Starting a Family

To prevent a barrage of angry comments, I’ll get to the point as soon as possible.  Shae and I are not having children yet, but we are planning for kids!

On our trip back to San Diego during Christmas, we fell in love with a 6-year-old Nigerian Dwarf Goat named Essie, and couldn’t resist the urge to bring her back home with us.  Lately we’ve been thinking very seriously about getting a dairy animal of some sort.  We go through a lot of dairy and frankly we have to limit ourselves so we don’t ruin our food budget.

It’s fair to point out that neither of us are particularly enthusiastic about goat’s milk, and we had been trying to justify spending the thousands of dollars it takes to get a milk cow.  However, very slowly (and serendipitously) friends and neighbors began to allay many of our concerns with goats.  As it turns out the “goaty” flavor of goat’s milk is a function of several factors including the presence of a buck, the breed you are milking, and the freshness of the milk.  My dear friend Galen from Polyface sealed our fate when he told me about his experience with Nigerian Dwarf Goats and how their milk is the most similar to cow’s milk and even has a higher butter-fat content (yippee!).  If Essie’s recent exposure to a buck is as productive as we hope, Essie will be giving birth in May.  Her breeder gave us the exciting, although perhaps daunting, news, that we can expect 3-5 kids and roughly 2 quarts of milk per day once she hits peak production.  Coming from a goat that is no more the two feet tall, I am reminded of the adage about big things in small packages.

However, we didn’t stop with Essie.  A few weeks back, Shae and I visited TLC Ranch in Santa Cruz.  They have sadly gone out of business and we were interested to see what experience and perhaps equipment we could gather.  We spent most of our time talking with Jim and Rebecca, the farm’s owners, and getting an eye-opening lesson on the challenges they faced when trying to get a long-term lease on any piece of land, hiring reliable labor, and keeping up with the regulatory BS that saturates agriculture.  However, all that aside, we learned that their farm/family dog, Iris, wasn’t going to be able to come with them on their next adventure.  Iris is an Australian Shepherd and a true outdoor farm dog that needs not only plenty of space, but also a sense of purpose.  While Shae and I weren’t quite planning on getting a dog in the near future, it has been a goal of ours.  We talked about the cost of caring for her, where we’d put her, and all the practical topics that a responsible young couple should, but we overcame our lingering reluctance when we learned that none of TLC’s neighbors had room for Iris.  We couldn’t be happier with our choice.

Iris is an amazing dog.  She is well behaved, loves strangers, other animals, and scares the coyotes away at night.  She even gets along with Essie (…even though Essie doesn’t quite get along with Iris).  We are still working out the details, like my allergies, but we are thrilled to have such a well-trained dog/coworker helping us out.

As the last few hours of 2010 roll away, Shae and I are particularly grateful to find ourselves healthy and in good spirits.  In 6 months our lives have changed dramatically.  However, through all of it our excitement to share our lives with all of you has not diminished.  From the peepers, to Essie and Iris, to Shae and I, we thank you all for your support and enthusiasm and wish you a very Happy 2011.

Yin and Yang

As we've moved into a Winter schedule, a lot has changed.  There are so few outside and traditional farm jobs to do.  These normally fall into my domain and all through the season I enjoyed being the masculine lifter, cutter, builder, hauler, and wrecker on the farm.  It was very satisfying to feel like the success of the farm was literally being carried on my shoulders.

However, now that those jobs have disappeared, I realize how many other jobs there are the farm...and more importantly who has been doing them!

My wife, Shae Lynn, is the answer, and she is sensational...not to mention beautiful.  From sunrise to well after I've fallen into bed, Shae Lynn was the force that keept me and the farm going at the pace that let us meet all of our 2010 goals.  I don't want to bring the honesty of this post into question by assigning an undue or unrealistic amount of kudos to her, but the fact is I would not have achieved on my own anything close to what we did together.

In addition to doing chores with me every morning and evening, Shae Lynn managed our business, marketing, customer contact, inventory, dealing with feed and equipment suppliers, the construction of our website (which should be ready soon), sales, the home laying hen flock, the food at home, the data we collected on the animals, designing/refining our mobile livestock shelters, and handled the bulk of the research and work we did for the non-profit land trust PLANT! that we work with.  It fills with me with such a deep sense of pride to be able to share this because I'm just now seeing it clearly too.

To top it all off, just recently Shae began work on getting our bread business off the ground, which will hopefully help get us some income through the chickenless winter months.  After talking with the people at Pie Ranch and working out an agreement where we could use their wood-fired brick oven, she rushed out, bought her supplies, mixed the dough, and spent a day baking 150 loaves of simply delicious artisan bread as a pilot program (I particularly liked the roasted garlic and butter ciabatta).

I don't want this to sound like I am gushing, but it is just so easy for the blog I predominately write to seem a bit one-sided.  Maybe when Shae Lynn stops doing so much work she'll have time to blog!

P.S.  I am not sure how many of you subscribe to Gentry Magazine.  I assume roughly 80%.  I am more Pleb Weekly type.  Regardless, I also should note that Shae Lynn will be featured in a piece on women in business in the January issue.  Here she is during her photo session where the words "make love to the camera" were, in fact, mentioned.

Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving!

The production season is now at a close, and boy was it great.  We really learned a lot and are thrilled about diving in again next year.

Thanksgiving was a lot of fun and was just the celebration we needed.  We were invited by our neighbors Donna and Gene to come have dinner, and while we had our reservations about leaving the house at all (when we were in the thick of processing we promised ourselves that we’d recover by staying in our pajamas for a month and eat ice cream), the dinner was spectacular.   We had an Early Bird Turkey, and I was quite proud and impressed. 

The turkeys ended up being absolutely huge.  In addition to just excelling on the pasture and expressing that as physical growth, we received so many requests for processing dates closer to Thanksgiving that we let the birds go an extra 10 days while they were at their peak growth rate.  All of this will be taken into account next year, but what blew me away was that the large size of the turkeys did not diminish their tenderness or flavor.  Email after email from customers, as well as our own dinner at Donna and Gene’s, showed us that customers with the same concerns ended their Thanksgiving suppers satisfied and fighting with their guests over who got to have the leftovers.  That said, we still have a 28 pound turkey in our freezer for anyone looking to host a minor diplomatic gathering or very complete family reunion.

I don’t think I’m going to say much more today.  Shae and I are overcoming our obligatory “we can finally rest now” colds and I’d much rather be under a blanket right now (admittedly, though, I’ll probably do some farm finances or something while I’m there).

I’m not sure how often we’ll be posting on the blog over the Winter.  I suspect we can keep a once-per-week pace up, but that all depends on us having interesting things to say.  We’ll do all we can to be fascinating!

Have a great Winter.  Happy Everything!

Tread Softly...

I certainly don’t want to tempt fate by counting my turkeys before they are processed and sold, but with winter approaching it’s time to start making some plans.

Having a seasonally-driven schedule has some significant disadvantages, but it allows us to reset our minds and use the “off-season” to play around with projects and see how we can improve or expand the business.  This year has been truly wonderful to us and while we are still a little ways away from paying for the broiler and turkey business and rebuilding our savings, we have a few projects that we are planning for the winter that we’d love to share with all of you.  Your input, critiques, ideas, and even help are all welcome and encouraged.

Our winter planning board!   See all the ideas?

Rabbits- In 2011 we are planning to start a small rabbit enterprise on the farm.  Many restaurants and customers we’ve talked to have been disappointed at the availability of local and especially pasture-raised rabbits, and we are thrilled that we might be able to help fill the gap.  The project would likely be quite modest as rabbits don’t scale easily.  However, on a small-scale they are wonderful and can potentially bring in a nice supplemental income for the farm.

We are thinking of breaking from the Polyface Raken House (It really should be spelled Racken House) that combines Rabbits and Chickens on a composting floor to eliminate the dangers of concentrating rabbit waste.  Instead, we are considering combining the rabbits with a worm composting structure that will keep our hens out on the pasture and control the rabbits’ waste while creating some really valuable compost for our garden.
Garden- So this one is a bit of a pipe dream, but it’s an important one to me.  I have very limited gardening experience, but next year I’d like to produce 75% of the vegetable calories Shae and I consume.  In fact, I’d like to produce a heck of a lot more… like comfrey for the rabbits to eat and herbs to sell with chickens.  However, I think this is possible.  I am a devoted student of Steve Solomon (look up his books on gardening!) and I’m surrounded by truly gifted vegetable growers and a near-constant supply of manure.  Additionally, ShaeLynn’s father and mother are both now experienced gardeners, and would be amazing resources.  If I can’t get them out here to help by offering chickens, I’m willing to try luring them with grandchildren.

Bread Baking- A big challenge that we have to overcome is that our cash flow ends in the winter.  This is not completely terrible, but it does put some hefty pressure on the other seasons.  In the next few weeks Shae and I will be talking with some local farms and seeing if we can team up with their CSAs and provide them with a steady supply of artisanal breads baked in a wood-fired brick oven.  Sounds pretty great, huh?  Shae is an accomplished baker now and her curiosity and devotion to the craft are really exemplary.  In the end of 2009 and the beginning of this year she worked full-time baking these sorts of breads in New Jersey and frankly we haven’t been able to find anything like them out here.  The time commitment is quite serious, but as a winter business I think this is a great fit.  I can’t imagine Shae will be too unhappy in front of a roaring oven during the cold wet months and I can’t think of a single customer that wouldn’t be interested in fresh hearty breads to enjoy with a warm bowl of soup this winter.

Soup and Chicken Stock- As I am not one to brag, I’ll simply say that the stock we make from our chickens is downright stellar.  With the rich and nutritionally-dense fat that our birds put on eating grass and clover, we can produce a stock that is thick, flavorful, and wonderfully healthy.  The best part about stock and soup is that it is a great way to add value to the chickens and empty our freezer (that is in cahoots with PG&E to destroy our budget).  Producing chicken stock or soup would be a great winter business as well and help to distribute or income a little more evenly.  Further, it would be a great way to cooperate and build relationships with the local vegetable growers whom I am sure would like to see aesthetically unsalable vegetables get purchased and used to feed people.

Slow Growth Broilers- The last project (although the list goes on) that I’ll put out there is that we’d like to begin experimenting with new breeds of meat chickens.  I love the Cornish Crosses that we raise.  They are efficient growers and produce at a low cost a meaty bird that we hope lets more families eat wholesome and local food.  However, they are not the only meat bird out there.  Other breeds bring other assets to the table and many of our customers have been interested in the slower growing breeds.  These birds take longer to produce and have mostly dark meat, but as a result are usually quite flavorful.  One of our big ambitions is to see if we can actually start a self-sustaining flock of these guys that we breed and raise on the farm.  Over time, this would allow to us experiment with breeding a meat bird that is specially suited to unique climate and pastures of the Cloverdale Valley.  Pretty exciting!

We’ll see how all of this develops.  Our model for growing this business is to expand the diversity of the farm rather than the size of any one enterprise.  We are also looking into getting a dairy cow (my cheese making skills are in desperate need of practice), starting a grass-fed lamb operation, and beginning to raise pastured pigs, but these enterprises might be too capital-intensive to begin in the winter and may have to wait until spring.

All that said, 2011 looks like it’s going to be a pretty formative year for the business.  As I mentioned above, we’d love to hear ideas, encouragement, warnings, or anything else any of you are willing to offer.  We really can’t thank all of you (friends, customers, family, and blog-readers) enough for helping us start and keep the farm going.  We wouldn’t have even gotten this far if it wasn’t for your cheering, advice, support, and friendship.

Happy winter!

But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet,
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams

Fancy Shmancy

Here we are, as promised, coming up for air.

As many of you can guess (or saw when you came by the farm), we are a little bit run down by the intensity of the schedule we’ve been maintaining over the last two weeks.  However, we've made it over the substantial obstacle of processing our second batch of chickens, and we even got enough last minute customers to bring our chicken inventory down to something that will fit in our garage freezer!

Everything seems to be going great on the farm, though. We've been a little worried to hear that two farms run by neighbors and friends of ours are closing down.  Both farm operations were run using sound and even impressive methods, but regulatory and market-based challenges made the businesses and, more importantly, the quality of life unsustainable for the farmers.  This is obviously a real concern for us.  We are willing to sacrifice to get the farm started and off the ground, but I think we are shooting in the short-term for something a little more modest than 12-14 hour days.

With that in mind Shae and I cleared our schedules and threw worries of morning fatigue to the wind and had a spectacular night out.

For the past two weeks we have been waiting anxiously to go and try the amazing ways that Flea Street Café’s executive chef, Carlos, told us he’d be using our chicken.  We haven’t had a night out in quite a while and our dress clothes were looking dusty.  When Carlos and the restaurant’s owner, Jesse, came by in the middle of our 10 day processing marathon to pick up their order and invited us as their guests to come have dinner, we accepted immediately.  In the days that followed, while we were standing in the wet and cold, covered in chicken guts, Shae and I created a wonderful fantasy of how great it would be to go out and have dinner to celebrate being done.  While it would have been enough for the dinner to have just provided us with the energy and morale to make it through 500 birds, it turned out to be an incredibly special night.

What a team!

Perhaps the most important part of the evening was meeting everyone at Flea Street Café.  Before we sat down, we were introduced to almost all of the staff and had time throughout our dinner to steal small conversations with them as they darted from table to table.  What made this so important was that Shae and I really don’t want to have traditional customer-vendor relationships.  When we look for customers, we proudly blur the line between personal and business matters.  Part of what we love about farming is that we have the ability to use the business as a means to meet new friends and develop ties to the people/community that are nourished by our food and in turn let us continue to heal the land and care for our animals.  However, all this gushing might be a little much--I’m sure many of you are interested mostly in what we ate.

The food was downright amazing.  Shae and I both get a great deal of pride from taking the time to cook delicious meals at home and experiment with different ingredients and preparations, but the food we had was just a great example of what years of culinary experience and training can produce.  The care and creativity that Flea Street Café put into their menu was really apparent.  We are usually a pretty cheap date, and as good guests we were planning to just have two modest entrees, but the people at Flea Street Cafe had a different plan.  Through taste after taste of exquisite food that they sent out to surprise us, we found ourselves a little overwhelmed, but supremely happy and satisfied.

Here’s what we had: squash ravioli with an Early Bird Chicken ragu, housemade lamb sausage with spicy peach compote, friend green tomatoes with corn relish and chipotle aioli, harpooned San Diego swordfish topped with crab, slow-braised grass-fed short ribs, pasture-raised duck with a bacon sherry vinaigrette, black mission fig bread pudding with bourbon cream carmel sauce, and chocolate almond cake with rum peach ice cream.



I meant to take a picture of the beautiful presentations, but I kept getting distracted.  Everything, with absolutely no embellishment, was awesome.

I swear it looked great.

Our wonderful waiter Steve, who couldn’t have steered us towards better choices, masterfully calmed all of our fears by reminding us that pre-industrial agricultural peoples usually needed twice the daily calorie intake that we consider normal today.  That was a big relief because it means Shae and I were only overeating by a factor of 4 rather than 8.

But here’s what really made this blog-worthy, the night was inspiring.  The time to rest was important, and the food was amazing, but meeting the staff and seeing their passion for real and high quality food reinvigorated our tired spirits.  Shae and I spent most of the night gazing into each other’s eyes… and brainstorming what breed of hogs we’d like to raise and doodling sketches for a mobile rabbit/worm compost structure.  It was as romantic you’d imagine.

So we’re back to our schedule, but things couldn’t feel brighter.  I suppose though, it’s easier for us to recover from being tired and overwhelmed.  This is the one job where the grass is greener where we are. 

This is our first slaughter spot in front and our second in back. Amazing.

Still Alive

Shae and I just wanted to check in and let all of you know that we are still chugging along.

We are in the middle of a seriously demanding processing schedule, and our aching bodies and faltering minds have just about reached their breaking points.  However, each day we are a little closer to finishing and we've been helped and encouraged by scores of friends, family, customers, and combinations therein.  It's keeping us going.

I'm writing this while we are taking a quick breakfast right before rushing out to do chores and start today's batch.  We won't be back up to our house until sunset, but I promise we'll have an update (complete with a picture or two) posted on the blog some time soon!

Oh yeah, We Have A Blog!

I realize we’ve been away from the blog for a while.  I actually wasn’t planning on posting even today, but we are in the middle of a rain storm with 25 mph winds so I thought this would be a good use of our time in between bouts of frantic running to check on the hens
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I think the standard “things have been busy” introduction is becoming a bit cliché, so I will lead in saying things have been hectic.  We are processing the second batch of chickens this week (500 in all), which as I sit here shivering is great to say is the last of the season.  Demand has slowed, but we are doing what we can to get the birds sold.  This batch was ordered before we processed the first batch and decided to shrink our numbers to a more manageable size.  Of course, the agricultural gods think they are quite humorous and this hard-to-sell and way-too-big batch is having record low mortality and was even sent from the hatchery with 15 extra chickens.

To help get some new customers, Shae went to the Half Moon Bay Pumpkin Festival last week and setup a small booth for the farm.  The festival is the largest event in the city and we were blessed to have an amazing friend who lives right on Main Street and let us use her driveway for our booth and dodge the booth rental fee of $5,000.  We brought a couple of live turkeys to show off, and they were a huge hit.  Kids seem to be as enchanted as we are by these silly guys, and it gave parents a momentary respite to talk about the farm with us.  We met some great people and got about 30 new customers out of the day.

Another big help has been that our restaurant customers are phenomenal.  About 150 of our birds have an invitation to dinner at Café Gibraltar, Pasta Moon, or Flea Street Café.  This is a huge relief, and we are always excited to see what amazing preparations these stellar restaurants come up with.  In terms of helping us avoid buying more freezers, Jesse (the owner) and her executive chef Carlos at Flea Street Café have been downright amazing, though.

Flea Street Café has been deeply committed to local food for decades, suffering through the years when it was not trendy.  When they heard through the grapevine that we had about 200 extra birds, they called and told us that they’d find/rent extra freezer space and buy all they could.   While I certainly don’t want them to feel obliged to do so, just the offer made Shae and I feel amazing.  This obviously helps us, but it also means that they will have pasture-raised chicken through the Winter after we stop production for the rainy season.  It is another reminder for us that small and locally-based business models creates significantly closer and stronger relationships that can get either party through a short-term hardship.

Well, I just heard a large wooosh of wind and a crash.  I guess it’s time to head back outside.

 P.S. As I promised, I have more pictures of our effect on the land.  Here's an update of our mobile processing shed's impact.  Hint: we processed on the green spot!

Turkey Club on Grass, Please

Well this post is a great example of how we on the farm need to keep the perspective that this is an ever-changing and adapting process.

Now that the turkeys are all grown up, we’ve moved them out of the broiler shelters and given them a home that will accommodate their considerable stature until they make that final rotation from the pasture to the plate.  Because turkeys are such incredible foragers and are quickly outgrowing the threat from most predators, we have put them into a 1/8 acre paddock surrounded by an electrified net kept on a solar charger.  The paddock gets moved every 2-3 days depending on the amount of fresh greens there are inside the perimeter, and the turkeys have loved the considerable jump in their access to bugs and pasture.

 
I’ve been meaning to post pictures and talk about how great our $30 PVC and tarp shade/rain structure is, but as many of you probably read, the turkeys teamed up with the wind this week and trashed their house.  In terms of devastation, these turkeys had some kind of chip on their shoulder because they not only broke the PVC frame and tore up the tarp, but they then proceeded to defecate all over the ruins of our hard work.  While I’m not too keen on negotiating with violent uprisings on the farm, I have read my Orwell, so we decided to build them a new home.

The new shade/rain shelter is frankly awesome, though. I’m seriously proud of this structure, and I really think it can serve as a prototype for shading sheep and goats too (when that wonderful day comes).  The house, also referred to as the Turkey Club, is a simple A-frame structure made of 2x4s and recycled roofing.  What makes me so proud is that it’s built for rotational pasture life.  When assembled the structure is pretty darn heavy, but when it’s time to move the turkeys, we can quickly split the structure into its two main pieces and then reassemble it in less than 5 minutes in the new paddock.

The Turkey Club is made of two 5’x10’ frames with aluminum roofing.  These two frames essentially lean against each other and provide a dry and shady spot for the turkeys should the weather swing to either extreme.  To keep the frames from falling and crushing the turkeys we have attached a row of bolts on one frame and a corresponding row of eye-bolts on the other.  When these two frames come together the eye-bolts slide over the bolts and lock the frames in place.  On the bottom of the frames we also have two sets of woven wires that secure the bottom part of the structure so the legs don’t splay out.  Of course, the last structure looked pretty strong too.  However, this time I know I’m dealing with some seriously destructive turkeys, and I think this structure has what it takes.

All said, it’s pretty great and in total cost less than $50 with all the hardware.  This means it’s easily replicable, which is exactly what we were going for.  I think the best way to increase animal coverage would just be to build an additional structure.  Increasing the lengths of the frame would make them too heavy to move comfortably.  As I’ve mentioned in other posts (it’s amazing how well all of this connects) sustainability relies also on how farming treats the farmer.  We can’t forget that it’s not just the animals that have to be convinced to be moved regularly.  No matter how cute turkeys are when they are chasing grass hoppers and gorging on grass, farmers just won’t bother moving their animals if they get a back ache every time.

Recreation

Now that we don’t have to race to build new infrastructure for every new stage of our chickens’ life, agendas have become more flexible on the farm.  We still have plenty to do (thank goodness), but now that the schedule is more malleable, we are making room in the day for little bits of recreation.

It’s not much, but the variety has been lovely and really made us enjoy our work on the farm a lot more.  Shae has been doing more craft work at home and finding time to work with her pressure canner that my mom surprised us with before we left San Diego.  The change of pace and ability to add some variety to her day has really seemed to perk her up, and it’s been filling our pantries with some delicious looking stuff, too.

I have been content with less productive activities.  I have continued my sporadic effort to learn to play the ukulele.  I’m luckily past the point of having those around me suffer while I practice, but because I’m working the same two songs over and over, I give Shae a break and go outside whenever I can, the chickens don’t seem to mind.  More than anything, just engaging the severely under-used musical part of my brain has been well worth the effort.  I’ve also had the chance to start reading fiction in earnest again.  My addiction to British nautical adventure was rekindled last June when my dear friend Vera from school bought me the first book in the Aurbrey/Maturin series.  The series is 18 books or so long, so like all good addictions the first kick was free and there is essentially no end in sight.

(3 Days Later)

So…it would appear that Shae and I have tempted the agricultural gods by talking too much about recreation.  I wrote the top part of this entry on Sunday and since then we’ve gotten word that our first rains might be coming tomorrow (we are not prepared for that), a pack of coyotes has attacked and killed 5 turkeys, and the wind/turkeys have destroyed the turkey shade structure that I was planning to write the next blog about.  Awesome.

Really, Turkeys?

We have since had to rebuild and re-fortify their house and get the farm ready for what might be a light drizzle or torrential downpour.  As for the coyotes, our first preference is obviously to let them live.  They are an important role to the farm’s health, even if we can’t quantify it or see it easily.  However, now that they know they can get such a big and delicious meal (these turkeys are looking absolutely stellar!) so easily, their cost benefit analysis is telling them it is worth it to go through a 6,000 volt fence.  I’m actually writing this now in our truck that we’ve parked out in the pasture to watch the turkeys and see if the coyotes come back.  The sad reality is we might have to intervene with lethal force to convince them their analysis is not as robust as they think.  I knew my graduate school years would pay off.

Life's Refinements

Once again we’ve arrived at the point when our little chicks make their way out into the great big world, and have their first taste of pasture!  These little guys are doing great and already we can see some pretty dramatic improvements in their quality of life (not to mention ours!) that have come from the experience we gained from the first batch and subsequent changes that we made to our methods.

First, and maybe even foremost, the compost in the brooder has finally kicked into high composting gear, and it’s great.  The issues we had with excessive moisture and even cannibalism (see the earlier post “A Murder Most Fowl”), completely disappeared, and we have dropped our mortality from 3% in the brooder to now less than 1%.  Based on the fact that little else has changed in brooder management, and that the weather has actually gotten more extreme both directions (which would negatively bias our findings), I happily attribute this progress to the compost… or more accurately the billions of micro-organisms that make it up.

Basically, the composting floor in the brooder gives the chicks’ digestive and immune systems a preliminary inoculation of pro-biotics and the compost’s flora and fauna provide, among other vitamins and nutrients, vitamin B12 and riboflavin.  What’s so striking is that conventional wisdom would have us cleaning out the brooder between batches.  Very few people would think it was right to leave a dirty floor for new house guests.  In fact, if we weren’t putting in the effort to aerate the compost regularly and manage the level of moisture to encourage the right pace of decomposition, it might even be a good idea. 

However, the fact is this vibrant and living floor creates an ecosystem in the brooder that is far better at using the concentration of waste that these little chicks provide and even has the fringe benefit of nourishing them too.  It’s really remarkable that just like in the pasture, everyone (no matter where they are on the food chain) is healthier when there is greater biodiversity and macro- and micro-biotic activity.  So, all that said, when I saw mushrooms growing up through the floor between the first and current groups in the brooder, I knew we were in for a good batch.

The chicks are doing beautifully.  We were so impressed by the quality of the birds and the richness/nutritional density of their meat that we have also decided to permanently implement our pilot program of moving the birds twice every day.  The comments we’ve been getting from customers have been really impressive and inspiring.  Also, after Shae made the richest and most flavorful chicken stock I’ve seen with one of our broilers, it really proved that the change to the meat is worth the doubling of our rent and labor.

The turkeys are now living in their new home.  We moved them into a 1/8 acre paddock with a mobile shade structure that gets moved every two days.  They are grazing like mad, as turkeys will do, and we are very excited about how they will taste.  They are enjoying the mild weather and sleeping under the stars outside of their house that I spent days making, but the important thing is they are happy.  In fact, even with all the fuss that their propensity to kill themselves causes, they pay for themselves just in the fertility they add to the soil and the entertainment they give us every day when they come and great us with a rousing chorus at the fence.

The great test, though, of whether we will keep doing turkeys will be if my Mom likes the turkey I bring home for Thanksgiving.  In the past, she’s been suckered into paying too much for a bird in the health food store, that ended up being dry and uninteresting.  The next year she got a tofu-turkey instead, and I think I'd have to retire if any of my birds were responsible for such a dramatic Thanksgiving upheaval.  What’s hard to communicate to customers is that simply buying a bird that was raised on better feed will do very little for the quality of the product.  In fact, just changing the feed can even diminish the quality of the bird because industrial practices often rely on the presence of an industrial feed full of hormones and medications.  If you just swap the feed, the eventual product will likely be a pretty good showcase of how poor treatment, nutrition, and living conditions affect meat.

In my mind, it’s unfair to make people think they should pay more for food as some kind of tithe for their lifestyle.  While I agree that we need to understand that food has a higher real cost than the supermarket advertises,  the jump in price should be worth the extra money when families taste the product, see the land that’s been improved, and interact with animals who are raised in a way that respects their natural habits and character.

P.S.  I wanted to brag a bit and share with you all back home a review that was written on the Holisitic Moms Network of San Jose website about our farm.  We had a couple of customers come out on the first pick-up day and it looks like they enjoyed themselves!

I also just got word that we are the "growers of the month" on the Buy Fresh Buy Local website for the Bay Area.


How cool is that?

Disturbance and Rest

One of the crucial principles we hold dear on the farm is the idea of disturbance and rest.   We are always trying to emulate and, in some cases, enhance natural systems to raise healthy animals and improve the land.  Wherever you look, healthy ecosystems have natural forces that encourage periods of rapid and heavy disturbance that are followed by long periods of rest.  However, we are quickly learning that this principle is a good recipe for emotional, business, and all-around health too.

Think about it for just a moment.  The way you grow muscle, study physics, or grow in any way is by enduring and overcoming difficulties and then recuperating.   Disturbance and rest therefore must arise together.  Whether you are talking about someone’s mind, body, or land, just having one of them will lead to a system’s accelerated demise.

So where does that leave us.  Well, yesterday was the first day off that Shae and I have taken since we moved in on July 4, and it was lovely.  However, during the day our bodies and minds went through what could best be described as a decompression or even a cleansing.  It was as though all the aches and emotional clutter we didn’t have time for while we were rushing around had to be brought out so we could begin to repair all the damage we had done.

 The first thing we noticed when we woke up was that even though the most physically demanding work we had done recently was on Sunday, both of us went through the day finding new muscles that were sore.  The simplest actions would have one of us crying out and the melodrama mad it sound at times like a rehearsal for a high school production of Titus Andronicus.   What really fascinated me, though, was that our symptoms diverged after that.  Shae came down with a terrible stomach ache and couldn’t hold down food all day and I went through bouts of feeling angry or overwhelmed by things as silly as a cluttered desk or a missing book.

Ultimately, though, the day off was we really wonderful and we woke up today feeling better than we have in months.  Coincidentally, it has also been in the past few days that we have begun to see beneficial effects of rest on the pasture that we expected as a result of our (and the chickens’) disturbance.

While walking down to do chores today it was really striking to see that the paths that the broiler shelters traveled were looking greener and fuller than the surrounding pasture that the broilers didn’t graze.  For the last few weeks the plants in these paths have only looked shorter, but today the response of the land to our rotational chicken grazing was really obvious and quite healthy.  This picture may not do it justice, but to the human eye the change is clear and getting clearer every day (so expect more pictures!).

Similarly, we are ecstatic to report that our mobile processing floor performed better than expected.  As some of you may recall, Shae had designed our processing floor to be six 6’x6’ decks that allow the water from the work tables to fall through the slats and be recycled into the soil.  This design feature was crucial for us because being able to move the processing facility in between batches lets us use the water as an asset rather than cope with it as a liability.  It’s essentially irrigation versus inundation.   All that said, we went on Sunday to go and move the decks and turn them so the sun could dry and clean where they’ve been, and the grass underneath them was astonishing.  It was teaming with new growth and there were large worms moving just beneath the surface.  It was another reminder that a managed and temporary impact can really be the best thing to encourage health.

While I can’t be sure when our next day off will be, I do know that it will come a lot sooner than this last one did.  I think our culture trains us to think the danger is excess passivity, but from what I’ve seen in the professional and academic world, it’s far simpler to fall into a schedule that overtaxes us and forgets that success really depends on having a balance between the active and passive.  On that note, I’m off to bed!

Farm Reaffirmation--ShaeLynn

Some days the farm is like an abusive boyfriend.  It beats me up, but then, just as I'm about to say, "Ok, I've had enough!" it brings me flowers.  Or in this case, cows.

The past week has been incredibly taxing. Rewarding, successful, beautiful at times, but nonetheless taxing.  And I wasn't really about to call it a day, but with Kevin under the weather and taking what's going on a four-hour nap, the turkeys biting my hands since I forgot my gloves when I went to feed them, and the fact that there are two chicks in the house because of leg problems--I was really feeling taxed.  And then, I went out to the brooder to check on the chicks and give them dinner, and just as I was starting to get cold, damp (it's drizzling), and generally miserable, a parade of cows came moseying over the hill.  When I first heard them, I turned to see moms nuzzling calves, and the lovely sound of very quiet grazing, where you can hear them tearing at the clumps of grass.  Then, suddenly, all the calves took off, romping and frolicking, in this burst of energy and speed that was so contradictory to the moms slowly plodding along methodically eating.  The moms started baying to call the calves back and it was just this beautiful, reaffirming moment of life and momma-baby love that made me feel warm and exhilarated.
So I put aside my earlier frustrations, and accepted the olive branch the farm was providing, and came inside to tell all of you that I'm happy we're farmers, even though it seems like no amount of sleep will ever be enough again, my feet will never stop hurting, and I will never finish the baby blanket I'm working on as my "leisure" project (HA!).

I'm sure Kevin will be back soon with a more standard update and a concluding message about the start-to-finish journey of our first batch, but until then, here's a lousy picture of the cows who came to remind me how much I like it here (sorry, it was dusk, my camera couldn't handle it).

It's A Process

While this may be still tentative, I am so happy to let you all know that we survived our first processing day!

The day was incredibly taxing, and was probably the hardest emotional and physical challenge I or Shae have faced in this endeavor, but we made it.

Essentially, I completely underestimated how long it would take us, and as a result the day was a whirlwind of rushing and multitasking that was only made possible by having Shae’s mom Ja Neva, step-father John , brother Mekye, brother’s girlfriend Jenny, and John from Santa Cruz work a 10 hours day with us.  It’s more than I could have asked of any of them, but because they were there, we got the job done well, and for every challenge or blunder on my part, there are also plenty of things that went great.

Right away, the chickens are amazing.  The quality, texture, flavor, and juiciness of the chickens is out of this world.  It was clear with just the first few birds that we had really hit the mark.  The fat on the birds was a beautiful yellow, colored primarily by the beta carotenes (among other nutrients) that are found in the grasses.  I had thought that moving them twice per day would end up being more important for the land, but it really looks like they doubled their grass intake.  Back at Polyface we jokingly called this “sunshine fat” because it was a sign of the richness of the vitamins and minerals you would see concentrated in the few birds that really were intensive grazers.  However, when you double the amount of grass they eat, they all become intensive grazers!

Here are the first two birds we’ve roasted at home.  One was made with this amazing dry brine my sister Korin makes (and that we now sell on the farm!) and other was just with salt, pepper, rosemary, and olive oil.  They were spectacular and I am quite excited that we are raising something that will be such a delicious and healthy staple in our diet.

However, along with these healthy birds came a lot of meat.  We had expected our birds would average around 4 pounds, and instead we are looking at around 5.  This doesn’t have any real consequences, because we sell by the pound, customers are actually getting a higher meat to bone ratio and thus a better deal.  However, in the future we will be either processing earlier or restricting feed in order to hit that 4 pound mark because I think it makes the birds more affordable and accessible if people with larger families can choose to get a larger bird or more birds if they want more meat.

In terms of our equipment and labor, the processing facility we setup and the crew we had were awesome.  John from Santa Cruz came to our rescue (again) and designed and helped us build a very lightweight, but strong portable shade structure for the processing facility.  The structure is made of bamboo and shade cloth, and is…I kid you not… on loan from a friend of his that uses it as an administration tent at Burning Man.  The actual facility was also an all-around winner.  Shae’s portable decks did a great job at letting water drain on to the pasture, and the layout of the stainless steel tables and equipment allowed us to scrub everything down at the end of the day and arrange it all so there were no dark wet corners that the sun and fresh air couldn’t purify for us.  There are a few adjustments that have to be made to the layout of the hose and power system, but the structure is efficient, safe for workers, clean, and will be easy to relocate when we move it for the second batch.

The biggest thing that will have to change is the schedule.  As I mentioned at the top, I had underestimated how long the 185 birds would take, and consequently I didn’t have any time with customers.  While Shae’s mom did an amazing job at the sales desk, I really get a great deal of inspiration and energy from working with customers.  Any sustainable model for a processing/pick-up day will have us done and cleaned up before customers arrive so I have time to take people on tours, talk about the product, answer questions, and just get to know the people who are making our dream possible.

We have a few plans for how to make this all work, but we also realize that this (like everything else on the farm) is just the beginning of a process that will see us constantly question and improve our methods.  In fact, yesterday (this is why I didn’t post this sooner) Shae and I got back on the horse and processed 53 birds on our own.  It went very well and smoothly.  In about 3 hours we got all the birds into the ice baths.  After cleaning we were able to take a leisurely lunch with our neighbor Jack the Garden Coach who came by to see how we process and keep us company during our experimental day.  What all this means is that Shae and I have a very real option now of simply processing over the course of more days so we don’t end up with a single overwhelming day.

Ultimately, all of this was very hard and at times pretty scary, but we made it.  Like everything else so far, we only made it through with the help and advice from our family and friends.  We also know that we have to approach this as a prototype.  While our egos and spirits have mended very well, our muscles are still completely out of service.  However, from all of this we know now that our methods and efficiency will improve and we just have to build in more time and money to allow that process to take place.

Good Signs

Well, ladies and gentlemen; we are down to six days.  Six days until we become a business with revenue and six days until we have to be ready and able to process 170 chickens… rain or shine.  It’s a little scary.

However, things in the present are doing notably well.  In fact, we’ve had some really great signs on the farm.  I promise I’m not getting new-agey on you--we actually now have beautiful Early Bird Ranch signs on the farm!  As has been the case for the last 25 years, my parents came by to help out right as things were getting a little overwhelming.  It was wonderful, and it was my mom’s first visit to the farm.

My parents’ visit was only a couple days, but wow did we get a lot done.  The biggest accomplishment was actually 5 weeks in the making.  After I struck out shopping for a truck during the weeks when I could put in the immense amount of time and effort to properly review each candidate, my father picked up the gauntlet.  Of course, he immediately began to lose sleep, compulsively watch trucks on the highway, and believe that every seller was carrying out a complex scam that would leave him penniless and alone…all of which is very normal when shopping for a used truck.

But, in spite of this Pandora’s box of obstacles, he succeeded!   Shae Lynn and I are now the proud (and quite productive) owners of a 2004 Ford F150 4x4 XLT.  The final cost was $2,600 more than we had budgeted, but that budget had been put together before we even knew where we were going to farm.  The increase in price and decrease in towing potential (we had wanted to get a three-quarter ton truck) was well worth it.  This truck only has 100k miles, it has been gone over with a fine tooth comb by several mechanics, and the safety record for this year and model is rated extremely high by Consumer’s Reports.  Overall it’s just great.  The other budgetary detail I hadn’t considered was that California’s approximately 10% sales tax would show up in the purchase of a used car, it is highway robbery!

Aside from spending more, the biggest change was that we ended getting a loan for it.  In addition to keeping our assets liquid, this was actually a great plan (thanks, Mom).  It turns out that by not taking student loans during school and paying off my credit card in full each month, I have a crappy credit score.  So this truck will also be a way to establish myself to the rating agencies as a good worker-bee, worthy of drowning myself in debt whenever I please.  All in all, my parents drove the truck up and even surprised us with a couple of great looking magnetic signs, a military-grade spray-in bed liner, and a truck detailing.  Thank you both so much!
However, this didn’t get them out of work once they arrived.  Both of them have too many skills to be left idle.  My mother the muralist and stenciling-goddess started right away painting us some amazing signs for the farm.  Shae even jumped in, and like I’ve talked about in past blog posts, made a genuine re-connection with my mom by getting to work with and learn from her passion and expertise.  I can’t think of many reasons why Shae and I would have needed to be learning about painting murals and signs in the academic world, but in the agricultural world the need is obvious.

My dad and I focused on organizing and planning.  The truck had to be registered, supplies for future projects had to be purchased, and the final details of the processing facility had to be worked out.  I won’t go into much detail about the processing facility, because I am hoping to debut it in a future blog post, but what I can say is we were trying to figure out which parts (out of the staggering and often poorly sorted variety of plumbing parts in stores) we needed to get water to the facility and then to each individual work space.  The job took us both around the county’s many hardware stores for days.

In the end, though, Shae and I came out way ahead.  We were surveying today what was accomplished in just two days and we are stunned.   Thanks in large part to my parent’s short visit, the farm is rapidly getting ready for the first processing day and we have gorgeous signs, a reliable truck, and plenty of supplies to make this week a little easier.   It’s good to know that you can always go home.

P.S. We have thrilling news.  Our little farm will be one of two featured in this year’s Buy Fresh, Buy Local magazine for the Bay Area.  They distribute about 100,000 copies!  I suspect at least half of those will be snatched up by our parents for a lifetime of scrapbooking.  Here’s my favorite of the two pictures we are submitting.

Animal Behavior

Hello faithful Blog Readers!  This installment is brought to you by ShaeLynn, because Kevin has a lot on his plate, and because I’ve been thinking it might be nice to put a word in again (last time I did was to announce our engagement… no such important news this time).   

No, these guys aren't on the ranch!

One of the most fascinating connections between my old life and this one is my exploration of animal intelligence.  For my honors thesis, I watched hours of video of bonobos at the wild animal park, which means that I listened to the tour guide say, roughly 10 thousand times, that bonobos have the intelligence of a human three year old.  I always found this fact to be very misleading.  On one hand, similar to a three-year-old, bonobos are decent at counting up to about 20, but don’t do much math beyond that.  Unlike a three year old, though, they really struggle with anything beyond a basic, basic grammatical system.  But also unlike a three year old, they engage in extremely complex and calculated social behaviors designed to maintain or disrupt a delicately balanced dominance hierarchy.  Three year olds are learning to do this, but in my experience (with three year olds and bonobos) the three year olds have nothing on the chimps.  So in any case, this comparison (bonobo to three year old) always seemed a little arbitrary to me. 

Nearly every time I tell someone that I am raising turkeys and chickens, they respond with something along the lines of, “wow, those guys aren’t too bright!”  So imagine my surprise when I’m browsing a local animal rescue website, and their chicken page declares that because chickens understand object permanence, they are smarter than a three year old!  Here we go again.  What does that statement mean?  Object permanence is the knowledge that when something goes out of your view, it still exists, it doesn’t just pop out of existence because it’s out of your field of vision.  There is debate in the field about how well (human) children do on this test.  It’s one of those things where most parents would say that their three year old understands this concept, but they routinely fail the test.  I tend to blame the test in this case.  So, while I find it impressive that a chicken passes this test, I’m not sure I find it to be compelling evidence that they are smarter than a three year old.  On the other hand, I think most folks underestimate the intelligence of these birds.  I like to say that they aren’t too great at being humans, but they are, actually, remarkably smart about chicken things.  I have yet to be able to narrow this down to specific behaviors or anecdotes, but I really feel that it’s there.
 

One particularly interesting piece of chicken behavior is that as soon as one chicken shows and interest in an object, all the surrounding chickens want that object.  It doesn’t matter what it is.  It doesn’t matter that the other chickens don’t even KNOW what it is.  What matters is that SHE wants it, and if SHE wants it, then HE wants it.  It’s fascinating.  I think it’s interesting to see the evolutionary history of this trait.  If food is scarce, then always getting a bite off your neighbor’s mouthful would be a good evolutionary strategy.  The setting that makes it so interesting though, is when the object isn’t scarce!  The day after the PLANT! party, we started feeding our hens the leftover spaghetti from the party.  Despite the fact that we gave them a hotel-pan of spaghetti, so big they could have all stood in the pan at the same time and gorged, they collectively ate the spaghetti one bite at a time.  One girl would get a good noodle in her mouth, another would notice, and then all four would chase her around taking little nibbles off her noodle, even though there are HUNDREDS more noodles in the pan.  Then, when that mouthful was gone, they’d all run back to the pan and start the whole thing over again.
 

Helloooooo?

Evolution is obviously thrown a little out of whack with these guys because they’ve been domesticated, but even that can be interesting.  Domesticated turkeys have very little inherent fear of humans, which in my experience is very different from their wild cousins.  Whereas even the chickens shy away from the side of the shelter when I kneel down to take pictures, I have more pictures than I even want to think about with turkey heads blocking the action because they approached me!  One particularly intrepid turkey managed to escape his shelter when we propped up the sides for ventilation on a hot day, and he ended up “exploring” the inside of our raccoon trap!  Incidentally, he’s the only thing I’ve seen set the trap off—which is a good thing!  And while I have a hard time believing the old story about turkeys drowning in the rain, I can imagine all kinds of other trouble they get into.  Essentially I wouldn’t say that turkeys are stupid—I’d say that their natural and healthy fears have been turned off to the extent that they don’t shy away from dangers.  I’m not sure if fear is something that was bred out of them deliberately, or if it’s a side effect of domestication (like floppy ears on mammals), but either way, it’s interesting that they maintained their curiosity without the appropriate level of fear to reign it in.
 

Thanks for sticking around for the animal behavior lecture!  I’m sure I will have more to say on this topic (in fact, I could say more now, but I’ll spare you!).  Instead, I’ll leave you with a somewhat hilarious bit of animal behavior—the ever elusive Stealth Cow!

Nice Things

I realize that lately so many posts have been frantic or tragic in some way, and frankly that’s been an unfair representation of how we are doing. While things are stressful, all of that comes from striving to do something worthwhile. If we could cut corners and relax, we wouldn’t feel what we were doing was valuable, and we probably wouldn’t enjoy it. Then again, if we could cut corners we could sleep in…even for just one amazing day.

Teen Pullet Squad!

We’ve had some really notable successes and mini-triumphs in the last few days. Right off we are quite excited to welcome three new pullets (pullets are hens who haven't started laying yet, essentially  adolescents) to our flock. Last weekend I came across a Craigslist ad from a woman whose very young sons had convinced her to get 3 chickens to put in their tiny yard. I responded to the ad and told her that our 5 girls live out in the apple orchard and are moved regularly to fresh ground, and that we’d absolutely love to adopt her three. I drove out the next day, and was introduced to the chickens by her 6-year-old son who made sure to tell me all of their names and where the names came from (Scarlet- She’s a Rhode Island Red, Jewel- She looks like she’s wearing a necklace, and Pepper-She is white with black spots). The family was so sweet, and ended up giving us the chickens for free because they were going to such a good home. I suppose there really is something exceptional about a child’s pet ACTUALLY being sent to live on a farm (I’m sorry if this bursts anyone’s bubble but, contrary to what parents say, most pets don’t actually go to live on farms).

Only the finest.  The sign reads, "Early Bird Ranch."

In business news, we have been doing fairly well. As of right now we’ve sold 203 chickens and 23 turkeys. Not a bad start at all! Last night, we even got to attend a special event at our first restaurant client, Pasta Moon. The event focused on local food production and had each farmer that sells to the restaurant eating with the guests and discussing his/her operation. The food was amazing, but really the best part of the night was meeting the people at our table. With a good chunk of beginner’s luck, we landed a table with great conversationalists in every seat. It was inspiring to meet such enthusiastic folks. Our table ended up being the boisterous one that had to be shushed when announcements or such were being made. It was a great night and a downright delicious meal.

Lastly, we’ve also been able to calm down because of all the great support we’ve gotten from you guys, our friends and family (what a blurred line that is!). We obviously have a lot on our plate right now, and if we wanted we could be stressed out of our minds, but the optimism and encouragement that we’ve received in phone calls, letters, emails, and even pickle jars (…and yes the Jalapenos were amazing!) have kept us focused on the fact that we are truly supported and loved. We are doing what we want to be doing, and while you all are, for the most part, quite far away, we’ve grown a lot closer to you in just past few weeks. So even if we don’t sell another bird, we’ve come out pretty darn far ahead.

GMO Woes

Shae and I are less than 2 months into the world of farming and we’ve had our hearts broken.

As I mentioned, I started to advertise on the forum of the Weston A. Price Foundation- South Bay Chapter’s forum. The people have been amazing, and the part I’ve enjoyed most has been their intense curiosity and interest in their food. I’ve spent days answering question about our methods, our breeds, and our feed ration. I even got into a small debate with another pasture-based farm in the area over whether a conventional (non-organic) feed could be free of genetically modified organisms (GMO) like Monsanto corn or soy.

This is important to us because Joel back at Polyface has struck a wonderful balance between his political/nutritional priorities and affordability by using a conventional feed that is free of GMO ingredients. We were jumping around the house a few weeks back when after calling feed mill after feed mill, we found one that sold a conventional feed that was GMO free. It felt like we had really surmounted a big hurdle.

However, as a result of my debate on the forum, I wanted to produce the guarantee of not using GMO ingredients in writing from my feed mill. Shae called them and as I watched her face morph from nonchalance to confusion to anger, I began to worry. I learned after the call that the man she talked when we placed our first order had backtracked, and in just a few minutes “non-GMO” became more and more specific, and less and less significant. What they can guarantee is that the feed they sell us does not contain Monsanto Round-Up Ready corn. That’s all.

Now that’s not bad. In fact, once we calmed down we realized that as conventional feeds go, we have been incredibly fortunate to have found one without medications and artificial hormones. The feed even has a great heat-resistant pro-biotic and a very balanced range of vitamins and minerals. But the fact remained; we felt, and still feel, heartbroken.

The reality is that because we are raising omnivores, we rely on grain. In this country 80%-95% of the grain produced is GMO and the vast majority of the available scientific research makes feed producers think you are wacko for requesting that it not be in your feed. Further it’s becoming harder and harder to grow non-GMO crops. No matter how organic or careful you are, if your neighbor or even someone in the county is using GMO you are at risk. This is because genetically modified DNA contained in the plant’s pollen contaminates non-GMO crops by invading (rather than sexually combining with) non-GMO DNA. It’s a bad situation (Shae would like me to add that the beneficent companies that make GMO crops can also sue you for stealing their intellectual property if this happens…and it does).

As though to make matters worse, the cartel of organic feed producers appear to be exploiting this fact and sell their feed at very high prices. While I have been exploring other options, I have been shocked at A.) how expensive organic feed is B.) how unimpressive its list of ingredients are and C.) how poor the customer service is at the closest and most popular organic feed mill. At the price they ask (which is more than 50% above my current feed’s price), I would expect a ration that was darn near perfect. Instead it appears they want me to pay high-end prices for something mediocre.

So, what do we do?

Well, after a lot of late night discussions and lists on the whiteboards we will be sticking with the feed we have for now. Our goal is to produce a stellar product that our respective parents could have afforded to feed our families when Shae and I were growing up. As it stands we are hovering around the $15 per bird range, which was our initial goal, but even some Weston A. Price Foundation members who are truly educated and passionate about their food simply can’t afford that. That’s a tragedy. We are constantly looking for ways to lower our prices, and we’ve done our best to offer trades for labor or other services, but that’s not a particularly sustainable model for us if it gets to be too much bigger.

To us the way forward is clear. Our mission is still to provide new choices to customers so more people can buy and will buy this food. Right now there are at least two other small pasture-based chicken producers in the area who use a 100% organic feed. This means customers have the option to buy a wonderful and pasture-raised organic bird if they can afford it, but they are stuck with what they can find in the supermarket if they can’t. We see our role as bridging that gap. Raising birds out on the verdant and nutritious pasture without hormones or medications is downright awesome and it’s our top priority because it’s the crux of producing delicious, healthy, and humane meat. However, we’ve learned from this that our next priority is affordability, and as such we have to be willing to get our hearts broken sometimes.

P.S.

Since all of you reading this are friends and family, I know you want to know how this has affected our business.

This has been such a blessing in disguise. We have the best customers in the world.

After immediately alerting all of our customers to the fact that our feed was no longer GMO-free, we haven’t had a single cancellation. Everyone who has responded to my email has been so understanding of the difficulty of balancing the priorities I mentioned above. Some have offered their suggestions, their advice, and in some cases even their gratitude for our honesty and efforts to do what we are doing.

One customer put it best, GMO crops and feed are worth fighting, but there are bigger fights for us to be in right now. The treatment of the animals, the health of the land, and people’s access to affordable, healthy, and nutritionally-dense food will have the largest effect on fixing our food system.

Day at the Office

With only three hours spent in the pasture each day, I’d say the last two days have spent at the office. A shift has most certainly occurred in our schedule, and right now all we can think about are the 400 chickens we need to sell by our processing dates on September 11 and September 18.

The deadlines are crucial because we are still operating on such a tight budget, that we would seriously prefer not to maintain an inventory of birds that has to be stored frozen in expensive and energy-intensive freezers. As such, we are doing all we can (including staying in to make phone calls all day) to sell pre-orders for our two processing dates so customers can come out to the farm and pick up their birds chilled and fresh.

The transition to sales has been interesting, but certainly helpful for letting our aching muscles repair themselves. So far we’ve sold about 70 of the 400 chickens, and without embellishment, the customers we’ve met over the phone and via email have been amazing. It’s been so exciting. Yesterday I sent a message about pre-ordering to the South Bay chapter of The Weston A. Price Foundation, a group that Shae Lynn and I consult very often for nutritional advice.

What’s been great about marketing to this group is that they truly value the nutritional-density of quality animal products and they are incredibly knowledgeable and interested in exactly how their food is raised and prepared. In one day, we doubled our orders, and had several meaningful and enlightening discussions about our methods and our priorities. While it took up a lot of our time, they are exactly the kind of customers we want.

I’ve also begun the search in earnest for the components of our slaughter facility. My preliminary design is for a converted open-air trailer that can be setup in new places on the farm each time we process. This will allow the waste water we produce to be an asset rather than a liability. With a mobile unit I can irrigate areas of pasture with the amazingly nutritious water that is used to clean the birds and tables and avoid problematic concentrations of organic matter and moisture in a single area of the farm. It’s amazing how with a little management and creativity, things that plague the industrial system can be used to benefit the small farmer. As such, we are on the lookout for a work truck still to tow the trailer with as well as a hay wagon or cotton trailer, and stainless steel work tables. A bit of each day is now spent on Craigslist looking for the deal of the century, which is essentially all we can afford.

We have also begun the design of a structure that will keep the turkeys dry and shaded once they move out of the pasture shelters with the broilers. The design requires a good bit of tarp to keep the shelter light, which can be expensive. However, my incredibly smart and resourceful wife had the amazing idea of sewing together our empty feed bags from to make a tarp. It’s just another example of taking a traditional waste product and turning it into something of serious and measurable value for the small farmer. Obviously things would be different if we had 10,000 of these bags, but because we only deal with about 80 of them at a time, we have this flexibility to be innovative.

Lastly, both the turkeys and chickens have been growing well and eating A LOT of grass. They eat everything they can find or dig up, but their favorite is the clover, which coincidentally is the cows’ favorite and is compared by Joel Salatin to ice cream for the livestock. Each morning we take their feeders out for about an hour after we’ve moved them to encourage them to focus on the pasture. It slows their growth down slightly because they are eating food with more vitamins and minerals than calories, but it is worth it!

They graze all day, but during that concentrated first hour on the new pasture, it’s amazing to watch them run to find the freshest clover patch. What strikes us every time is that they have the same exact DNA as the industrial birds that are pumped full of antibiotics and hormones to keep them alive and can’t walk or die of heart failure. The juxtaposition is breathtaking. Even though we are waking up at sunrise, it really is our favorite part of the day now.

Pastured Poultry

So today is quite important. Today is the day that we officially became pastured poultry producers.

After a week of intense labor and stress, we have finally succeeded in constructing all of the pasture shelters for the turkeys and broilers and moving the giants out of the brooder and onto the grass. To alleviate the stress of crowding, we had actually moved 250 birds onto the pasture three days ago. Our neighbors, Gary, who grazes shorthorn cattle on the property, and Conrado, who lives in the other house on the property, helped us truck down on Gary’s trailer 5 of the 300 pound shelters and then carry them into the field. We would have been screwed without their help.

The last two days and especially today were a determined and exhausting campaign that got the final 250 birds and remaining 5 pens out as well. However, with the help of our friend John from Santa Cruz (I feel like he should get a column on the blog too now. He knows as much as we do about this farm by now!), we got the shelters out and filled. Here we are on the left.

The birds are doing great! The shelters are keeping them comfortable and safe. We’ve had some interesting temperature changes each day and wind, but they look great and I am very happy to report that no foxes or raccoons have been able to even get a paw inside of the shelters. So while the chickens and turkeys are all setup, in the interest of getting the birds out on the grass as soon as we could, Shae and I postponed working out the details of creating the infrastructure down by the pens for watering, feeding, and moving them. As a result we are moving them by hand each day (however, my neighbor Laco is welding for us the custom dolly that should solve this), hauling 5 gallon buckets of water across the field, and carrying sacks of feed out to the birds. Frankly, this is only temporary, but it isn’t much of a surprise. Our two management creeds are “Just start” and “Stress the farmers not the land or animals.”

We also are now officially taking pre-orders for this first batch of chickens and the Thanksgiving turkeys. Things have been going great and we have already gotten a flood of orders, which has been a big part of keeping us motivated. Even though we don’t have a Paypal account setup yet and didn’t at the time have a business bank account, it was important to us to give individuals and families first crack at our inventory before restaurants. For all of you, I'd be more than happy to send you the order information sheet if you are interested. You can reach me at: Kevin@earlybirdranch.com

I’m downright exhausted (which could also be due in part to the leak in our air mattress that has had us essentially sleeping on the hard floor between 4:00a and 6:00a), but we are thrilled…and proud. There’s more to do, but we can see what we’ve done. We can see the chickens and turkeys expressing their natural tendencies and exploring the pasture. And we can see the quality of the experience we are having While I am a bit puzzled by how we are going to manage all of the things on our to-do list, I am excited by the fact that we have to do them all, and so we will find a way.