Pastured poultry~the beginning

The Cornish rocks have arrived and made it safely into the brooder Connor put together for them.  This will be their home for the next 2-4 weeks until they go to a bigger home in the pasture for finishing.  We lost 7 in transit so we have replacements coming next week,  not sure where they will go.

You can't see in the picture but I also purchased 8 red comets to add to my flock of laying hens this year, that makes 78 birds in this picture with 25 more coming next week.  Yowza!  Good thing we like to eat what we grow and share some extra with our CSA friends.

Here they are the morning of arrival looking like cute, fluffy Easter Chicks.  Unfortunately by Easter they will have feathers and not be so cute anymore.  More updates to come as they grow.

Roosters bite

I really, really dislike Rhode Island Red roosters.  They tend to get very aggressive and protective of their little flock of hens.  When that happens you had better watch out and you had better carry a very big stick.  We had Rhode Island's a few years ago but no more.  The hens are good layers but we were only ever able to keep a rooster until his 1st birthday before he got mean and ugly.
                          

"Big Red"  was the last RIR rooster we have ever had.  He decided to pick a fight with me one day when I wasn't looking and ended up in the pot by sunset.  Boy did I ever enjoy the chicken and biscuits that night.

As you can see by the picture he got all froggy on me and "spurred" my leg.  The puncture was3/4 of an inch deep and took a tetanus shot, two different oral antibiotics, and all summer to heal up.  You should have heard me trying to explain to the nurse why I needed to come in to be seen.  She kept saying, "your rooster bit you?".......no, my (soon to be dead rooster) spurred me!!!


If you ever decide to get chickens or already have them, be very careful if you have Rhode Island Reds.

Butcher day

Sooooo..........  we got Mr. T into the freezer, now we can breath a sigh of relief.  If you remember from a previous post, we lost his girl to a fox attack.  Since then we have been guarding him during the day with our dogs and by night we have been putting him in a pen with a board over it.

By the way, Mr. T is a turkey and we are going to have him for our Thanksgiving dinner.  We weighed him before putting him to bed in the freezer..... a whopping 35 pounds of yummy white and dark turkey meat!

I have a had a couple of people ask me how I am going to cook him since he is so big.  I switched to using a big electric roasting pan (the same one I make apple butter and tomato sauce in) a few years ago.  If you haven't tried this and have one of these pans, you might want to.  The turkey cooks much faster,  gets brown just like in the oven, and is really moist and juicy.  This pan is large enough to fit a nice size turkey and I believe it will accommodate him nicely when the big day arrives.

We were also able to process eight of the Cornish Hens that have been running around the farm like wild birds all summer.  I was very happy that only one of them looked like it had been laying.....  The ongoing quest for eggs has been quite a challenge around here this year.  We still have to buy eggs sometimes to supplement what we are getting from our girl's. 

The processing went quickly because we invited some friend's over that were interested in learning how to butcher chickens.  I made a big pot of beef stew, homemade rolls, and pumpkin pie ahead of time to eat when we were all done.  It was a chilly day so my husband had a little fire in our fire pit out back for anyone needing to warm up.  We ended the night out there by the fire exchanging stories.  I will definitely think of doing something like this again, the next time we have a lot of chickens to do.

Chick Surprise

We found the hen sitting on her eggs two days ago.  Since no one was willing to get their hand near her razor sharp beak we were at a loss as to how many eggs she had under her, not to mention how long she had been sitting on them.   Yesterday, we found out that the sneaky hen had been setting for quite a while.  Connor had gone out to the barn to check on the goats when lo and behold he heard peeping coming from the direction of the hay mow.  When I looked over the boards there were two little chicks peeking out from their mommas chest but by the time I got the camera they had retreated to the safety of her underside.

Being the reckless brave soul that I am, I lifted her out of the hay mow to get a better look at the chicks, not to mention giving them water and some food.  She had 5 little ones and four eggs that looked and smelled like they weren't going to hatch.  She was glad to get her chicks on the ground and promptly started calling them to come eat as she watched us out of the corner of her eye.  If we got too close she would screech and lunge at use to let us know that we weren't to touch her children. 

The babies spent the night in the corner of the barn, snuggled under their mommas body all toasty and warm until this morning.  Today she is roaming about the barnyard teaching them how to find food.  If any other animal or human dares to get close she charges them in defense of her clan.  What a beautiful sight.  I don't have to care for these chicks...yeah!!!  Mostly, it is so beautiful because of the way she walks around mothering them and caring for them.  How quickly they hear her voice and know to come running for warmth, water, protection, and food.

More Canning

I had a busy day canning yesterday.  We processed chicken, beans, blackberry jelly, and blackberry jam. The jelly being made by special request.  My husband prefers no seeds to get stuck in his teeth.  After making the jelly I noticed that there was so much extra pulp left that I added a bit of spring water and made jam.  It tasted great and the family is enjoying it on PBJ sandwiches and toast.  The thing is I usually have a touch of jam or jelly left when I make it.  The last scrapings from the pot go into a bowl for immediate use.  You do know that the jars of jam that you just made cannot be opened for a few months, right?  Well, maybe that is just what I like to think.

I placed the whole chickens (plus some feet) in the pressure canner with some spring water, touch of salt, bay leaf, garlic, and some Italian seasoning.  Pressure cooked it for 30 minutes and pulled it off the bone.  I then strained the broth to take out any leftover chunks and placed the meat in sterilized wide mouth jars while the broth heated up to boiling.  The I finished filling the jars and processed them in the pressure cooker for 90  minutes at 15lbs of pressure.  Pat bought me a propane burner a few years ago so that I could do some of the canning outside.  Since it has been in the 90s and humid this burner came in real handy.  I had some broth left over so I just canned it along with the other jars.  I did use chicken feet in the initial process because I believe that they give the broth more nutrition and a richer taste.  The bones, skin, and other junk was taken out to the chickens and devoured in 15 minutes flat.

We decided to check the pickles to see if they were done and if they were crispy.  Yeah!! I made a crispy pickle after trying for 20 years.  It was sour, a little spicy from the red pepper flakes, and had good dill flavor.  I didn't want them to ferment anymore so we re-packed them from the crock into smaller jars to put in cold storage.  Washing up the crock brought back memories of my mom and grandma.  The crock I use came from my grandma.  She kept busy in the kitchen right up to the day she passed away in her 80's.  She was always trying new recipes out on us and kept notebooks with recipes, quotes, card, pictures, bible verses, and such in them.  After she passed away and we were going through some of her notebooks it was odd to find little notes that I had written to her when I was a child.

We made a sign to see if we could sell some of the extra produce to people driving by.  I can't label our food as organic because we will not go through the hoops of getting certified paying to maintain that certification.  Since we don't use chemicals and artificial fertilizer's, I figure I can label it naturally grown.  Our neighbor stopped by to chat and we were able to give him some veggie's as well as some friends that live up the road from us.

This is a picture of the cheese that I have been making this year.  It doesn't include the wheel of cheese that I took to a friends house or the wheel that is in the refrigerator soaking in blueberry wine.  It also doesn't include the 3 batches of feta and 4 batches of soft herbed cheese I have made so far.  I just poured 3 gallons of milk in the cheese pot this morning to make another Tomme today.  I sure hope all this cheese turns out yummy or I will have spent countless hours making it just for it to be chicken food.  That is the thing with hard cheeses, you have to wait (patiently) at least 3 months while they age before you can try them.  We will let you know when the time comes for the taste test.

Our experience with Dark Cornish Meat birds

 We have had laying hens for a few years and this year we decide to try some meat birds.  Not being into fast food we purchased Dark Cornish Chicks instead of the White Cornish most that is purchased in the store.  This is a picture of the hens and roo's plus a Maran rooster who thinks he is a Dark Cornish.    The verdict isn't totally out yet but we have not been as pleased with these birds as we thought we would be. 

For one, it has taken them 5 months to get to the size you see in the picture.  We have butchered and few along the way and had some yummy roast chicken but the food to weight ratio has not been good.  They are however, exceptional foragers and can be seen ranging far and wide on the farm in search of their meal.  The Hens are starting to lay and the yolks are a really dark burnt orange color which we really like to see since it tells us that there are a lot of omegas and nutrients in these yolks.  That is plus but I am waiting to see how they lay.

I would not purchase these birds again for meat but maybe for the foraging ability and nice egg quality I might consider keeping a few.  We will probably just stick to the extra roosters we get from hatching out the laying hens each year.  They grow much faster and are ready to butcher sooner.