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!