On Tuesday, there was a film crew at the farm to shoot a cable TV spot about the farm. It was orchestrated by our next door neighbor and videographer, David Huot (of Xcetera Productions), and will be part of a series about food and farming hosted by Ben Hewitt. He is a writer who wrote about Hardwick Vermont in The Town That Food Saved: How One Community Found Vitality in Local Food. Many who, like us, are farmers and committed to a local food economy, know all about Hardwick as a place with an inspiring story (Ben's title says it all, but here's a 2008 news story about what's happened there over the past 5 years). We've sent articles about Hardwick to our town office and we have cornered the business community organizers at SEDCO with eager plans to push Scarborough in the direction of a food-based economy; growth coming from food production and related agricultural enterprises. Hardwick is very rural with a dead industrial past... there are not too many parallels with Scarborough, but we are optimists in this mission, so we'll take what we can get! There has been growth in agriculture since we moved to town five years ago. "Doubling" the number of farms, or claiming 100% growth, is not saying much when there was only one other vegetable farm in town, but we see growth in other ways. Most notably by the enthusiasm of our community for our efforts. And our great employees, volunteers, and work exchangers. And, this season, we welcomed another new farmer to town, Daniel Mays, over at the Frith Farm. Add to that the steady number of "part-time" farmers who expand their operations to fill voids in the marketplace. Two farmer's markets: The official one on Sundays at the town hall parking lot, and the other one improvised by our friends at the Cheese Iron. Between the enthusiastic neighbors we have to the Facebook community of producers and co-producers, we certainly see and feel momentum. That being said, Daniel over at Frith Farm has a newly certified poultry processing facility! For everyone who has hungered for some amazing pastured poultry, you should drop him a line and reserve a few birds. He'll have thanksgiving turkeys as well. With our last year's intern, Courtney, Frith Farm has the poultry processing well in hand-- as with other aspects of helping to start up a new farm. We could not have socially engineered better farm neighbors! While we're on the subject of progress, lets hear it for the new root washer! In go the carrots! The barrel turns, and sprays water onto the carrots. And out the other end! Lacking a waterfront for our Farm Camp, we think this could be the Camp's next water activity. Blessings on the Meal! John
Coined the 'Greenest Home in America', Tah Mah Lah is a model for sustainable homes. And even seven years later it still is incredibly impressive. Rise chats with owner Paul Holland on what it's been like living there, and lessons learned.
Know more about Chickens I know yesterday I talked about eggs, now let’s get into the meatier part of the story. Do you think you would be interested in raising a few chickens at your house or farm? Did you know that many towns these days will let you raise a few chickens in the city limits as long as you don’t have a rooster? I am glad I have a farm because I love to hear the rooster’s crow. There are so many to choose from and depending whether you want to use them for just egg laying or eating them or both, you have a huge variety to pick what is best for you. Being ready to take on the job of collecting eggs every day and cleaning the area, feeders and waters can add work to your already busy day. Be prepared at any rate, how to raise chickens Before you get started buying your chickens, do some research on what you need to house them where you will house them and how many you will be buying. Feeders and waterer are things to think about too. What are you going to feed them? Scratch feed for just your everyday feeding but if you plan for eggs you need laying pellets. Will you free range or keep them in a pen? Right now we have our chickens in a large pen because there are too many stray dogs and other predators in our area. There is no ordinance for dogs here either. This poses a huge problem when it comes to protecting your chickens. We have had 50 or more killed in one shot here even though we had them in pens. The dogs dig in and that was devastating because they were all to an age where they were getting ready to lay eggs. Now we have wired bottoms and barbed wire around the edges. Others can let their chickens out and coral them in at dusk and lock them up. We even tried that before. I counted and still count all my babies every day and back when we let ours free range the bird started disappearing every day. We didn’t just have chickens either. We had ducks, geese, guineas and turkeys. It is heartbreaking to see their bodies dismantled or just finding feathers scattered as they were drug off. Chickens are basically easy to raise if you have a good set up. We use self-waters that hang from a rope to keep the water from getting dirty. We do the feeders the same way because the chickens will scratch out all the food onto the ground and waste it. If you are raising them for eggs you need to have a good nest box when they are of laying age. When buying chickens, I will tell you to buy from a reputable chicken company of farmer. Whether you are buying from chicks which need a lot of TLC or older birds, know how and where your bird started from. We have bought several of our birds from Tractor Supply Company and sometimes it is a hit or miss thing with that. McMurray is a great place to order birds also. We have bought birds from farms that raise them also. Choosing a brooder box and heat source is your next thought. Will you keep them inside or out? Small feeders and waters are needed for this job. And some type of bedding that is dust free and absorbent. Stating a compost is a must when you have to change out bedding every day, chicks tend to be messy. A heat light and good thermometer is needed too, to keep an even temperature. Chicks are smart though because if it gets too hot they will go away from the light. Too cold and they will be right under the light. Great egg layers are a good choice if you do not want to spend time cleaning birds to eat. Here are several birds that you may find to start out with. · Rhode Island Red · Australorps · Orpingtons · Dominique · Maran · Sussex · Leghorn · Plymouth Rock · Ameraucana or Easter eggers Here are some chickens that produce a lot of meat. · Jersey Giants · Delaware · Dorking · Rhode Island Red · Orpingtons · Leghorns · Chantecler As you can see there is a few on the two lists that overlap each other. So you can have less birds for doing both jobs. There are also many of these birds that are in the Bantam list that produce smaller eggs. Bantam chickens are cute but I like big eggs. But now if you wanted chickens that could produce chicks that is another list of birds because some get broody and sit nicely and some lay eggs and leave them. Here are a few. · Silkies · Cochins · Sussex · Orpingtons · Brahma Whether you are planning to raise chickens for eggs, meat or babies you always need to be prepared before you ever buy your first birds. Know what is available, know the ordinances in your area and realize that it is a job to raise and protect your birds. There is so much more I could tell you about raising chickens and it could take a little bit more typing but I hope this can get you off to a great start whatever you choose to do. Quote of the day: The domesticated chicken is probably the most widespread bird in the annals of planet Earth. If you measure success in terms of numbers, chickens, cows and pigs are the most successful animals ever. Yuval Noah Harari Scripture of the day: ECC 3: 1 There is an appointed time for everything, a time for every activity under the heavens: 2 a time for birth and a time to die; a time to plant and a time to uproot what was planted; 3 a time to kill and a time to heal; a time to tear down and a time to build up; 4 a time to weep and a time to laugh; a time to wail and a time to dance; 5 a time to throw stones away and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing; 6 a time to search and a time to give up as lost; a time to keep and a time to throw away; 7 a time to rip apart and a time to sew together; a time to be silent and a time to speak; 8 a time to love and a time to hate; a time for war and a time for peace. Weather today: Blustery with a chance of rain or maybe snow just depending here you might go.
Keeping goats parasite free is easier than you might think. These are my simple methods to ensure your goats are healthy and happy for years to come.
Visit a Farm or a Farmer… Supplies: A Working Farm Farm Equipment Farmer There is so much to learn about our land and food from some of the ha
Digging in the dirt is a Southerner’s longstanding duty
In this 1982 interview, horticulturist Booker T. Whatley describes his idea for a small farm plan that can net $100,000 a year.
Your goats need all the pasture you can give them! But it's tricky to plan it. Here's how to plan out pasture rotation like a complete pro.
'Violet Intrigue' exhibits the typical handsome gray foliage of good lavenders, but its form and flowers are particularly noteworthy.
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Our friends built Architectural Designs House Plan 740000LAH with a white brick and clapboard exterior in Georgia. Ready when you are. Where do YOU want to build?
From building a fire pit to making an arbor bench, try these fun and functional outdoor DIY projects for a sensational summer yard.
Only the finest art products used to create Nuala (noo-lah); Liquitex acrylic paint, Faber-Castell water color pencils, Liquitex pastels, and beautiful custom boots painted by famed detail artist and photographer, Dallas Owens. Her overall shorts are made by vendors in Europe and are specific to the doll and theme I want to create. Nuala (noo-lah) is a close recreation of a teenage girl I saw tending chickens on her parents small farm in Ireland. The jewelry was made for Nuala (noo-lah) by an artist in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania specifically to replicate the feel of the 70s. I have frequent sales for different holidays. I mainly sale at juried artisan shows around the U.S.; however, Covid opened up the opportunity to reach my audience of buyers online. I will be posting many new dolls in the next month, but in October, artisan shows are again being held, and I will be taking my dolls on tour again; many dolls I post today will be removed before my shows. I hope you enjoy looking!
So tell me. What do you see here? "Well", you say, "I see a U-Haul truck that rolled off the assembly line sometime back when Milli Vanilli was a really cool music act, ole Ron Reagan was riding off into the sunset, and Freddy Kreuger was scaring the hell out of a whole generation of pre-teens. Oh yeah, and the aforementioned truck also looks like someone spent a little quality time gettin' jiggy with a DeWalt sawzall..." Um. Okay. Correct on all counts. But dude. Let's take a look in the box, that's what really matters. Come on, walk around back here with me... So, whaddya think is behind the door? An ultimate party wagon complete with big screens, leather recliners, and multiple beer meisters to be used for hardcore tailgating at PSU Football games this fall, you say? No. But a damn good idea though....(stroking chin thoughtfully...) All right, all right, enough suspense. Let's take a look. That's it, roll up the door, and feast your eyes upon the interior... Tah. Dah. Welcome to the Rettland Farm Mobile Poultry Processing facility, or MPU for short. This is my solution to the problem of finding local, reliable, sanitary facilities to slaughter the poultry that is raised on small farms like mine. I wanted to build a facility that met a variety of needs. First, I needed a place that matched or exceeded any food processing facility in cleanliness. I needed to be sure that the integrity of every chicken was as high when it came out of the facility as it was when it went in. So we needed washable floors, walls and ceilings. We needed bright lights so we could see what the heck we were doing. We needed REALLY hot water. We needed LOTS of stainless steel. Second, I wanted a facility that could be used to educate the public in general, and my loyal customers in particular, about what went on behind the closed doors of a facility that turns live animals into food. I think it's highly unlikely that the public would ever be given that opportunity to "peak behind the curtain" at a large scale, commercial slaughterhouse, and I think that's unfortunate. For my operation, I wanted to literally throw open the door, and shed light on the whole process, from the kill to the chill. To welcome and even encourage the presence of those people who are the ultimate end users of my birds. Lastly, I wanted this facility to be a resource for other small farms like me, who may otherwise decide that the rewards of selling amazing, wholesome poultry to people and their families just wasn't worth the hassle of getting it to them. I wanted them to be able to use this facility on their own farms, using their own labor and their own quality standards to process the food to which they affixed their names. Take the abattoir to the animal instead of the other way around, so the animals died where they were raised, and didn't spend their last day (or two) crammed into a cage on a fast moving truck. So enough background. Ready for a tour? First stop for the birds: the kill station. The birds are placed head down in these stainless steel funnels, and their heads protrude from the bottom. One quick, small cut with a sharp knife, and they bleed to death. Just across from the kill station are the defeathering machines. The machine on the left is a scalder. The scalder is where the dead birds are placed in scalding hot water, which they rotate through for about a minute or so. This process loosens the feathers. The chickens then go into the machine on the right, called the picker or the plucker. This has about 1oo rubber fingers inside it, and a rotating disc on the bottom that spins the birds around for another minute or so, until the feathers are gone. Next stop is the eviscerating (a big word for "gutting") rail. The shackles you see hanging on the rail hold the birds, so there is no surface contact that could be a source of bacterial contamination. At different points on the rail, the birds are alternately hung by the neck or the feet to allow the worker to remove the entrails and wash the carcass thoroughly. After all other unusable parts have been removed, the feet and the neck come off, and the result is a bird that looks like...well, like the raw bird that we're all accustomed to seeing. The carcass now spends about a half hour in a cool bath of tap water to start the chilling process. But after that... ...it's into the chill tank. This to me was a critical piece of equipment. It was very important to me to have a reliable way to chill a large quantity of chickens to a safe temperature very quickly. I think this tank serves the purpose. The tank will hold up to 500 gallons of water, at least 200 chickens, and chill it to 34 degrees F, and keep it there indefinitely. The bird spends about an hour or so in the tank, but it is usually chilled to below 40 degrees F in a half hour. Not much chance for bacterial growth there. After the bird comes out of the chill tank, it hits the table. Here it can simply be bagged whole, ready for delivery to the customer, or it can be broken down into breasts, wings, leg quarters, whatever we have a need for. This is a new service that we couldn't provide before, and based on the way these parts are snatched up, it is definitely nice to have this ability. I also don't use any machines, other than the knives you see here, to break the birds down into parts--we don't need them. How do you break down a chicken with just a knife, you ask? Come see us sometime. We'll show you. Sooo, this concludes your nickel tour of the Rettland Farm MPU. If you'd like the chance to see the facility in operation, please contact me--we'd love to have you come out and look over our shoulders for awhile. If you're a small farmer who is looking for a way to process your poultry in a safe, reliable way, I'd like to hear from you too. This old U-Haul truck holds a lot of opportunity for everyone. Now, about that PSU tailgate mo-sheen... Note: I owe an incredible amount of gratitude to my cousin, Marc Barron, who is a skilled electrician, and who generously gave me many of his Saturdays off this winter and spring to help me wire this baby. I am many things, but an electrician isn't one of them, I discovered. If it weren't for him, I'd be in the fetal position in the corner of a padded room right now, muttering incoherently about wire gauges and full load ampacity, with my vision for this MPU laying in tatters with the rest of my sanity. Thanks Ned. You rock.
Explore DeLaval press centre's 163 photos on Flickr!
A quick, easy, no sew chicken saddle. Also called a hen apron. DIY directions to make one yourself!
