200th post!

So this is my 200th post. We built a barn. Half a barn. Maybe a big shed? I had a permit. And lots of help. Thanks BP, AF, AS, JF, RP and JP for all your assistance!

It all started with a dream. JF ordered a bunch of laying hens and the race was on to provide them with housing before winter.

AS helped BP and I harvest some tamarack posts from his woods. I got stung by hornets but we persevered - felling trees in a U shape from the road around the Hornet nest. AS also donated whatever I could use from a pile of old barn boards on his property left over from dismantling an old barn on his property a few years ago.

For beams I went to a local lumber mill and bought 2x10s. And then 2x6s for the wall supports. I returned later still for 1x3 strapping for the roof. It was much cheaper than buying lumber from the local big box hardware stores. I even price checked.

We elected to go with metal roofing when I contacted a metal roofing place that sold "seconds" at half price. So the roof isn't all the same colour. One side is!

The style is called a pole shed which means rather than putting in a foundation you sink your posts to below the frost line. I used my new tractor powered post hole digger to make this task surprisingly easy. I sunk 10 4 foot deep holes in about an hour. (OK one of them was only 2 feet deep because we hit sandstone the auger couldn't drill through but don't tell anyone.)

As you can see our poles were not perfectly straight so we soon began referring to the structure as either "the eyeball barn" or "The Dave Brubeck Memorial Chicken Barn" in reference to his song "Unsquare dance". Considering the starting posts I think we did a decent job at making things fairly squarish.

 Before the roof went on I found it was a nice spot to relax and enjoy the view.

And then the roof went on in a fast an furious weekend and there was much rejoicing.

All told it all went up faster than expected with no serious injuries.In two days I had the coop all set up and ready for the new tenants. 

And 44 chickens now call it home.

And this bad boy is our new rooster. His name is Pedro but I've taken to calling him Juan, as in Don Juan because despite his dismal performance cowering in the corner from the Lord Humongous he is clearly the ladies choice to this point. 

In his defense (and probably in defense of his flock) Lord Humongous has contracted mites. So we've had to bath him with diatomaceous earth and quarantine him for a few days. 

ACORN

This week we went to the ACORN conference [http://www.acornorganic.org/index.html] for new farmers in Moncton. It was interesting. Very interesting. Those who know me will be surprised to hear that my one complaint was that we didn't have the opportunity to mix socially more. Not the Conference's fault as they have a brunch and mixer etc but we had arrive just in time and leave right away because our animals need looking after.

Anyway I found all the speakers to be engaging and informative and most of them applied to us. The other thing that was intriguing to me was that most of the participants seems serious about farming. I contrast that to the Farmstart courses I did in Ontario where most people seemed like dreamers and hadn't taken any more steps towards farming than paying the course fee. I don't blame Farmstart for that mind you.

I have been thinking about it since the conference and think this is it: In Ontario small scale organic farming is just a dream for the most part. The capital expense of land is just too high to really have a chance unless you inherit. The serious people (like us?) move to places like New Brunswick where and old house and some land are more affordable and therefore a young farmer doesn't start off with a hopeless amount of crippling debt.

Yes we met several other people from Ontario and Western Canada who came here for the reduced start-up costs.

Killing Time

I killed 36 more chickens this week. all our meat chickens. I'll have 19 turkey's to do in a couple of months.

I don't know if 36 sounds like a lot of a little to you but I found it to be a real chore and I didn't even like those birds. All they did was eat, grow, poop and sit. They were a chore to feed and water and a chore to kill, a chore to pluck and a chore to eviscerate. They do taste good and we might even break even on the costs and have a few left over to eat ourselves for "free" but there wasn't much "fun" to them. I think next year we might try another breed just to increase the entertainment value of the actual raising process. Of course that might depend on what it's like to kill the turkeys - who are a highly entertaining bunch.

It took three days to kill and process the birds, 8 the first day, 10 the second then a day off and with some help from the Boss' Dad we did the last 18 in one day. The real time consuming part is the plucking so I ordered a feather plucking drill attachment. For real, here's the link:

http://stores.powerplucker.com/StoreFront.bok

I'll let you know how that works out after the turkeys are done.

I'll spare you any photos of the processing and just give you a quick summary. The killing is the most tiring and unpleasant part. I think that it's because there is a lot of stress leading up to the killing stroke as you really don't want to mess up and try to give every animal as quick and clean a death as possible. Plucking is not bad just tedious and time consuming, and I'm not very good at it (fingers too big). Evisceration is what you expect but stinkier and it takes practice, practice, practice to become efficient at it. Eating is, well you probably already know that part.

Working out the kinks

It seems crazy but our meat king chickens are ready for slaughter. These freaky birds grow so fast that they are ready to process at 9-12 weeks of age and it being 9 weeks we selected two to work out the kinks in our processing plans before we start the main slaughter.

To start I need a better chopping block for beheading the chickens. Or a bigger cone. We made kill cones to use to cut off their heads but the birds were too big to fit in the cones! So I hauled out an old stump and put a couple of nails in it and sharpened a hatchet. I prefer a hatchet because it's more accurate than a full sized axe and even only half sharpened it was a quick clean chop. But I'd like to have a more stable stump and sharper hatchet to do a bunch of birds.

We dipped them in hot water and began the laborious process of plucking. That went fairly well. The hot water loosens the feathers so they come out pretty easy but still I will be looking into an automatic plucker if we decide to keep doing meat birds.

The evisceration was not bad. A bit of stink from the internal gasses and we were reminded that you're not supposed to feed an animal the day before slaughter but not as bad as one might think. At least not in my opinion.

For processing we have decided we'll do it assembly line stile with J doing the feathers and me the guts and we've had to accept me probably won't get it all done in one or two days.

And this was the end result:

Animal Farm

This is Phinneas, or Furrbut. I can't really tell them apart unless I try to pick them up. Furrbutt loves to be picked up, Phinneas not so much. They are out "barn" cats and pretty good mousers. They get the occasional bird and young rabbit and even butterfly too.

Remeber those chicken tractor's from last week? Well this is what it looks like to be living in them. these chickens are called meat kings. All they do is eat, drink and grow. And make a huge mess. We have to move this housing unit every 2 days.

These are the turkeys. much like the meat kings but even dumber and not as tough. 

Les boys. that our rooster in the foreground and our ram behind him. They are pretty good guys but don't turn you back on Caesar, the ram, he can get playful.

This the a shot of some of the ewes and lambs on the pasture. I'd like to get them more tame but most of the time they are just causing trouble.

This is the chicken yard with just a single egg layer willing to face the camera. Chickens are funny animals.

New Beginning

I have arrived at my new home in New Brunswick and the getting tired and dirty has begun. This is the house:

Charming isn't it :) Someday maybe I'll show you inside. After we get a couch and TV so we look a bit more normal. For now I'll do a little photo tour outside.

Beatrice has come with us:

And she has a sister, for now at least, Betsy:

We have a multipurpose outbuilding made of a Shipping container, or Sea can as they are called locally, with some rooms added on one side:

A garden struggling in through a cold wet spring and the ravages of crows:

I seem to have brought hot Ontario weather with me this week and a scarecrow is on the to do list so hopefully it'll get a bit more green in coming weeks. And to finish off a different kind of tractor:

Chicken tractors! These mobile housing units were ingeniously built by my big bro currently AKA Big Muddy. Thanks Bro! They are providing shelters for our new laying hens and some meat king pullets. 

Next time we'll go out back and take a closer look at all of the animals.

P.S.: Thanks to ECJ for the generous donation of the machine of photos that captured these images. 

Real

So I got kind of busy there for a while what with the move and all but that battle with materialism is for another post. Today I want to talk about yesterday. Yesterday I went to the Tweed property and took down the temporary garage that has been shielding Beatrice from the elements the past couple of years and was generously donated by friends. I packed it up so Beatrice can take it to New Brunswick in her bucket and in New Brunswick it can once again be her shield.

It was a sad drive leaving the property. This time it really felt final, I have no more excuses to return. But the finality is not the source of my sadness. Over the past couple of years I had done some work on the property, not much but what I could without having deeded ownership and yesterday I could really see that the process of all my efforts coming undone are underway. The property is not posted for sale and the forces of nature are reclaiming their dominion. In the grand scheme of things I know that is not so bad - the world can use all the natural habitat it can get. But right now my sheds are still standing, the cleared areas are still mostly grass and the bunkie is beautiful. The grass is full of baby bushes and trees and the rain cover has blown off the first shed. Without maintenance it will not survive the winter.

It made me even more sympathetic to the people we purchased our New Brunswick farm from. Many people might think they were crazy for wanting to sell it to people who would continue to hobby farm the property rather than take more money from the clear cutters who wanted the wood. I saw their point from the start but after yesterday I think I really understand both their sadness in selling it and their relief that it was bought by people like us. My sense of stewardship of the land has increased.

I can only imagine the sadness of old farmers watching their children sell off generations of toil and care and love to the "developers". Or worse yet - having to do so themselves.