Crop Rotation. Next year. Farming = Friends

This past week, we planted a variety of alliums for harvest next year.   Prior to planting, we had to make a decision on where their location would be for next year.  Their placement was crucial in understanding the role of crop rotation on our farm.

There was nothing short of random and arbitrary placement of plants this year.  There was some order, but it was minimal.  It was spontaneous, it worked for us, it was good.  It can be better though.  From the randomness we were able to observe what systems we could apply next year to limit variables, and improve efficiency.  Crop rotation is proper land stewardship, but our understanding of it was, and still is, limited.  We know what it means.  But its application, and exactly how it is going to be used in our particular situation it what we are deciding on as we go.

Total lack of perfection did give us one thing, a starting point.  From that point, we can and will evolve as a farm as we continue to gain experience through practice and observations.  So we know where we planted (most) of our alliums this year.  The basic idea of crop rotation is that you do not plant the same type of crop in the same place for consequitive years. We proceeded in choosing a location where we had not planted alliums before.

This wound up being the southern most rows in our southern most field.  We only have two fields, North field and South field.  We chose this spot because alliums have not been planted there, and it had had most of its previous crops cleared away.  After decisions were made, we finally got to planting.

We planted garlic.  Oh so much wonderful sweet garlic.  We obtained all of our garlic from a small local producer.  He provided us with a wealth of information on everything garlic.  From variety types he selected to fit our specific needs, to planting instructions.  The garlic was not any cheaper than seed catalogs, but the beautiful drive to get there, the learning experience, and the fact that we supported local farmers made this purchase entirely worth it.

We recieved 17# of garlic of 5 different varieties, most are soft neck varieties.  The garlic bulbs needed to be broken up.  The cloves were then given a hot water bath to ward away any fungal, bacterial, or other life that would have been harmful to yields.  Popping them into the ground was quick.  Gabe and Ben had lots of practice planting garlic because they helped another of our friendly local farmer seed 10 – 200 ft beds.

Leeks were also planted.  Once again, local farmers rule.  Another farming friend we met through farming, dropped off some extra leek starts they ordered from a catalog. They had ordered too much, and they were kind enough to donate their leftovers to us.  We put them in the ground.

Lastly, we bought some shallots and walking onions.  We planted them too!

Once again, from another person, an awesome person, we received a bunch of sunchokes that she had dug up from her garden for us.  Today, before I conceived of, then wrote this blog, I randomly planted the sunchokes in a place that they could possibly grow.

The Messy Side of Being a Farmer

Today we did something that I have long wondered if I would have the stomach for. We killed 3 roosters.

Roosters are pretty unnecessary in laying hen production. The hens don’t NEED roosters to lay eggs. They need roosters to lay FERTILE eggs. So when we got the chickens, we tried to get as many females as we could. But, it is impossible for an uneducated person to know the difference between a male and female baby chick. There are people who have the job title “chicken sexer” who go through the batch of chicks and tell the males from females. But they are bound to be wrong sometimes.

We have 2 separate groups of chickens–one in the field (often referred to among ourselves, for some strange reason, as the downstairs chickens), and one in the backyard. So, at max, we need 2 roosters. We had 5. And only 4 of those were from the chicks we bought and raised. The fifth was named Zelda and came to us from Ben’s brother in Portland.

Dan showed up one day to visit with a chicken in a sewing machine box. They keep chickens in their yard in the city, but due to noise ordinance, they can only have a few, and they can’t be noisy. This one was noisy, and they decided to let it come have a nice life in the country where it could be as loud as it wanted. So, Dan showed up with a chicken in a sewing machine box. He said “her” name was Zelda Myrtle and she was just a little talkative. 3 days later, when all we have heard out of this bird is crowing, I decided they gave us a rooster. Everyone assured me, No, no. It is a hen. So, I do some research, dutifully Googling “Do hens ever crow?” It turns out they do sometimes under periods of stress. I give the bird a break, reasoning that 4 hours in a sewing machine box would be stressful to the best of us. When “she” was still crowing 3 weeks later and had taken to mounting the other hens, we knew something was up. I don’t mean this bird crowed a couple times at dawn. I mean this bird crowed every 3 minutes from the first blush of day all the way through til it was pitch black outside. And he attacked us when we went into the coop to get eggs. Full blown throw himself at you with his spurs flying and his wings beating you and his neck feathers as big as he could get them. And as many times as you tell yourself as you are walking up to the coop, “It’s only a chicken. I am MUCH bigger than it.” It still scared the crap out of you…

And for that reason, Zelda was picked as the one of the 2 coop chickens to go. Of the 3 roosters in the field, 2 were Rhode Island Reds and one was an Aracauna. The Aracaunas are much prettier birds, and they are more docile. So the 2 Reds from the field were caught today to be “processed”.

A guy Chad works with volunteered to come over and help us with it. His family used to raise broilers to sell, and he has been helping kill and clean them since he was in grade school. So we trusted him to show us how it is done. The first thing you need to do is set up a bit of a station where everything is going to happen. It helps to have a hose nearby to wash everything down when you are done, and probably do a few rinses along the way. So we set up our large pot of boiling water on a camping stove and we made a work table out of some plywood and sawhorses. And then, or course, you need a butchering block. We found a decent sized old stump and set it in the leaves, and then we went to wrangle chickens.

If you have read this blog for a while, you know our history of chicken wrangling, and today was no exception. We went down to the field, and promptly lost 4 out of the ark, only one of which was a rooster. The other rooster remained in the ark, and we caught him no problem, but the one loose in the field kept us running around for a good hour (all four of us) attempting to corner it. As I write this, there is still a hen loose.

And then came time to kill them. It was less dramatic than I had imagined. Yes, they flop around, the basis of the proverbial “chicken with it’s head cut off”, and yes, it smells weird, but altogether, not so difficult to be around. I would feel worse if I wasn’t going to use them as food, I think. But I will, and so they haven’t given their lives in vain. And they had pretty good lives. We fed them well and often, and kept them safe. And that is all you can hope for with this whole circle of life thing.

So once you chop off their head, it comes time for a plunge into the boiling water to loosen up the feathers. Tracy showed us how to use a propane torch to really loosen up the big quill feathers and singe off the little hairs and everything.

Then he showed us how to gut them. This is the tricky part that requires patience and a sharp knife. There are things inside of a chicken that you don’t want to cut into because they are nasty and can potentially ruin all the meat if they get broken (the gallbladder is one. The chicken version of a colon is another).

It took us longer than I had originally anticipated to go through everything. But in some ways, that is right. You can’t fully honor the animal unless you take the time to do it correctly.

Here are some pictures from the day (nothing too gross, don’t worry!):

Boiling Water Station for easier plucking

The Block

Blanching

Getting ready

De-feathering

Singeing and Pulling Quills

All three

Ben and the bird

farm writing and genetic preservation or Our Heirloomy Heritage

I just got back from a day spent at the Oregon State University Extension office in Central Point comiserating with a room of fellow farmers who are writers. We started off the morning getting to hear from a panel of accomplished farmers and writers (some even started as writers, then came to farming). That was pretty great; my personal local idol, Don Tipping of Seven Seeds Farm in Williams, Oregon shared once again his vast array of hats and homesteading arts by reminding farmers of their niche and their audience should they become writers. Chris and Kirsten Shockey of Melonia Farm, another Applegate Farm, raise kids and perennials while keeping their hands in the homesteading arts as well.

I say ‘pretty great’ because after the panel spoke it was suggested that everyone go around the room and introduce themselves to the group… that’s when the connecting sparks started popping and sizzling! From Priscilla Weaver of Saltmarsh Ranch Soay in the Applegate Valley to finding out we’ve got a neighbor farmer just down the road in Marguerite Damewood of Fair Oaks Farm (“livin la vida local” as her card says).

Priscilla was particularly fantastic because she and her husband moved to the area FROM CHICAGO, albeit ten years or so ago. Over one hundred sheep later they’ve hit on something they both can live with: helping to preserve these really rare sheep by maintaining a pedigree database (her husband was a molecular biologist at UIC) and getting the word out through Priscilla’s blog (she, a trial lawyer). All of this to preserve a piece of our agricultural pre-history – think seedsaving but with animals. (She also offered that when we get tired of smelly goats to give her a call for some sheep…)

How many of you have thought about this: the genetic diversity of the vegetables, fruit, livestock and poultry in this world is shrinking. Our options of meat, eggs, and dairy are on the brink of extinction – not to get alarmist but think about any trip to the grocery store, and then think about the names of the stuff you put into your cart. “Turkey”, “Chicken”, “Tomatoes”, “Lettuce”. Then think about names like this: “Florida Cracker” (a breed of cow), “San Clemente” (a breed of goat), “Paul Robeson” (a tomato), “Ginger’s Pride” (a melon).

Farmers should be writers because there are stories to tell about what we do and the day to day messy, hilarious details of preserving our collective agricultural genetic heritage.

Hops

We have a multitude of animals and a baby, but our hops seemed to be too much responsibility.
Our 22 hops rhizomes planted in May produced no flowers at all. They barely even became plants. A good number of the plants died, with some getting dug up by animals. The total number of plants that will be around next year is uncertain.
We were really excited about doing the hops thing, and the possibility of working with local brewers. We failed this year to the extent that are hop plants produced nothing. We now have more experience on what not to do, how to better integrate our hops into our farm, and we are coceiving new ideas for their perpetuation in the following years.
Trellising and watering seem to be the most persistant problem. And we will be working throughout the winter to properly solve these issues. Some ingenuity and imagination are going to be needed to properly adapt these to our land.
Next year without a doubt there will be hops for beer.
And apples for cider.

Harvest Party!

harvest-flyer

Since you read our blog, you are invited to come to our party! Email us (mudpuddlefarm@gmail.com) if you are interested in coming, and we will get you directions to our place! Thanks for your interest!

Sadie in a pond with goats and chickens

So it turns out that animals are awesome.  Without delay we have added some sweet new additions to our farm. Animals are an integral part of a small farm.  Besides promoting biodiversity, adding to the closed cycle of land stewardship, they also provide heightened vitality to the entire farming experience and to the purposefulness of the land itself.  We combine animals with plants in a crop rotation to ensure that we are responsibly using our soil.  The feeding practices of our animals will provide nutrients through manure, and with keep the land from being overrun by unwanted plants and pests.

We already have chickens as you know.  They provide us and our customers eggs, and are now producing at about capacity.  Their manure, after composting, is the highest in nutrients and most beneficial for our vegetables.  If the are free ranged a little better, they will also consume bugs and weeds.

Well we just upgraded beyond chickens.  Getting meat rabbits and goats.  Their poop that the rabbits provide us are also extremely nutritious for our plants, and it can be added uncomposted.  It is not a hot manure like most others, and added fresh it will not burn our plants.  We just bred them with the help of some local rabbit fanciers, so we can start producing them for meat production.  These same fanciers will return to show us how to humanely process (kill) the rabbits for meat production.   Killing animals brings food consumption in a full circle.  We are no longer alienated from our food, we are the producers and the consumers.

Then we brought in the goats.  Their names are Blossom and Rodeo.  They are Nubian and Boer breed respectively.  We are using them as lawnmowers.  Damn goats eat anything.  So we are allowing them to do their work.  We are overrun by poison oak and blackberries on our property, and the goats are more than happy to clear these away for us.  Besides water and little shelter they do not need much else to happily co-exist with us.  They are actually very friendly and enjoy being petted.

I am also lining our now dry pond with bentonite clay.  This particular type of clay has properties which allow it seal pond bottoms to minimize water drainage.  Our pond is completely dry now, but the rainy season will be soon upon us.  I just got the clay free because it is  tailings left over from a local ceramic company.  Otherwise it would have cost me like 300 dollars.  Now that I have the clay it needs to go into the pond before it starts raining, otherwise it will be very difficult to work with when the pond begins filling again.

Lastly, Sadie continues to excel at living. Check it out.