I finally made chicken stock from feet. After five years of hemming and hawing, researching and hesitating and staring at bags of chicken feet in the fridge it was time. The husband was butchering fifty Cornish cross chickens and it was now or never.

If you have always wanted to make home-made stock from chicken feet read on:
First you have to source your chicken feet. For me that meant telling the husband to save the feet. No tossing them out to the livestock dogs. So get yourself some feet. I ended up with twenty-four pairs of feet or 4.5lbs. Rinse them under cool water. Our chickens are raised on pasture so they walk around on dirt, grass and even chicken poop. You might be able to skip this step depending on where you source your feet. Being the farmer I get to work with the real deal.

chicenfeetsink-1

Next fill a pot with water and get it simmering. You’re going to swish the feet in the water a couple at a time. Don’t let it boil, you don’t want to cook the feet.

Now is the fun part. Pull the foot out and either rub or pull the skin down all the way to the toes. It should peel right off like a glove. If it doesn’t peel easily just dip it back in the simmering water and swish it around again. Once it’s peeled you need to decide about the toenails. You can leave them on or pop them off. To pop them off just give a little squeeze. Pop! Kind of like popping bubble wrap…I told you this was fun.

After all of the feet are peeled you’re going to dump them into a stock pot. You do have a stock pot, right? Add enough water to cover the feet. I used five quarts. Add two TB of vinegar for every four quarts of water. I used white vinegar but cider vinegar will work fine too. The vinegar will help pull the nutrients out of the bones. Let it rest for about thirty minutes.

Chop up an onion, a few ribs of celery, a handful of garlic cloves- we eat a lot of garlic so plan accordingly, toss it all into the pot with the chicken feet. Throw in about ten peppercorns. Bring the pot to a boil, then immediately turn down the heat to a simmer. Let it simmer for at least twelve hours. Every now and then stir it around. Towards the end of the twelve hours you will see the feet have pulled apart, releasing lots of fat.

New Image

Remove from the heat and strain off the solids. I worked in batches using a slotted spoon and mesh strainer over a bowl. Once the liquid has been separated you have to decide if you are going to keep the fat or skim it off. I kept the fat. To skim it off, put it in the fridge overnight. In the morning you will be able to skim off the top layer of fat. For storage, you can freeze it or pressure can it. I opted to pressure can because I love to hear the lids ping.

I ended up with four and a half quarts of the most amazingly rich, and dark stock ever. It looked nothing like the pale stock that you buy at the store. And even better- no sodium, no preservatives, no garbage. Just succulent stock from pastured chickens. I like using my stock to boil potatoes or as a base for soups. It’s nice to be able to season my stock for individual recipes.

So there you have it. Chicken feet stock- it’s what’s for dinner.