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.