What's up Doc?

So it's been awhile. Welcome back to the continuing adventures of Toby. Since we last spoke I no longer work for the 3rd largest national grocery chain but have improved my life immeasurably by going to work for the my local Co-op. I've never been more professionally happy. The farm is moving forward in winter mode right now (mud, poo, water...). We're weeding out the garden beds and stock trough planters to get everything back on track.

Biggest exciting part of our life is our basset hound puppy Gus. He and I share the same birthday, July 29th. He's 5 months now and an absolute joy/terror in our lives.

Rounding out my life right now is the re-starting of the restoration of my 1965 Toyota FJ40 Landcuiser. I rebuilt the engine 10 years ago with my buddy Matt. The body is almost all the way off now and I'm getting the tub cleared up to come off and start the rust repair. I'll definitely update that with lots of pix.

Been awhile...hi!

We have been very busy around Nine Lives Farm. 29 baby muscovies on the ground this week. Plenty of meat this winter. In a couPle of weeks Chef Alex (local French chef and all around cool guy) will teach us how to make turducken. For reals.

Pastured
Organic
Turducken

With duck sausage stuffing in the chicken and layered in between each bird. We started talking about it as a joke, but we're totally gonna xo it. I'll put up pix and talk about it after we do it.

Meat Chickens Batch #1 Arrives!

Saturday Morning: 6:44am

Our post office calls to tell me that our chickens are here. Nevermind the fact that on Wednesday I called JM Hatchery and they had no record of my order and very nicely offered to ship the following week. Turns out that the order was under my wife's maiden name. Luckily we had the brooder already set up for the two Brahmas we had brought home two weeks ago. I ran to pick them up while Amandy put fresh shavings and food in for them. We plugged in a 250 watt red bulb and a 60 watt clear and we were good to go.

The box contained 27 peeping colored rangers. We didn't have a single shipping loss. We have a galvanized 18" trough feeder with the cover on it. We use a red saucer waterer with a quart widemouth mason jar. We also set up a hamster bottle waterer which they LOVE. It is more sanitary, no shavings get into it and they seem to love to play with the shiny ball valve that makes a little clicky noise.

We spent the afternoon in the garden with all of the birds and the bunny. We used a 20' pvc pipe to create a round pen for Cara the Bunny. We used 24" black plastic garden netting to create a play pen for her. She is a little ninja bunny but she was contained, for now. It was a pleasant afternoon of yard clean-up, planting veggies and playing with our flock.

12 of the baby meat chickens will be going with Sheryl leaving us with 15 to raise for the freezer.

Costs so far:

13 Chickes: $36

1st Bag of Feed: $18

Expected Finished Weight: 5 lbs.

Expected number of birds: 15

Total: 75 lbs of chicken

Store Cost for organic free range whole fryers: $3.59

Cost for 75# of chicken at the store: $270

End of the road for our 3 turkeys

Monday was quite the day.

I figured that the turkeys would be just like butchering a really large chicken. Right?

Not Quite...

Mechanically, procedurally, anatomically yeah. But there is a bit of a difference when you are dealing with a struggling 50 pounds of pissed off turkey fighting for it's life. I couldn't have done it without help from my friend Matt. I actually did the first turkey (Salad by name) myself. She had some kind of leg injury about a week and a half back and wasn't too much trouble. I learned a hard lesson though when I got to the plucking and gutting portion. Her injury had gone septic. The skin and tissue around the injury area was dark green. She had to be disposed of. I was pretty upset about what I considered to be a tragic waste until my wife sent me this:

I’m not upset that we waited to process her. I don’t feel like she’s going to waste. We loved her very much. And it’s the same thing as with any of our other animals. She was loved very much, she got sick and we put her to sleep. She had a very good life while she was here. And we enjoyed her company very much.

My wife is so cool.

The next bird to go was the other Hen (Dinner). She went quietly as well. I used a black sock as a hood to keep them calm. I got the idea from the episode of Dirty Jobs where Mike Rowe works on an Ostrich farm. I really think it helped. She was beautiful, and huge. They were 22 weeks of age.

Finally we tackled our Tom (Tom-go figure). He was a beast of a turkey. We had to get creative to keep his spurs from gutting us (no pun intended). Matt had the idea of using a moving blanket with a hole cut out for his head to go through. Worked like a charm. He finished out at 40 pounds.

Again, what a day.

Two steps forward...

All we wanted was a flowering cherry tree in the front corner of our yard. Was that too much to ask? I'll just dig a nice little hole for it to live in.

Not more than an inch under the surface my shovel comes to a complete halt. Clang! What the hell??? Apparently this entire corner of our yard is made of fill. Large chunks of old asphalt to be exact. Half an hour later I have scratched out a shallow depression. And I do mean to use the word depression. I stopped for the night, dejected and having NO idea what the heck I was gonna do.

Today I went back into it with new fury. Aided by an eight foot steel pole filled with dirt weighing in at a cool 40 lbs. I cut, pounded, chiseled and scraped my way into a two foot deep hole about 3 feet in diameter. My arms are toast! I will get back into again tomorrow and see if I cant get through the la brea tar pit layer down to some real dirt!