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.