Cheep Cheep

Having baby chicks around is definitely the most fun we've had so far this year.  They arrived on Sunday morning, which means they hatched on Saturday.  Granted that's a rather small egg this guy is standing next to, but it's already hard to imagine that it could have held a chick.

As you can see, their wing feathers are starting to come in.  As soon as they have their adult feathers and grow out of their fuzzy, yellow chick feathers, they'll be ready to move outside.

Since it's so early in spring, we won't want them to go outside if it's too cold.  We'll keep them inside until sometime in April.  All this time indoors, however, means increasing their space so that they're never crowded.  We give them hay chaff to eat and scratch around in.  This get them used to foraging for food, a necessary skill when they're on pasture.  Hay chaff is the seeds and bits of grass left behind from a bale or flake of hay.  Imagine when you pick up some hay and everything that is left on the ground and on your clothes.  The chicks love it and it's is full of nutrition.  We also gave them some swiss chard yesterday, which they loved.

As soon as the weather gets warmer and the snow melts, we'll let them go outside for a couple hours in the warmest part of the day.  Even though they'll come back in at night, this allows them plenty of sunshine and again, lets them practice foraging.

In a month or so, they'll move to their portable chicken coops.  They'll have their organic grain, fresh water and all the bugs and grass they can eat.  The coops don't have a floor, so when we move them twice a day, fresh grass is underfoot for the chickens to eat.  We'll let them out of the coops during the day to stretch their legs and explore their pasture but it'll be really important to keep them in the coops at night so that they're safe from predators.

Their happiness and health consumes a lot of our time and energy right now.  From the moment we wake up ('have you checked on the chicks yet?') to right before we go to bed ('where's the flashlight, I want to see if they're ok since it's supposed to be cold tonight') we're thinking about them.  

They're pretty darn cute and a lot of fun.  I can't wait to watch them as they grow up and I'll be so excited when they're old enough to live out on the pasture.  They'll be happier out there and so will we.

A Flock of Firsts

Well folks, we are off and running.  Today, we received our very first broilers.  They are happy, healthy and pretty darn cute.  

This winter, we built a greenhouse and in the last few days, our first plants germinated.  Currently, the Chard, Kale and Bok Choi are up, while we're waiting on the onions, shallots and leeks.

And these lovely eggs were laid by...

these lovely girls!  We drove up to the Farm School on Friday and purchased 12 layers from them.  They're settling in to their new farm but seem pretty bummed about the snow on the ground outside.

There is much, much more exciting news to come as we begin our first season on our own farm, so stay tuned!

Looking Back at 2011

This time last year, we were in the middle of our year at the Farm School.  We hadn't been to Italy yet, we hadn't endured lambing season, hadn't cut the umbilical cord of a new calf and hadn't watched the first plants of the season sprout in the greenhouse.  A farm of our own was just a few notes on the back of a piece of paper and something Theo and I wondered about.

Fast forward to now, and we're living in our farmhouse, anxiously awaiting the arrival of our first chicks and piglets and planning the crops we'll grow for our first season.

The road here hasn't been all that smooth.  As of August, our house that we were supposed to move into was completely gutted and we needed to be living there at the end of October.  Those days were hard, long and stressful.  I was commuting over an hour to my new job as an elementary school teacher and Theo had an equally long commute to the new house.  Why wasn't I writing about this grand adventure of plumbing mistakes, lack of dry-wall and no heat?  It was bad enough to go through those days once and at the end of them I certainly did not want to relive them through writing.  Then, a week before we were supposed to move, and New England got dumped on by the first storm of the season, our house wasn't done (think no toilet, no kitchen, no walls, no heat, no running water... the list goes on), our truck was broken, which was impairing our ability to even move out of where we were currently living (and each day was closer to the end of that lease) and this guy, the one in the back, didn't come back inside one night:

Talk about a stressful, sad and pretty horrible weekend.  It was times like those that the great parts of the fall shone through: my best friends dropped everything to help me search the woods for Hobbes, who never came home again.  My mom came down to the new house and helped us get it ready.  Theo's parents, who live in Montana, sent us a set of power tools which were invaluable.  During that weekend, we received our first email from someone we didn't know and hadn't met who was interested in our lamb and chickens.

Eventually, we did move.  With one last, long look at the woods behind our old house, hoping that Hobbes might appear, we drove to the new farm.

What comes next?  Ordering seeds, putting the final touches on our new home, planting flower beds and waiting for spring.  What have we learned over the last year?  Not to let the cat outside.  Continued thanks to our family and friends who have been nothing but supportive as we begin this great adventure.  We've had lessons in perseverance, tenacity, hard work and that the days march on, no matter how great or how bad they might be.  Hopefully I'll write more, especially as the season gets started and we're doing more exciting things than installing a shower and wiring lights.

We hope that 2012 will be kind to us as new farmers and that the good times will continue to outweigh the bad.  We're getting a dog soon, so that might fill a bit of the emptiness Hobbes left in our lives and our home.  We can't wait to see how this year goes and to look back at it in twelve months with all that we've learned and all the experiences we've had.

I hope all of your New Years are happy and hopeful as well!

Murphy

My friend Murphy!

http://rearviewmirror20percent.tumblr.com/

Fall Cooking

I miss a lot of things about summer, mostly peaches, blueberries and sunlight until 9pm. But you really can't beat autumn food. This weekend I made beef stew, butternut squash curry, corn and poblano pepper soup and pumpkin soup, all of which I froze for busy days to come. It turns out that working full time and starting a farm doesn't leave much time for cooking during the week.

This afternoon, Theo and I went to pick up four chickens from Pete and Jen's Backyard Birds. When we got home, we immediately set to making Apple Cider Roast Chicken. We omitted the parsnip and added squash and a potato. It's in the oven now and I can't wait until it's done! Plus, we'll have enough stock from the carcass that we can make a second round of soup madness in a few weeks!

Dessert is pumpkin ice cream and ginger snap molasses ice cream from Bates Farm in Carlisle. Wonderful!

Roast Chicken with Root Vegetables and Cider

1 chicken

2 tblsp butter

2 firm tart apples such as Granny Smith, cored, peeled, and cut into 1” dice

1 large sweet potato, peeled and cut into 1” dice

1 medium onion cut into 1” dice

1 large parsnip cut into 1” rounds

2 medium carrot cut into 1” rounds

½ head medium cauliflower cut into 1” chunks

Salt and pepper

2 c. fresh apple cider

Preheat oven to 400.

Rinse the chicken, inside and out, under cold water, and pat dry with paper

towels. Place the chicken in a flameproof (so you can put it on a burner later to

make the sauce) roasting pan large enough to hold it and the vegetables without

crowding. Smear the chicken with the butter, surround it with the vegetables,

sprinkle everything with salt and pepper, and pour in the cider.

Place the chicken and vegetables in the oven and roast until the apples have

practically melted, the vegetables are tender and brown, and the chicken juices

run clear when the thigh is pricked with a fork, about 1 ¼ to 1 ½ hours. Stir the

vegetables halfway through for even cooking.

Remove the chicken to a platter. Using a slotted spoon, remove the vegetables

and place them around the chicken, and keep warm. Set the roasting pan over

high heat and bring the cider and juices to a boil, scraping up the brown bits on

the bottom of the pan. Cook, uncovered, for 5 to 10 minutes, until the liquid is

reduced by half.

Serve the sauce alongside the chicken in a sauce boat or pitcher.

T-Rex

This post should begin with a comment about how much Theo loves T-Rexs. Loves, loves loves them.

We went to move the cows one day during chores and PB, the friendliest one, wouldn't move. She's a bit of a pig and loves to eat, so it was surprising she wasn't interested in a new pasture. Turns out, she had just given birth and had tucked her calf in the brush to rest. We quickly found him and Theo quickly named him T-Rex.

When we walked up to the barn to get the calving supplies (iodine, the notebook, scissors etc), we found PB eating the placenta. Remember this post? The meat falling from the sky? Well we found out later that that was also placenta, picked up by vultures and dropped on yours truly. We were very glad to see that PB had gotten to hers before anything else could.

We tagged his ear with number 5, which he didn't enjoy too much.

And Theo cut his umbilical cord.

All in a day's work! T-Rex is now frolicking happily with the other calves, though he's the only black one so he's always easy to spot.

Two Gross Things

One peaceful afternoon at the farm, I was sitting around with most of the group cleaning garlic. Sophia comes into the lower barn to find me and tell me that I need to take Theo to the hospital. Theo doesn't really like the hospital- his words to me once were 'don't ever, ever take me there, no matter what', so I was a bit surprised at Sophia's declaration. I head up the driveway to find him bleeding all over the grass from an incredibly deep cut on his finger. How'd he do it? Sharpening the scythe. Very grim reaper-esque, if you ask me.

So we headed off to Athol Memorial Hospital, a wonderful, quite little place down the road from the farm and they fixed him up.

I, of course, thought the excitement was over for the day. We got ice cream cones, because what trip to the hospital shouldn't end with an ice cream cone, and drove back to the farm. We pulled up and found The Grossest Bug Ever lying under the maple tree behind the farm house. It was so big the chickens wouldn't eat it and I don't blame them.