Chickens Under Fire!!!!

The air was thick with humidity and the thunderclouds were rolling in. We were cleaning out the garage and getting sweaty with the dirty dusty air we were kicking up from the brooms. The teasing of the cool storm air was starting to feel good, the cleaning was getting done, then it began. Thunder clapped and the rain came pouring onto our earth.

Two weeks prior to this, we were newbie chicken farmers with our sweet young pullets getting settled into their new coop. We were taking the newness in stride much like a young mother learns as her baby grows. Little by little we were making small victories as each stage of development took hold for our chickens. 

Then we adopted 33 loud, large and crazy chickens. 4 of which were roosters. Our friends needed a temporary shelter for their birds during a transition in their life and we had room. Our serene world of ease and slowly working towards full blown layers changed in minutes. My farming took to a whole new level and life was getting crazy!

Happy "new" chickens getting some grit

We built a very solid chicken coop with lots of protection for the birds to stay safe at night from all the wondering coyotes and other predators. We were very successful in getting them used to their new digs, all except for the temporary nesting boxes...as they were pooping all over, fighting over one space and laying eggs in bizarre places. 

See the chicken underneath trying to steal the place of the red hen?

The outside time was a little more exciting as the electro-netting we were using from the owners was glorified snow fencing because there was no charger for it here. It didn't seem to be a large problem in the first few days as the birds mostly loved all the dandelions we had provided for them. A few birds would get loose and we would chase them down and get them back in. But all in all, no harm was done. That is until one of our roosters decided to wander over to our neighbor’s yard where their large dog decided to "play" with the rooster and played a little too hard. First casualty. 

So back to our stormy day...the rain was pounding the earth outside our garage, but the clean air smelled and felt great. We were having a great start to the day...until we saw a very wet rooster, running for his life. He cruised by our garage heading for our neighbors to the north. WHAT?!? 

"Kids! Get your mud boots on, we have to go grab that bird!" 

No sooner had those words come out of my mouth, when we saw another rooster and his hens bookin' it across our yard to our neighbors! What is going on? Two of my kids ran to try and "herd" those chickens back to the barn and then I saw the culprit down by the barn. Our neighbor's dog was chasing the other hens into the barn and cornering them. Feathers were flying! 

The neighbor girl who had been over with us ran to go get her dog. The thunder was all around us, the rain was pelting us and chickens were scared out of their mind. I caught up with her by the pole barn where she had grabbed her dog. We were looking around at all the chicken feathers scattered on the ground in utter disbelief, at the insanity of it all. Was there any casualties? We quickly peeked around the corner to where the fencing started and in the fence there was one really scared hen caught in the fence. We helped set her free and then we saw it...casualty number two. The neighbor girl promptly took her dog to her house to lock it up and I tried to get my bearings. Wet dead bird. Gross. A gazillion terrified birds running loose in the storm. Nuts. I think I want to go back to bed.

The kids decided to try and grab the birds one by one and haul them into the coop. We were all wet, muddy and grumpy at the situation. We managed to gather 15 of the birds safely in coop. The other hens were under the front porch of our house. I figured they would come out when the storm was over. There was one in the garage tucked up so tight in a corner underneath a shelf, we could barely see her, but she was there. That first crazed rooster? He headed for the hills. With all the birds we could muster were safe in the coop, we decided to go inside and relax till the storm blew by. 

As the birds started surfacing one by one, we got the birds in the coop. We counted 27 birds. Still missing some. "They'll surface eventually," we thought. I got the inside waterers all filled as the humidity was back with a vengeance and the heat was starting to pour in. Don't want more dead birds from heat-stroke! It was time to fix the fencing. As I climbed over the netting, I realized in horror that there were two dead birds to take care of...not to mention that our neighbor girls thought they saw a dead one in the field. 

I think this would be a great time to let you in on a little secret of mine. I'm scared of picking up birds. Happy birds, little birds, big birds, dead birds...not a fan of holding them. I'm chicken to pick up chickens...I know, seems weird that I wanted to have chickens and I'm not fond of the whole holding chicken thing. The good news is that my two oldest kids aren't scared and are affectionately known as my chicken wranglers. It's a problem I'm bound to overcome through this adventure of chicken raising. I have to. No way around it. Some day when my kiddos are all grown up, who' s gonna be wrangling chickens then? Moi! But I digress...back to the story.

3 dead chickens. 

3 wet dead chickens. 

3 wet dead chickens lying in the blistering sun. 

3 wet dead chickens lying in the blistering sun with swarms of flies around them.

1 big chicken that looks like me holding a bucket and wearing gloves and hyperventilating at the prospect of picking up these...these...ugh! I have to do it! 

After talking myself through this and praying for the Lord to help me through this, I went into action. Wincing at the weight of the lifeless bird in my gloved hand I threw it in the bucket and it landed with a thud. One done, two to go. As sweat was trickling down me, hauling a dead chicken around in a bucket and being brave to pick up the next two, I was thinking about how much I was growing in this single act of dead chicken removal. Thinking about how I taught my kids that sometimes to get over our fears we have to meet them head on and face it. Realizing that I was experiencing exactly that, I mustered up the strength to keep trudging through muddy fields with a very heavy bucket full of dead chickens.

That was my day yesterday. That was a growing experience. That was a true test of moving forward as a farmer or retreating back to the safety of a sterile environment where everything was packaged nice and neat. Farming isn’t always idyllic and beautiful with the meadows full of flowers and cattle gently grazing in the fields. There is death and there is fear and there is definitely going to be things that gross you out. 

And if you were wondering, Mr. Fancy Pants, the rogue rooster who headed for the hills, came back after hearing his fellow rooster crowing in the now safe confines of the hen pen. 

April

Milking Madness

It' been quite a little bit, since my last entry... more than 6 months... BUT I'm still farming and I'm always learning and having a great time doing it. I've been at Hawthorne Valley Farm in the Hudson Valley just south of Albany, NY since late January. I'm a in a 2nd year apprentice position here. I work primarily with the 75 head dairy cattle herd. I've been milking early mornings (4:30 am) and "late" nights (6pm). They keep me busy on this farm, but it has been really great learning about the dairy biz. It's not just dairy here though, it's RAW! Raw milk is a featured product on this diversified farm. They also produce cheeses, yogurt, lacto fermented vegetable products, and lots of veggies for a CSA and weekly farmer's markets in NYC. There's also a Waldorf School across the street, and a visiting students program that hosts a new group of kids every week. The kids from across the street and the visiting students get the full farm experience and work closely with us for a few hours a day. There's a lot going on here, and many many people going through the farm every day. This week the cattle got to start eating grass again, and they are loving it! They were clicking their heels and wobbling their udders in sheer joy out on the spring pasture. A big change happened this season. Bettina, my lovely lady, is farming by my side and learning the ropes of veggie production and animal management. It's been a wonderful thing to share the farming experience with her, and see her excitement as the seedlings sprout and the spring calves drop from their mamas. We've been rising at the same time (for once) and crashing hard at 8:30 every night like clockwork. We're both pretty darn tired but we've been helping each other get through the week when one of us is less tired than the other. Bettina and the rest of the vegetable crew have been transplanting lettuce, beets and onions in the fields and seeding tomatoes and peppers in the greenhouse. We're getting closer and closer to fresh summer veggies. I can't wait! That's all for now, but I'll leave you with some photos from the farm.

Adam

FREAKS

Out on the farm we've been pulling lots of deliciously sweet carrots out of the ground for well over a month now, and last week we started to harvest them using a mechanized carrot harvester. It's this crazy lookin' contraption that looks more like a hunk of rusty old metal with wheels than a useful farm implement, but it works amazingly well. The carrots don't come out looking quite as nice as when you harvest them by hand, but the volume we're able to harvest in such little time is impressive.

Most of us go to the market or grocery store and pick out a nice lookin' bunch of equally sized carrots with or without tops (leaving the tops on actually makes the carrots go bad faster), but the the carrots the farmers don't show you are nothing short of magical. There are several styles of mystical carrot that form deep in the humus. Some are quite beautiful and some are border line offensive! The first kind I discovered was the "lover carrot(s)" when I pulled up my first crop of carrots in Early July.
The Dancing carrot is on the more graceful side of the spectrum.Then moving towards the freakish side... the dwarvesThe mutants
The parasitic and conjoined Twins
And last but not least, the Carrot ORGY.
Adam

Hillbilly nightmare!

SOOOOOOOO, if you've been checking in to see what's up with ol' Adam, then you haven't seen ... well ... anything in the last couple months. Some things went down on the homefront, things involving a duck, a couple of inbred yokels, and us (Bettina and I). To start with the short version, we moved into Trumansburg, so we could live close to our workplaces and put a few miles in between us and our old roomies. It's been a very busy couple of months. The harvest season is in full throttle, so I've been fermenting zucchinis, cucumbers and kim chee like a sloppy lunch lady with too many mouths to feed, all while working 10 hour days and trying to get our lives back in order. The cherry on top is that our new landlord is a bit of a nosy psychopath. He comes around a little too often and tells us to stop hanging things on the wall and to start using our sink drains... hmmmmmmm. Every day it gets a little better than it was the previous week, though. I hope that winter will be a pleasant few months of relaxin' and readin'. To make up for lost time, I'm going to do some recap entries over the next couple weeks.
Since I'm sitting here writing to all of you, I might as well tell you about our dear old inbred former roomies... Once upon a time there was a real jerk of a drake (a male duck). He would pant and strut if he thought anyone or anything was trying to compete with him for the love of his darling little duck mate. Although amusing at first, his musings soon became tiresome and those around him, were forced into action in order to stifle his aggressive behavior. The creative drake gave one of the inbreds a nice size welt on the arm, and the innocents decided enough was enough. One cloudy day whilst tending to the arugula, Bettina turned to find our creative friend panting and threatening to nip at her... um... tucus. After tricking the assailant into entering the garage, she locked him inside, and promptly informed one of the inbreds of her encounter. The inbred was none too happy about the current position of the "supposed" assailant, and left in a huff to consul the jerk drake. At 20 minutes past quitting time Adam arrived and learned of the goings on, and was none too happy about it. Later that evening the event was brought up in conversation with the inbred we call Sling Blade, and after finding no helpful resolutions about the drake, the second inbred burst onto the scene spewing venom and wrongful accusations of violence. After trying to defend themselves against the she-devil and her very personal attacks on their characters, the innocents yelled and attempted to interject, but alas the she-devil was deaf to reason, and retired with a door slam. No words were shared between the innocents and sling blade and she-devil thenceforth. Funny? Perhaps. Tragic? Certainly possible. Better in the long run? For Sure. Good riddance, inbreds.



Adam

The Magical Deep Red Vegetable Called A Beet

Growing up I always liked the tangy taste of Grandma Farmer's Pickled Beets she had in canning jars. She'd serve them in a pretty glass serving dish on Sundays. They'd sit there in their deep red, almost purple juice and beg me to have more. I'd carefully slip one onto the spoon and try to get it to my plate without it dripping on the white tablecloth. Usually there'd be a nice bright red spot left behind. But that amazing bite and tingly sensation on my tongue after eating one was so worth it! MMMMM!!!
Well, this year I wanted to grow some of these magical deep red beauties and try to make some of my own pickled beets. My oldest daughter and I would keep picking every now and then to see if they were big enough. I had no idea how tall to let them get before diving in. We had a lot of false starts, but when we got back from vacation in July, I knew without a shadow of a doubt that they were ready!
Check out the size of that beet! It's like a baseball! We didn't just have one like that, we had several giant beauties!
Pulling beets is so exciting! We were taking turns harvesting. It was so much fun and so satisfying! It was like getting a present every time you pulled them from hiding in the dirt!
I wish I had weighed them because it wasn't a light load! I have no idea how many pounds it was.
Here they are after trimming all the gorgeous leaves away. Next time we'll save some of the leaves to eat too, but now all the real work begins!
Washing and scrubbing beets is quite the task! Loads of dirt to get off! My sink didn't stay that clear! It was pretty pink and murky by the time we were through scrubbing!
After scrubbing, we boiled them and then dunked them in ice water to get the skins off. Then I slipped their skins off and cut them up. This was really fun and messy!
This is the amazing sauce that makes them all pickled! I used Apple Cider Vinegar instead of regular vinegar. I think it'll be real nice tasting!
After all that, we ended up with 4 pints of pickled beets! While that doesn't seem like a lot, it'll last a while! I might have to plant some more for the fall harvest! I love pickled beets!

April

Veggie Markers

I wanted to include the kids with the garden as much as possible this year and I had a fantastic project in mind. I thought it would be fun to paint our own vegetable markers for the garden. My son helped paint the solid colors on the pieces of wood and my youngest daughter hung in there for quite a while painting veggies and then playing and then coming back for more painting.

My oldest daughter lasted the longest. She loves being creative. She even painted pictures on the newspaper when we were through with the signs. It was a lot of fun and great to see their representations of different vegetables. I know I had fun painting too!

April

Garlic Scapes

It's garlic scape time in the finger lakes, which means the first real produce of summer is not far behind! It has been raining all week, which is always good for the plants, but despite all the green growth, it's been a little glum. But things like fresh spring kale and the garlic scapes keep our spirits high and looking forward to the upcoming harvests. I can see the blackberries around the corner, and the strawberries are out in full force. I got a big ol' bunch of scapes from one of our sister CSA farms, and I made a really nice pesto out of them. My ol buddy Matt back in Brooklyn gave me that idea last summer when he had surplus scapes from the farm stand he works for. For those of you who don't know where scapes come from or what they are, they are the little shoots that come out of garlic plants when the plants are almost at maturity. The shoots grow out from the middle of the plant into a curly green, tasty treat. When you harvest these little delicasies, it sends more energy into the roots to plump up those garlic cloves, so it's good for your garlic harvest too! You can cook them up with some kale or collards, or eat them raw in a salad or pesto. Here's the rough recipe for my pesto:

- A double handful of scapes (a big ol' bunch)
- 3/4 - 1 cup olive oil
- 1/2 - 3/4 cup parmesean cheese (or asiago, or any other dry stinky, salty cheese)
- 1 cup nuts (pine nuts, almonds, walnuts, cashews, or whatever nuts you have around. Probably not peanuts though)
- And a little salt to your taste

Mine turned out to be really tangy and spicy, but I bet it'll be good on a pizza, or in pasta.
Adam