The Grass is Back!

Spring has arrived here at Early Bird Ranch.  I know that we passed the calendar date for the first day of Spring--it's a memorable day for me, since it's the day I went into labor with Kevin Jr.  But there's the calendar date, and then there's the unconscious knowledge that the seasons are changing.  This year, they coincided pretty well.

For me, Spring has arrived when the grass begins to grow again.  It greens up and almost overnight seems to go from hunkering down for winter storms and cold snaps to reaching mightily for the sun.  It means we'll probably see cows at the house soon, since there's something for them to eat!  It means we'll soon have just-fledged young chickens out stretching their legs and grazing, and happy hens clucking about making mazes in the grass (hopefully NOT hiding eggs--last year's Easter spent on a real egg hunt was enough for me).

This year we have a new way to enjoy the growth of grass--through Kevi's eyes.  He's finally past the obsession with putting everything in his mouth, so I feel comfortable setting him on the ground outside.  We still mostly do chores in the jogging stroller, which he thinks is a great way to tour the farm, but I decided to let him explore the new grass while I put up one of our electric nets that will soon house chickens.  He was delighted by the new environment, as you can see.

New Blog Location

Hello Everyone!

As part of our new changes for 2013 we have refurbished the website and moved the blog there (with a new post!).  This little Blogger page has been good to us, but we feel very excited about our snazzy new website.  Please check out the new site when you can and give us your feedback.  The address, as you likely know is: www.EarlyBirdRanch.com.  If you have any trouble finding it or the blog please let us know as that would be quite good to know before the season gets going again and there are literally thousands of animals to care for.

Thanks!

"Let The Animals Do the Work"

This is really more of a note than a blog post, but I think it's worth sharing.  One of Joel Salatin's favorite concepts is to "let the animals do the work."  In practice, at Polyface and at Early Bird Ranch this typically means things like hens following cows and reducing fly load by scratching through cow patties to eat the larva.  Instead of having to apply some kind of fly deterent to the cows, we let the hens do that service, saving Joel or the folks at LeftCoast GrassFed a little work.

Today I saw a great example here at the house, though. Kevin, Brooks, and I have been working hard clearing compost out of the brooders and dumping it in wheelbarrow piles in the garden.  I just looked out the window to discover that some rogue hens (who refuse to sleep in the Eggmobile and are generally a pain in the butt) are trying to redeem themselves by scratching the compost evenly through the garden soil.  In the picture, you can see the piles we left, and how they're spreading it in an even layer, saving us the time and energy of raking it out ourselves. So, although I grumble to say it... Thank you rogue chickens!

Execution Year

What a year!

2012 was fraught with challenges, and yet we are still standing. I would prefer not to go into too much detail as not all of the mistakes or accidents were acts of god, but after a couple of record breaking storms,  a few broken structures, and unprecedented turkey mortality we are ready for a new year.

Of course, the feather in our cap is that Kevi Jr has been thriving, but we are also thrilled that the business is still afloat and growing (though modestly).

Please ignore all the STUFF in our lives!

2013 will be the first year we will actually just farm. There are no new babies on the way or surprise moves planned. It is just a year to focus on efficiency and fine tuning. The folks on TomKat told us in the banking world this is called an "execution year."  The name just drips optimism, but it really does offer us a lot of hope. We are coming up on 3 years of operating our own business, and there are a number of things we've left on the back burner (like the blog) while we've tried to keep our heads above water and our animals happy.

This year we are looking forward to full participation in our new Good Eggs "Webstand". The  platform is everything we could wish for and the company that started it really appears to care about how well they are aiding farmers. You can see it at www.goodeggs.com/earlybirdranch. It's very cool.

We are also planning to expand our pig enterprise in 2013. The demand for and reviews of these forest raised beauties has been great and their effect on the forest quite positive. The big hurdle is in how to scale the operation properly, but it is certainly worth doing. We are excited too because once we have a large enough and consistent enough supply we can approach folks like Chipotle and New Leaf. We are also hoping to find a charcuterie so we can begin selling cured meats that truly showcase the deep flavors that our style of production can imbue.

The last major change we are looking to make will be focusing on record keeping and organization.  Not as interesting, perhaps, as pigs, but certainly important to the business.  So far, we've kept a minimum of records for our own use, but we want to have easy-to-understand numbers on feed consumption, mortality, sales, and weather in digital formats!  With our combined experience using Excel for data analysis, this should be no problem!

And now, because this post sorely lacks pictures... here's the eggmobile and its hens as the sun rises over the hills of TomKat Ranch!

We're back.  I promise!  And although we're a little late, I thought we could relaunch the Early Bird Ranch blog with a posting of things we are thankful for, because right now they are many!

First, we are thankful to live in a farm community that supports each other.  We've been working with a number of other local farms, including Harley Goat Farm, Blue House Farm, Flygirl Farm, 5th Crow Farm, Pie Ranch, Markegard Family Grassfed, and Fat Cabbage, plus, of course, Left Coast Grassfed.  It's a real blessing to feel connected to other farms and to develop a network of interdependence.  Farming is not a lifestyle that thrives on isolation--and we're lucky to have such great neighbors for shared sales opportunities,  "recycled" food streams for our pigs, companionship, inspiration, and baby-loving.  Here's a picture of our hens greatly appreciating some Blue House Farm greens!

Grandma helps Kevi clean a pumpkin!

Second, we are thankful for family, and all the support we've seen in the past several months.  Kevi has had a constant stream of grandparents, uncles, aunties, cousins, great-godmothers, great-aunts, and more visiting and helping out with the ranch (or with the baby, so we can work!).  My mom in particular impressed us with her ability to do a load of laundry, teach Kevi a new skill ("High Five!"), cook dinner, and vacuum our carpet all in the time it took us to do chores.  A special shout-out to Kevin's cousin/godmother Dede and her daughter Megan who joined us for turkey sales!


Third, we are thankful for the chance to raise our son on the farm.  Every day I'm struck by how even at this young age his life is shaped by our choice to be on the farm.  Already he is enamored with the animals and has shown a tremendous amount of patience, curiosity, and enthusiasm for this life.  He loves to simply watch the hens going about their business, and often we can calm his crying by taking him to the window and pointing out a rogue, escaped hen (about the only time I'm thankful for rogue hens, trust me!).  Here he is with possibly his favorite of the farm's animals, Gus--our half Pyrenees, quarter Akbash, quarter Anatolian puppy.  If you're not sure what that means, I feel all I need to say is that in this picture he's only 6 months old...

Last, we are thankful for the sense that the future is bright and open to us.  We look forward to a year of just being farmers--not starting a farm business, moving halfway through the season, or having a baby (although we'll keep the one we have!).  I'm so excited to see how great Early Bird Ranch can be next year when we focus our energy on streamlining and perfecting the business we have now.  Pigs and turkeys, I have plans for you, let me tell you!

Summer Growth

Now where did I leave off in our exciting saga?  I believe a little baby had joined the farm and we were just starting to get some eggs from our hens.  Well, I fear I’ll have to skip a few chapters because Kevi Jr. is now 3 months old, 16 pounds, and wearing clothes that are made for 6-9 month-olds, and our little batch of laying hens are producing 240-260 eggs each day!

It is a great time to be on the farm.  We are coming up on our 1-year anniversary of moving to TomKat Ranch and already we are maturing enterprises we weren’t expecting to even begin until our third or even our fifth year.  The pigs are thriving in their rapid rotations through the forest and this next batch we are processing is right now gorging themselves on the wild blackberries and strawberries that are ripening all over the place.

Our nascent egg business couldn’t be doing better too!  Our egg mobile is performing perfectly and this week we are installing the final components (solar powered automatic doors, bulk feed storage, and rain-capture tank) that will make it a breeze to rotate around the 2,000 acres of TomKat Ranch.  As it stands, the custom design appears to be just what this special terrain needs.  The wheel base sits approximately as wide as the structure is tall (6.5’) so it sits quite comfortably on even the most uncomfortably slanted hill.  The internal space is amazingly accommodating for the hens and even without accounting for the eucalyptus roost bars that span the whole structure, each hen is getting about 0.65 square feet of internal space in which to sleep.


As for outside space, these girls are given limitless paddocks.  That’s right, in order to let them do their job of gobbling up all the bugs they can find, we let them roam completely uninhibited.  The girls absolutely love it and every night dutifully return home to by sunset so we can close them in their house and move them to their next paddock in the morning.  It’s simply amazing!

Kevi Jr. is starting to use his voice more too, which brings us a great deal of entertainment and joy.  The squeals and half words are adorable, but we are most struck but how he mimics the rhythm of a conversation, waiting until we reply to say anything else.

It’s looking like 2012 will be quite a great year.  We’ll do our best to keep you all in the loop!

Happy Mother's Day

Another guest post from ShaeLynn...

My first Mother’s Day weekend as a mother has been very special, thanks to several surprises Kevin Sr (including a nostalgic breakfast, gorgeous roses, a copy of my favorite movie, and a series of photos showing my transition to being a mom). But I want to spend a little time talking about OUR mothers, in part because I think I appreciate them even more than I did before I was a mother myself, and in part because they’re just awesome!

Both moms (grandmas!) have come to stay with us and help out since Kevin Jr. was born.  My mom offered magnificent, unconditional support during my homebirth and for weeks afterward.  I was astonished that she completely put everything in her life on hold so that she could spend extra days helping us when my midwife recommended what amounted to bed rest for me.  She even let me bring the baby out at 5 in the morning so I could get a few hours of uninterrupted sleep, and diligently worked to learn the origami-like cloth diaper folds!

After 5 days on our own, Kevin’s mom came to stay for 10 days, and brought so much sunshine and energy into our home!  She cooked Kevin his favorite meals from his childhood, held the baby during every meal so I could eat without interruption (EVERY MEAL!), and added charming little design touches all over our farm, making it a happier place to work and live.

But beyond how much help these two remarkable women have been since we became parents, they both strongly influenced our willingness and confidence in starting our own business.   Kevin grew up with his mom’s small business—she was a professional muralist in Hawai’i, and a costume designer for one of the largest theaters on the islands.  As Kevin has said again and again seeing her bravery to forge out on her own to make her passion into her business gave him a great deal of strength and inspiration for starting Early Bird Ranch.  Similarly, every time she visits I see where Kevin gets his beloved extroversion and desire to truly know and befriend every customer.

My mother worked as a university pre-school teacher/director, overseeing a classroom that could serve as many as 60 families a year.  I grew up watching her design staffing charts, consider how to interact with challenging parents or student employees, and plan out and design intricate and fascinating lessons and activities on a slim budget.  From my mother I learned the importance of economy of time and money, and how important planning and organizing are to this goal.  Clearly these skills and priorities are priceless in a business where we strive to provide food at its least expensive real cost, and to make it affordable to as many families as possible.

My mom may not realize that she gave me my first real lesson on running a small business, but in part it’s memories like these that make me feel confident about my future goal to homeschool (I was not, but my mom would have been terrific at it!).  In my Junior year of high school, I joined the orchestra and made plans to travel to London for a music festival and a week of tourism.  The price tag attached to this trip was $1300.  It was not in my parents’ budget to just fork this over, and I think it would have done me a huge disservice had they done so.  Instead, mom and I sat down in September and considered how much money was in my savings account, how much I could responsibly invest in this trip, how much I could expect to add if I didn’t spend any birthday or Christmas money, and how much was left to raise.  Then, perhaps not realizing what an enormous undertaking this would become, she gamely suggested that we do a fundraiser—we had just perfected our family’s favorite apple pie, so why not make them as Thanksgiving take-and-bake pies for friends and family?  We went to the grocery store and scoped out the price of the competition, added up all the costs associated with the project (she donated her labor, as did I), and came up with a price that would get me closer to my goal.  She cajoled a family friend into letting us climb to the top of her 50 year old apple tree to collect fruit their family wouldn’t typically bother to get, and we increased our margins with free apples.  The week before Thanksgiving we made dozens of pies, which raised hundreds of dollars towards my trip, and if I recall correctly, mom eventually covered the costs of ingredients to get me even closer to my goal.  If Early Bird Ranch was going to make pies, this is exactly how we would do it.  And 8 years before I began my own business, my mother showed me how it was done.  No textbook could have prepared me better for grasping the fundamentals of running a small business!  Thank you, Mom!

Tutu, Grandma, and baby Kevin at 3 days old.

Happy Mother’s Day to all the mothers out there investing the kind of time and love that our mothers invested in us.  You deserve the recognition and adoration of your families and communities for the work that you do, and I hope to one day count myself in your ranks!

Babies and Eggs Everywhere

With Kevin Jr. on the farm, the chores and projects have fallen pretty squarely on my shoulders.  He’s growing so quickly in Shae’s care and it’s not the slightest sacrifice on my part to see them both as healthy and happy as they are.

Bake on low for 15 minutes, or until done.

The farm, though, is also growing!  We received this week our second batch of Cornish Cross broilers and they are doing wonderfully.  We did have an amazing experience with a little chick who I found cold, wet, and motionless one morning.  During their morning feeding I found a baby chick seemingly dead beneath the lip of the waterer.  It appeared as though he had climbed in to play and then gotten too cold to return to the hover to warm back up.  He was sadly motionless, but instead of composting the little guy, I had the unexplainable thought to try and warm this motionless body back up.

So, in a strangely ironic twist, I put the little chick into the oven to see if I could help bring him back to life!  After a few minutes in some warm towels, there was no improvement so I gently picked him up and walked over to the compost bucket.  Right as I was about to drop him in he sucked in a big gulp of air and started to breathe!  It was amazing.  So back in the oven he went.  Over the course of the whole day we kept him in warm towels, under a heat lamp, and on a steady diet of sugar water.

Amazingly, the little guy did a full recovery and was ready to rejoin his friends for the evening feeding.  We’ve had no mortality since I put him back, so it’s great to report that he’s thriving and happy!

Ta DA!

First Early Bird Ranch Egg!

In construction news the egg mobile is almost ready!  We've had our first egg show up from the new hens and we are rushing to get them in their permanent home.  This custom built mobile coop is the most impressive structure yet on the farm and quantum leap in our infrastructure.  The coop will hold 500 hens with nest boxes, roost bars, food and water infrastructure, and will have a solar power system to control automatic doors and some predator control systems I’m excited to talk about once we get all the kinks out.  The egg mobile is a special design that will be low and squat to make it more stable, but will have an impressive inside area for the hens to sleep in at night.  We opted to build it out of steel instead of wood because it has to be strong enough to travel the hilly terrain on the ranch so it can follow the lovely cows in Left Coast Grass Fed Beef’s herd.  Because the egg mobile will also provide some serious benefits for the cows, Left Coast has generously given us a few hours every week in the schedule of their resident welding expert (Jeremiah) so he can help us make this structure a success!  

I will absolutely post pictures as soon as we are done.

I lastly want to thank everyone in our community who have been bringing us wonderful suppers each night to help us with the baby.  We have personal notes on the way, but it is just so important to me to sing the praises of our amazing community here in Pescadero.  We couldn’t do half of what we do without the help our neighbors and friends!

Spring Surprise

Hello All!

About an hour after the Spring Equinox arrived, our newly born son decided it was time to come on out.  What a farm baby!

The process was long and hard, but after 22 hours of labor my incredibly strong and wonderful wife gave birth at home to our 8 pound 6 oz (22 inches long) son.  Both of them are in incredible health.  Shae is recovering her strength so quickly and he's been absolutely no problem.  He opened his eyes and started nursing the minute he was out!  Everything is going really well here and we are zeroing in on a name for the little guy too.  We will try to be vigilant with pictures, but in the meantime I hope these help give everyone a good idea of what we've been up to.  The first picture is Shae just a few days ago at the hunter safety course we took at TomKat Ranch.  The milking picture is actually during labor, she just wanted to be up and walking and decided she could milk.  I am simply awestruck.

Enjoy!

Fruits and Haggis

Where to begin?  It’s been a long while since we last posted an update on the blog.  With the baby on the way, I’ve been excitedly preparing the house and farm for his arrival.  Shae has been handling all the silly details like what he’ll wear and eat and where he’ll sleep, but I’ve been hard at work planting.

As some of you may know (the old blog ‘CowsandEffect’ talked some about this), my first exposure to and love affair with agriculture was in orchards.  My mentor and advisor in electoral studies also proved to be my first agricultural mentor as he taught me to prune rare fruit trees while we discussed the merits of the single non-transferable vote versus open-list proportional representation systems.  All that said, I now have begun planting my own orchard around our little house, and it’s been a blast.

The first trees came to me through the largess of our friend Jack the Garden Coach whose home was too shaded to support the blood orange, Meyer lemon, Eureka Lemon, Keffir Lime, and fig he brought us.  It was wonderful to plant them right outside our bedroom window and imagine that as our son ages he’ll be able to tottle around the house with Iris and help himself to whatever he finds.  In fact, the thought was so much fun that a few days later Shae and I went out and spent our Valentine’s Day fund (and probably a couple birthday funds too) on a pluot, cherry, pear, persimmon, pomegranate, two blueberries, and two raspberries.

I’ve also been spending some time in our first garden!  Here on the new farm we’ve developed a wonderful relationship with our landlords and have been able to envision some long-term stability.  As such, as a surprise for Shae, I prepared a 25’x30’ garden and built a fence for it out eucalyptus posts and donated deer fencing from the wonderful couple that Jack the Garden Coach rents from.

The fence was incredibly easy to build (as all things are when you have the help of John from Santa Cruz), and is quite ingenious.  Eukalyptus is incredibly strong if it has a chance to stay dry, but will rot quickly if it gets and stays wet.   With that in mind, the fence is built so the posts sit atop rebar stakes that are driven into the ground to provide stability.  This allows the posts (which have a painted bottom) to sit on or slightly above the soil line and stay dry.  I really hope this model pans out, we are surrounded by these trees and they grow like weeds.  It would be amazing to do more construction with materials we have right here on the farm.

Last, we were able to revive a small tradition by celebrating our first Burns’ Supper this year in our new home.   Burns’ Supper is a Scottish tradition to celebrate the birthday of Robert Burns (our national poet) and is usually quite an event with a great deal of pomp, poetry, and ceremonial toasts.  We opted for a simple affair, but stayed true to the principles.  We had some wonderful whisky on hand, my grandfather’s copy of Burns’ poems, and Shae stole the whole show by making a FANTASTIC haggis.  We had to cheat a bit by using a combination of lamb and pig organs, but it was amazing.  Shae even ended up eating it too!  There’s truly hope for this family.

Adventures in Pork

Hello friends, this is ShaeLynn.  I can’t help sharing my excitement about our newly arrived pork!  The pigs in our pilot program turned out BEAUTIFULLY!  Our free-range, part wild, forest-raised, whey-fed, and acorn-finished pigs were quite the attraction at the slaughterhouse.  We received a number of compliments from all the people who handled the meat on how gorgeous (and unique!) the marbling and overall fat composition was in these pigs.  Kevin was so proud, we’ve been joking that our Son will have to hit a lot of homeruns to top that!

 Quick Disclaimer:  I am writing a food blog post, and I promise this will remain a farm blog.  I’m just so excited I can’t help it!

We just received our half pig back from Freedom Meat Locker, where they cut and wrapped it for us.  Next time we hope to embark on that particular adventure of butchering the pig ourselves, but this time around it seemed easier to take advantage of the simplicity of having someone else do the butchering.   That said, I am pursuing two pork processing endeavors that are making the house smell great:  Sausage making and rendering lard.

The sausage is pretty simple.  I asked them to grind about 30 pounds of the pork, including the pork belly (from which you would usually get bacon).  This means that the fat content on the ground pork is a little higher, which makes it better for sausage.  If I had a meat grinder at my disposal I could have ground even more fat into it, but the above-average fat in the ground pork seems to be working fine.

I used a mortar and pestle my mom got me for Christmas last year (and I even ground up some parsley she grew in her garden!), to grind some of the whole herbs, and used powdered for the rest.  The spice mixtures themselves turned out awfully pretty, especially the Hot Italian mixture (pictured here--I also made a breakfast sausage).  We couldn’t resist tasting it as soon as I’d finished, so I put some into a pasta sauce which we ate at dinner.  It was really great!  Here it is cooking… yum!



The lard has been a longer, slower process (as it should be!).  I’ve learned so much about lard in the past few days while figuring out how to make it.   Lard gets a bad reputation both because of its high saturated fat content and because most of it comes from confinement pigs.  I won’t lay out my arguments about saturated fat, but suffice it to say I’ll take saturated over the trans fats of hydrogenated vegetable oil any day!  And, of course, our pigs were not raised in confinement, and were treated to really high quality feed inputs (notably the whey and the acorns which no doubt contributed mightily to the pig’s fat).

 I also learned that there are two types of lard:  For frying (lard is really stable at high heat, making it ideal for frying) it’s best to use lard from the fat back or pork belly (if you didn’t grind your pork belly or make bacon).  This is because little pieces of skin and meat cling to the fat and no matter how slowly you cook it the lard will take on a bit of a pork-y flavor and a little browner color.  If you’re making frybread (it’s high on my list of things to make with lard), this is no big deal—in fact most fried foods benefit from the added flavor in their cooking medium.  However, if you want to use lard in cookies or a pie crust, you probably don’t want pork flavor there (“Pig” Newtons aside…).  For these types of recipes it’s best to use leaf lard, which is the fat attached to the kidneys.  Since it doesn’t have any meat or skin attached, it melts down snow white and odorless, so long as you melt it slowly.  I started with the fatback because it seemed a little more forgiving for the first-timer!

Here is the fat back as it came packaged.  I chopped it into little bits to help it melt evenly.  I found it really interesting to see the different layers of fat in each piece.

Then it was into the crock pot, to which I added ½ cup water so it would cook too quickly at first.  Here it is full of pieces.  I ladled the liquid lard into a canning jar as it melted and here it is 24 hours later.  And then here are my jars (I already started using the one on the left to make biscuits to go with homemade sausage gravy for breakfast!).

With any luck this will not be the last of my adventures in pork, but I'm thrilled with the start!

P.S.  Thanks for not making fun of my complete lack of photography skills!

A Time For Turkeys

Hello Everyone!

It’s a very special time on the farm.  The weather is getting cold and wet and chores, along with the available daylight hour, are getting much sparser.

The best part of this change, though, is that the turkeys are ready!  After 16 weeks of loyal service, wonderful grazing, and spectacular fertilization the turkeys are all grown up now and ready to be processed.   This year we raised 200 turkeys (instead of 75) and we couldn’t be happier.  It’s been a lot of work, but after all the compliments last year we really wanted to be able to provide as many neighbors as possible with these truly special birds.

The biggest change has been that these guys are now being kept in our largest enclosure yet!  Turkeys are such wonderful grazers (thus their spectacular flavor) that we decided to give them a full quarter acre every other day of completely fresh grass (that’s grass that no poultry has grazed in at least a year), and boy did they use it.  There is a particularly magical moment when they first enter fresh grass.  In just a matter of seconds all 200 turkeys begin running around picking through their favorite forages or chasing grasshoppers—it’s a consistently impressive sight that we use almost always use for tours.  Anyone that’s seen it instantly understands how important rapidly rotated fresh pasture is for turkeys.

The only downside is that once again these turkeys are far too healthy.  Even though we limited their access to grain and slaughtered them two weeks earlier than last year, these guys thrived on the fertile fields around our farm and ended up being about 3 pounds larger on average than we expected.  All in all, though, the quality of these birds is off the charts and we don’t mind slightly larger birds if they continue to taste (as one customer said) “like the meat has its own gravy!”

Happy Thanksgiving!

New Projects and Progeny

I suppose now we’ve sunk into a monthly rhythm when it comes to blogging.  I’d still prefer a weekly post, but our energy levels and access the internet have not really been conducive to such an ambition.

"I'm on the paleolithic diet.  My yoga teacher just loves it and it's
great for the hams..."

One thing that has really kept us busy is the addition of 6 adorable pigs to the farm.  As a pilot program we purchased 6 weaned pigs in the end of July as a special anniversary gift to ourselves.  The pigs are being rapidly rotated through forest paddocks where they get to graze through the forest and scrub brush.   We’ve also been giving them vegetables from the organic growers at Bluehouse Farm and whey from Harley Farm.  These guys are so pampered and with such a raw/organic/high protein diet, I’d say they are truly Californian pigs!

We also got the turkeys on pasture this month. They are, of course, loving life and eating everything green in site.  We are raising 200 turkeys this year and it’s a big step up from the 70 we did last year.  The group mentality is quite powerful and we have to be careful not to place anything tempting by the fence or else a wave of turkeys will push its way through.  They are still quite small, but already we’ve had to give them a 300’ perimeter net and we are planning to expand that to a full quarter acre (450’ perimeter) in just a few days.  We are trying to drum up the demand to raise turkeys year-round, they are so great to have on the farm.

Lastly, ShaeLynn and I have the absolute pleasure to announce that we are going to be having our first child in April!  We are psyched, especially because we now know that in about 10 years we’ll be able to have another day off when the child is old enough to do all the chores!   One point that may be hard to explain in twenty years, though, is why I talked about pigs and turkeys first in this post.  I suppose once the child understands that his or her college fund was made possible by those animals, I think they’ll come around.  Frankly I’m just so excited and it’s been terribly hard to keep a lid on the news until Shae felt it was a good time to let everyone know.  I realize that there will be some people who I have been unable to get a hold of to tell them the good news over the phone (especially those now residing in Spain…hint!), but hopefully this will spur them to call me instead.

See you all in October!

Anniversaries and Infomercials

August is off to a wonderful start.  We started this month by celebrating our 1-year wedding anniversary.  The day was wonderful!  I planned a surprise night away from the farm for us (a true luxury when we have 4 hours of chores every day and two very insistent milking goats), but kept it a total surprise from Shae for weeks.  Day after day I had to play the role of the apathetic husband telling her that we shouldn't do anything too big because there was too much work to be done.   With help from John from Santa Cruz and two of our friends, I was able to arrange a patchwork team that kept the farm running smoothly without us for 24 hours.

The anniversary was such a blast. We spent the day in town and even saw a movie.  However, the best part of the whole day was (of course) our time at Flea Street Café and with its owner, Jesse Cool.  Dinner at Flea Street Café was a truly special treat, but the blog-worthy bit came after.  We ended our night by staying in Jesse’s amazing guest house.  Nestled right in her magnificent  garden, the cottage is a dream and we savored every moment.  In the morning, Jesse, a world-class cook, knocked lightly our door and surprised us with a spectacular breakfast (much of it taken from her garden).  The whole experience left Shae and I feeling happy to be in love and quite privileged to have such an amazing network of friends.

In farm news, we have a brand new baby girl on the farm.  Our goat, Poppy, surprised me two weeks ago by giving birth to a happy and healthy romping machine named Pansy.  It was amazing to see how good of a mother Poppy was/is.  We had heard that her first birth (Tuxedo) had been quite a mess, so it was an incredible relief to see that she did everything on her own with this new baby.  The coolest thing was that she timed the birth (goats can actually choose to some degree) to be on the 1 warm day in a 10 day cold/wet period, and even waited until we had moved the herd onto fresh grass.  Pansy is such a love.  She cuddles with her brother, Tuxedo, at every opportunity and actually snuggles up against you when you pick her up.  I'm sure we'll have more pictures of her very soon.

From the business side of the farm we are in a strange good new/bad news situation.  Our feed prices suddenly jumped 30% and we’ve been seeing reduced demand now that we have a continuous supply of chickens every week, instead of an event-style once or twice every other month.  It's a crappy situation to be in, but we are looking into some extra restaurant customers and we've been learning a lot about marketing.  The lower demand is a really interesting phenomenon and it’s making me think that we need a more frantic sounding infomercial-style advertising campaign.  Call now!  These limited edition summer broilers are going fast and we cannot guarantee you'll ever see a product like this at such an affordable price again!  Supplies are limited!

On the good side of things, the chickens are stunning right now.  The new farm has so much life in the soil and the chickens always seem to be chasing a grass hopper or chowing down on some beautiful grass.  In a pretty surprising turn, ALL of chickens we slaughtered this week had that beautiful vitamin-rich yellow fat (the yellow is from the beta carotene), and just looked and tasted spectacular.

Also, turkeys have finally arrived on the farm!

It’s been so quiet and uneventful since last thanksgiving without the jolly gobbling and suicidal antics of dozens of 20 pound turkeys.  This year we are doing a mix of broad-breasted bronze and whites (what we had last year).  This mix of breeds and more timely slaughter will let us hit our 12-18 pound average for the turkeys and avoid the awkward, but delicious, obstacle of our smallest bird on a given pick-up day being 19 pounds.

Place your pre-orders soon, though, these guys actually are being pre-ordered fast and supplies are in fact limited...

Up and Running

Well we are on the new farm (more on this very soon), and things are great.  All of the animals are thriving.

The rabbits are multiplying, as can be expected, and we are really impressed by how their pasture homes are working.  We are observing some pretty considerable feed savings, in some cases upwards of 50%!  We are expecting 5 moms to give birth to bunnies during the week between my birthday and the 21st.  What a gift!

The goats and hens have taken to the move as if nothing happened.  The only noticeable change was that for the first few days Essie and Marigold spent their days bleating at all the new people they saw, but after everyone got properly introduced things quieted down.

We are trying a new rotation with the animals.  First, the hens are now following the rabbits.  This is a great combination because the hens LOVE to pick through the rabbit dropping.  Chickens being omnivores don't have the digestive hardware to tackle eating grass only, so they relish the chance to eat pre-digested alfalfa and grass the rabbits leave behind.  We are also doing a tighter rotation now with the goats.  We have scaled down their enclosure, but decided to move them more often.  This leads to a more even and complete graze, which will ultimately encourage some great re-growth.  Our organically-fed slow growth broilers are then put in the same net as the goats (right after they move onto new pasture) to clean up any bugs or small weeds.  It's great to see!

Speaking of the slow growth broilers, we just put them out to pasture 2 days ago and I can't articulate how excited I am.  They are grazing non-stop and have so uninterested in their feeders.  These guys are chasing bugs all day (something that speaks to the fertility of the new pastures we are on!).  Simply put they will be amazing.



So that's about it.  We are planning to get some pictures and videos up of the new farm pretty soon.  It's all going wonderfully, but we are obviously quite busy getting everything back up to production speed.

The Littlest Grazers

We’ve made a real effort to cram as much as possible into the past week or so.  In fact, in order to find the time to update the blog, Kevin has promised to work twice as fast while I (ShaeLynn) write.   We’re moving (more on that in the next post!), we had my family out for a visit, we’re selling the last of our chickens, we’re building another brooder—and we decided to pick this time to expand our rabbit enterprise.  Our supplier of breeding stock is a gentleman from Basque country in Spain who raises hormone and anti-biotic free rabbits in his backyard hutches.  If the significance of this find hasn’t hit you let, I should mention that in the early years of Joel Salatin’s rabbit operation, they lost a lot of their bunnies because the rabbits weren't accustomed to life free from a daily regimen of anti-biotics.  It took them years to get a heartier, and select for rabbits with a consistently solid immune system.  So we really hit the jackpot since we got to skip all that.

The main project that goes along with new rabbits though, is rabbit housing!  After they reach sexual maturity, rabbits can’t be housed together because they become very territorial and will actually kill each other.  So each adult needs its own house.  Plus, rabbits are prone to digging if left to their own devices, so open floors are challenging (though not impossible!).  We wanted the rabbits to have access to pasture during the day, but be securely closed up (including a slatted floor to prevent digging) at night—and voila!  The Bunny Scoot.

Obviously, the chickens are also quite fond of them.  During the day, the rabbits have access to both sides.  The enclosed end gives them a shady “hole” to hide in when they want, and it has a slatted floor so their waste doesn’t accumulate  This is doubly helpful because chickens LOVE the rabbit's droppings because they are just pre-digested plant matter.  The open end gives the rabbits plenty of grass to eat during the day, plus lots of fresh air and sunshine if they want it.  At night, we take the roof off the open part of the Bunny Scoot, and use it to gently push them into the enclosed area and shut them in.  That way they spend the night protected from predators, and unable to dig out.

We’re still tweaking the design a little bit, but the idea is that they will go out on the pasture near the broiler shelters, and get moved onto fresh grass each morning.

Our rabbit operation is also expanding because our babies are growing up.  Here they are enjoying their Bunny Scoot.  They are growing so fast!  We have more bunnies due next month, it's really exciting.

Last Batch for a Bit

So right away I think I should update you all and say we still haven't found the missing buck. It's not certain he's dead, but my theory that life on the outside would send him running back to us has been undermined by late rains. The farm is currently surrounded with a near-endless supply of lush succulent rabbit food, so we are getting ready to replace him. His children, though, are beautiful and healthy. In fact, it's really neat that they are doing so well because I realized today they are the first animals we've had born on our farm! We've been very lucky too because the mom they were born to has been incredibly nurturing. They are even starting to learn to eat the weeds I bring her, which is a great indicator that they will enjoy a life on pasture.

The bravest and most dapper man in town.

Our bee adventure has been progressing well too. The hives are really starting to establish themselves and it's great to see them all tending the the clover in the field and the roses by our window. I've been doing all the reading I can on beekeeping, and I even got a surprise shipment of bee books from my mom! The more I learn I about these guys, the more I realize that we do not "own" them or "raise them," we are simply enticing them to stay and work with us. It's a pretty cool relationship.

Last Friday we hosted a chicken slaughter seminar as part of Pie Ranch's educational partnership with Pescadero High School. It was a blast for Shae and I and we got to meet a lot of our teenage neighbors. All of the students were genuinely interested and caring. In addition to our talk about our farming methods and thorough exploration of chicken organs with Shae, a few of them chose to jump right in and learn in a hands-on manner where their food comes from. After the slaughter, the kids made an amazing chicken lunch with some freshly gathered Pie Ranch greens and brick oven-baked flatbreads. We were paid for our time, but as you can probably tell, it was hardly a chore!

The slightly sad news is we are coming up on our last bunch of chickens for a while. We've held off on buying new chicks until we settle onto a new farm, so we are quickly running out of broilers. It's a bit of a shame because the grasses right now are incredible, and the chickens are being pampered by all the choices they get (something that is clearly showing up in the meat!). Here’s a picture of Bowtie and Tux trying their best to graze the grass down so the chickens aren't too overwhelmed. We have one more fresh pickup day planned and then after that a couple of weekend buying club drops. I'm hoping we can get on the ground soon so there's no perceivable gap in supply.

Well, I can smell the pizza Shae is baking for dinner and it's getting hard to concentrate. Marigold is producing milk faster than we can consume it, so Shae made mozzarella and ricotta for our pizza from all the extra. There's even some chicken liver on the pizza, which I know sounds strange, but when it's seasoned and slightly browned, there's nothing quite as good.

Take care!

May Flowers

 It’s been a silly few months, but it looks like things are slowly coming back to normal.  Through all the chaos of relocating, it's been great to have all our friends and family come and visit, especially Shae's mom and dad who helped us take apart the brooders and go on an all-day cleaning/packing rampage respectively to get ready for our move.

We are thrilled to report that the search for a new farm may finally be coming to an end.  Without counting my chickens before they hatch (something we do all the time in this business), it looks like we are going to be able to team up with a local grass-fed beef producer and graze the chickens behind their herd of cattle.  It’s a wonderful fit that will benefit not just both business, but the land and animals as well.  Expect me to make a big deal once it finalizes!

The farm has plugging along too.  We had our first bunny birth last week and so visitors and friends have had plenty to swoon over.  The rabbits are all doing really well in their “bunny porches,” but there are still some kinks in the design to work out.  While we’ve cut feed consumption dramatically just by letting them have continuous access to weeds and grasses, we did have an escape yesterday.  Our one and only buck decided that a pampered life with two lovely girlfriends and regular feedings wasn’t the right fit for him and he slipped out during the night.  We are holding out hope that once he gets a taste of the real world, he’ll come right home.

We also just added two bee hives to the farm to help bolster the pasture’s health…and hopefully produce some great honey.  The project really excites me, but at the same time it’s probably worth noting I have a mild phobia of bees.  It’s been a fun mix of emotions to check on the hives and beam with delight as I see how well they are doing and then spend the next 20 minutes after I’ve walked away being sure that I feel something crawling on the inside of my shirt.

 Another addition to the farm has been our new experiment with buying club drops as a supplement to on-farm sales.  Our truly amazing friend and patron-saint, Jesse Cool of Flea Street Café, invited us to deliver pre-purchased frozen chickens to customers in her restaurant’s parking lot in Menlo Park.  In less than 24 hours after sending out the notice, we sold out of everything in our freezer and filled up a second drop day as well.  It was a great way of helping customers get access to good food and we really enjoyed ourselves.  All of the customers were genuinely excited about the chickens and even gave us some spectacular recipes to try.  We are doing all we can to work out the details so we can make the drop a more regular part of our week.

So that’s basically it.  We have a lot on our plate, but that’s the reality of the lifestyle I suppose.  We’ll keep you all in the loop as things progress!