Raising Wood

One of the oldest tropes on the Internet is raving about bacon for clicks. Just to prove this is on the Internet, today we’re going to rave about bacon.

Well, pre-bacon really. The daddy of bacon.  Pork belly, the slab of muscle and fat on the belly of the pig. Prepares moar often as bacon because it’s very tasty, and it takes a salt or sugar or smoke cure very well.

Our first experience with Pork Belly proper, not yet converted into bacon, was in Ireland. Killarney, to be specific. The national park there is tremendous. Fully recommended. We hiked around all day there. You wouldn’t believe the size of the stags flitting across the prairies.

Then we dined out to a delicious dinner on a rainy November night. Because it was off season for tourists, all was quiet except for the hen party across the dining room. I had sea bass, Jenny chose a pork belly.

Jenny chose wisely. Imagine a steak sized slab of bacon, tender and salty inside while crisp and savory outside. We walked back to our lodging that night marveling how sad it was Americans turn it into bacon. Not that bacon is poor fare, but that Pork Belly is surpassingly great.

Fast forward a few years. We figured out bacon is best prepared in the oven. Rimmed baking sheet. Parchment paper. Bacon slices laid out. Oven at 400 for 23 minutes. Never again on the skillet, this is too good.

Fast forward beyond that. Friend named Bud says “Robert you need a Traeger” and Robert lol’d. Then Bud slow smokes a pork belly on Sunday and brings it to work on Monday. The doors of the new covenant heaven swung open. It was every bit as incredible as I remembered. By the end of the month I had picked up a Traeger with an end of season clearance deal. I tracked down a source for slabs of pork belly. Turns out they intermittently appear at Costco.

Jenny eats the now freshly prepared pork belly and declares the Traeger was the best kitchen investment we’ve ever made. “It’s meat candy!” she exclaims. I agree, humbly of course, and proceed to find Costco’s with pork belly about once a month. After a few months we begin to ask ourselves: if we’re trying to raise all of our meat from our property, what are we going to do about pork belly?

Well, time for more pigs. The Kune Kune variety turned out to be a lot of time for little meat, just like Salatin warned. So they’re out. Craigslist had a man selling Idaho pasture pigs for a reasonable amount. We’ll take two and raise one for a friend, provided friend helps us appraise and pickup the pigs. He did, we did, bada bing, we have a pair of sows among us.

The plan started great. Feed barrel, water barrel, and shade unit surrounded portable electric fence. Pigs on pasture, feeding on grass and churning up the bramble to eat the roots.

That worked until it didn’t. We got tired of moving the fence. Bandwidth with a baby just looks different. We let them live in the pasture as porcine libertarians. We fed a blend of corn and Kalmbach protein that we blended for them. That saved a few bucks per 50 pound bag of feed. When feeding up to 10lbs a day, that adds up. And man did they tear up some bramble, so long as the bramble was in the shade and we hosed water into them.

By August, it was time to take the girls to the butcher. How do you load pigs into a trailer? Beats me! There’s a dozen different procedures on YouTube. We went with the “feed them in the trailer to get them used to going up a ramp” strategy. 

In the process, a helpful friend noticed the axle bolts were sheared off on the back left wheel, so might as well fix that while coaxing the girls up the ramp.

After five days of fiddling and adjusting and optimizing the on-ramp, the girls were finally in the trailer. We closed them up for the night, ready to haul in the morning. What’s that? Did they use the ramp?

No. They certainly did not. One loaded from the side door on the passenger side. It turns out pigs can jump up 24″ into a trailer for corn. The one in the back used the pallet under the ramp to jump in, leaving the ramp squarely attached and firmly unused.

We had the pork processed into ground breakfast sausage, Italian sausage and shoulder roasts. The pork belly was split into half bacon and half pork belly. Mistakes were made and the pork belly was also sliced like bacon, to our mild horror and annoyance.

The annoyance abated as we began to inspect the meat itself. The color of the pork is no longer white and pasty, but deep and succulent. The pasture raising of pork makes a far more flavorful meat through a healthier animal, even with a simple visual comparison.

Nothing to it but to do it. On Sunday I tend to smoke meats. This is entirely from our property. A dozen Scotch eggs, pastured chicken, goat, and a slab of that sliced pork belly.

It was all delicious. The quest for the best pork belly has been mostly satisfied. Who knows, after 10lb of it sliced we may prefer it in this form. We remain Americans, after all.

It’s a sunny Saturday morning. Wednesday afternoon a big hunk o’ beef finished breaking a gate that was pre broken by tree roots. Golden opportunity to move the gate location to better suit our application. Since we’re going to do that, might as well take off some branches banging on the barn. That will unblock sunlight for this space.

I genuinely enjoy cutting trees. The chainsaw is a work of genius. The results are immediate and gratifying. I run a 20″ Stihl, 18″ Husqvarna, 10″ cordless(Milwaukee and Ryobi) pole saw and a 8″ handheld Milwaukee “hatchet” chainsaw.

I’m also big on personal protective equipment, PPE. It’s hard to replace legs and eyes so some cover is needed. I haven’t always done the chaps and gloves. Near misses with holes in my pants changed my mind.

Good PPE doesn’t get in the way. It can make you even more productive. These ear muffs are quiet when the noise is up but have passthrough microphones for when it’s quiet. Great for working with others. Steel toe work boots, why do anything else around logs? Great gloves drive better grip and reduce hand fatigue.

Cutting wood is even better when you have assistance. The small branches after the big cuts are tedious. It turns out goats love the leaves and the farm team is getting strong enough to help throw them over the fence to the hangry horde.

While I handled major branches and detailed limb dropping (don’t hit the fence!) Jenny cutsmall limbs off with this small Milwaukee battery chainsaw. Highly recommend. Much faster than loppers or machetes. She calls it her lightsaber.

Sometimes you end up burning big piles of wood. After trying it, I don’t care for the scorched earth effect it leaves behind. Some patches are still struggling to grow back 3 years later. We tend to pile up the trimmings and pieces through a wood chipper.

So it’s still a sunny summer Saturday. Morning has departed and team morale is low. Mr. Hungry and Miss Thirsty have joined us. I want to finish this pile of brush in one final push, then we’ll head up the hill for lunch. Satisfaction of a job well done and all that. Just gotta finish this pile of branches tangled up in the grapevines.

It’s go time. Quick quick quick. Left hand holding branches, right hand wielding this lightsaber battery hatchet saw. Wrrr-cut-pull. Wrrr-cut-pull. Wrr-snag-zip.

Uh oh. That went over my hand, not the branches.

Set the saw down and start checking, nausea intensifying.

The glove has been clobbered but the fingers are safe after the chain saw skimmed over the surface. 

This is a well worn Ansell HyFlex 11-735. Regarded as a medium cut level glove with an A4 rating, I’ve used it enough that the polyurethane dip coating wore off the palm side long ago. Fortunately the cut protection is intrinsic to the fabric.

This is a better story because I have four fingers on my left hand. This is a better story because I can tell you I set the saw down and we went inside for lunch. This is a better story because I can report on some errors made by pushing too far with dangerous equipment, not a life changing injury with dangerous equipment.

I like to think we’ll have chain saws on the new earth when Jesus comes to set it up, but I don’t know. In the mean time, it’s right to work smart, work safely, and wear the right PPE. I only get one of these bodies in this life.

One challenge with raising goats is keeping them dry in the winter. When they are dry they can take real cold, but all bets are off if they get wet while cold. Given Texas weather patterns it inevitably rains to drive our cold snaps into place.

Time to expand our coverage footprint beyond the barn. The back of the work shop has space and matches our workflow well, so let’s get to it.

We ran some boy goats here in the spring and it worked well. You can see the hay feeder we can throw hay in from the ramp. Now clear out the trees and brush. Mark out post locations.

Oh, we need some posts! A legacy telephone pole fell in the front pasture last week, 25 feet long! A little sawzall work and now we have two of the three 12ft poles.

Next is marking a level horizontal plane to reference from. The ground isn’t flat, so you use a level and a string. This helps mark how deep the posts can be set so they are the same height at the top. String is a legendary building tool. Keep it handy.

Next is running the auger, setting the posts and verifying they are level. Then attempt to hold the posts straight vertically with wooden braces while the concrete sets. Mixed results with acceptable outcomes for me. DIY grade. Recognize afterwards the posts are not straight cylinders but taper, so the level wasn’t reading on a straight surface. Now run the wooden stringer along the building, checking level along the way.

Then set the stringers along the posts. Deep timber screws to anchor them into the posts. Use long boards leaning against the post to rest stringers in place. Check constantly for level.

Start cutting rafters to connect the stringers. Then realize they are all different and unique lengths and you’re not as hot as you thought you were. Plod forward accordingly. Feel pretty smart about a jig to hold the rafter up while you fiddle about on the ladder on the other end.

Feel great because it’s all coming together and man we’re crushing…hey what’s that pig doing?

Then wonder how you managed to break an aluminum speed square.

Cut off the hang off and move the wood for the stringers to the top. This is the wood the steel will fasten on. Cut sheet steel to right length for the two parts required on top.

Much easier to work at this stage. The up and down the ladder sequence is no longer in play. Just keep your balance, mind your measurements and drive in screws.

Pull the sheet steel up. Fasten from the bottom edge first, overlapping those sheets from the top. Pull out caulk gun to secure flashing between roof and building. Mutter and murmur over the cordless gun being broken and it’s already been warranty replaced and and the sun is setting… I’m not finishing tonight and if only I had done x, y, and z more quickly earlier…

Running numbers in my head as I pack up for the incoming rain. Half day of material acquisition. Two and a half days of work from start to finish. Probably another day ahead for painting to protect the wood.  Was it time well spent? We’re deep into the payback phase of buying tools to improve quality and save time. With work it pays back deep dividends, and I enjoy the building.

End result is 30ft long x 16ft deep x 9-12ft high of great utility covered space. Sweat equity is real. Not paying a contractor 3-4k is good value. Growing the farm as a family is even better.

Then I go down to the barn. Now one of the momma goats is getting work done and my wife and daughter are there for it as the sun settles in the west.

Turns out, the shelter for the goats is going to be just fine, even if it’s finished a few days later.

We started with 45 chicks in a shoe box.

We ended with 39 birds for processing.

We ended with 33 birds in freezer bags.

The smallest bird was 5lb 10oz.

The largest bird was 9lb 8oz.

Total freezer weight was 248lb 4oz.

There is significant cost for infrastructure: Two chicken tractors, 4 waterers, 2 feeders, heat lamps, lumber, paint, chicken wire, steel sheets, hardware, PVC pipe. ~$600 fully involved.

There is significant labor time. Two Saturdays of tractor repair and production. Chick pickup, temp management, “ZOMG there’s a huge thunderstorm coming so cover the pens management”, feed and water management, rotational movement, removal of deceased birds. Figure 30 minutes per day as an accurate average for our initial process, more like 15 for the last two weeks.

Then there is processing time and costs.

1. Kill step

2. Hot water scald to loosen feathers (borrowed crawfish boilers)

3. Plucker machine to remove feathers (rental from excellent neighbors)

4. Remove extras, clean out bird. (Stainless table bought off Craigslist)

5. Final wash step, then move to ice coolers

6. Drip dry station after chickens below 40f.

7. Bird in bag, dip in hot water to heat shrink

8. Label then into the freezer!

We are very blessed to have friends interested in the process join us. Learning experience for everyone. Started at 9, lunch at one, done by six for dinner. I prepared a brisket that covered both meals for the families.

Hard work for a long day. We’ll be faster next time. I was happy to send both families home with some birds We received some excellent feedback.

The end result is a very large bird given rain water to drink and feed free from GMO. A healthy and wholesome outside life with room to move. Healthy birds make healthy meat.

I’ve smoked some of these. The meat covers dinner 3 times for the family. Then the carcass boils into a gallon of chicken stock. The stock is far superior to what you’ll buy at the store or boil from a typical store chicken.

Was it worth our time? In terms of cost savings, we will eat one bird per week for 6 months. The savings in our grocery budget will cover the costs of inputs within 2 months. This sets up a nontrivial amount of grocery money for other allocations 8 months a year. As inflation waits for no man, it’s worth it.

Separate from that is the improvement in quality of meat and efficiency gains of an 8lb chicken.  Smokon Sunday, eat 3x dinners for busy week nights. That’s worth it.

Additionally this is a family endeavor of a tightly focused 8 weeks with a big blowout processing day. My oldest son led the posses of children to capture birds. They put them in a cart and hauled them to the kill station. The children are deeply familiar with what the cost of meat is, and what honoring creation can look like to bring it to the table. That’s worth it.

Pastured poultry is a good fit for family. While we can sell some birds to you and yours, I’m more interested in helping you get your own up and running. A goal here is to improve food stability for every backyard, and pastured poultry is an effective method for anyone with some grass and a will.

What is good? Beef is good.

What is better?  Managed Intensive Grazing Grass Only Beef.

What is best? MIGGOB born and raised on the Raising Wood homestead. From artificial insemination to birth to weaning to weaning again because he reactivated his momma(!) to the steering committee meeting to feeding out through two winters, Yum was the first beef fully ‘ours’. We think he’s quite simply the best.

First time customer chimes in:

We usually require a deposit on a share before taking a head of beef to the butcher. I failed to do that this time, and a customer backed out the day after we started the processing. Fortunately we had other customers looking for a share and everyone ended up happy.

A typical question is ‘how much beef is a share of beef?’ Yum was our largest head to date. A quarter of his beef was 97lb. 97lb of beef fills up two 50qt coolers in delivery, or about half of a 7 cubic foot freezer.

We enjoy running delivery to our customers. It helps ensure a chain of custody with temp control. It helps move the beef out into its freezers more readily, and delivered beef makes happy customers. It is good to know your farmer, separate from the commercial chain of sales and distant don’t-think-to-hard trust requirements.

Spring is here early. Time to take advantage of the great rain and moderate temperatures. After reviewing our 2023 results, I realized the food and dollars return for my labor in meat production is way higher then for gardening. As much as I have enjoyed gardening, it was becoming a bandwidth constraint and we’ll put it aside for this year.

That makes more sense in the context of expanding our meat production this year. Meat chickens are fast growing and space efficient. We bought 45 chicks and moved them into the brooder to stay warm.

A bed of mulch, a heating tray, and food and water. So much food and water. Day 1 they were running through what our 3 week old birds did last spring. This Cornish cross variety grows as quickly as advertised.

Joel Salatin describes this breed as race car chickens. They are probably the most populous bird in the world, with hundreds of millions hatched, grown and processed annually. Any chicken you buy at the store is this breed. They can’t reproduce because they grow so big so fast they will over weight and die before sexual maturity. I’m planning 8 weeks total to be make a 5.5lb bird.

Well Robert, why don’t you just buy Tyson birds from the store and save yourself all this hassle?

Well, because we’re going to run them on grass. New patch of grass every day with unlimited food and water makes healthy and wholesome birds. We’ll be able to run a non-GMO feed and supplement their minerals along the way to further improve their health. Healthy birds make healthy meat, and the quality of the muscles, fats and collagen is much higher.

One week in, seven to go. We’ll run some updates as we go and for the processing day in early May.

Every man should make a work space. It will be a place where he goes to work. First with his mind to design, then with his hands to build, then with his heart to judge a project complete. Here he will bind what is broken and mend what is mangled. If he is wise he will do maintenance on his machines before they need repair. He will also teach others the skills he sharpens in this place. There is a reason that every good Role Playing Game has a good work area. The aspirational hero will forge new weapons and craft protective armor, it connects to the soul of man.

If he is really blessed, it will grow into a workshop. A workspace is a place you sit, a workshop is a place you can walk. He will have workstations in the shop, designated storage, and focused lighting. Invariably he will be at one workstation and say “aaaigh, I need that tool be ready right here”. It could be a measurement tool, a screwdriver, maybe a change of blades. He will consider his situation and be sad he did not have a way to easily and conveniently put task relevant tools in reach.

There’s a cheap solution. Let me show you with some real life pictures:

The good news? For $3 at Harbor Freight, he can make a massive upgrade to his work space and workshop.

Magnetic bars. 18 inches of working space.  Screw holes on the ends. Easy install. You will notice these are placed near the corners of the workspace to be easily accessible from both sides of the corner.

https://www.harborfreight.com/18-in-magnetic-tool-holder-60433.html, no affiliate link.

Give it a try or give these as a gift. They punch way above their weight class in terms of permanent utility per dollar spent.

North Texas has a long and hot summer followed by a random autumn. Highs from the 40’s to the 80’s, lows from the 20’s to the 70’s. Then spasms of winter compete with autumn and spring from Thanksgiving until Easter. Highs in the 20’s to the 70’s, lows in the 10’s to the 60’s. It’s beautiful and erratic and helps you feel alive.

Here are some tips for running temporary electrical infrastructure on a homestead with active animals.

Priorities:

1. Keep all electrical pixies where they belong

2. Manage stock water to be always safely accessible. (Let the deicers do the work.)

3. Zero damage to water infrastructure.(Drain yer hoses.)

Here’s my work process:

First, open your panel box and understand the amp rating on your circuit breaker. This will tell you how much you can run off the plug in the wall, as a safe system has all components rated equal or greater than the circuit breaker capacity.

Now take the watts rating of your deicer. Convert them to amps at 120 volts. Designate type as alternating current (AC) in this calculator: https://www.rapidtables.com/calc/electric/Watt_to_Amp_Calculator.html

Now you know the amps of your deicer and the capacity of your circuit. Match extension cords to the application. Going big is always acceptable for electrical systems.

12 gauge wire handles 15amp/1875 watts. On a 20amp circuit I can run a 1500w de-icer and a 250w de-icer safely and continuously.

Now that you have your components figured out, it’s time to put it together.

As much as possible run on top of fence lines. If the cable is on the ground it will be tripped on. Whej stepped on it will damage the cable. Perfect your time and investment and run elevated.

Leave 5 to 10 feet of spare cable at each end, so as to have extra capacity when it is yanked on.

Work to secure the cable at multiple points along it’s travel path. I find an overhand knot, the first part of tying your shoes, to be the simple way.

Finally, if a junction is on the ground and any source of water is available I like to secure it with a weather box. These are like $4 and last for years. Make sure it can accommodate your cable size, some do not handle 12 gauge he may duty cables. This also acts as a strain relief in the event a cable is yanked on.

Oh, one more thing:

Chickens are remarkable animals. We use them for eggs and pest control and fertility. The hens can do all of these things gently. After 3 years, they become stew hens.

The roosters though. They don’t lay eggs. They fight for dominance. They can occasionally get uppity with humans and their children. They tell you about the sun before it ever shows up. They don’t taste good when you cook them. (Different texture in the meat once they get big enough to bother cleaning out. Stringy.) Roosters exist in the same category of livestock as Emus: Borderline useless and nearly always a hassle.

In previous years we would incubate eggs, keep the hens and cull the cocks and move on. Then we had pigs and I could feed the cull birds to the pigs and everyone who was around to be happy, was happy. Then we ate the pigs and had a batch for 11 chicks with 9 roosters with no where to go. We have enough issues with predatory canines that I can’t feed them roosters now. 😞.

David the Good writes incredible garden-action-adventure novels, funny gardening books and runs a productive YouTube channel. He mentioned using chickens to prepare garden beds, and that got us thinking.

What if we could redeem these truculent juvenile roosters to be productive members of the farm society?

What if they could help reclaim the garden? We lost track of it with a newborn baby in the fall and it became a jungle.

I took the electric net from the pasture. It surprisingly fit perfect to cover the bottom, and then loop back to cover the top. The birds get food and water. They scratch up the grass and the weeds and the old growth. They smash down the tomato and okra carcasses. They fertilize everywhere for the coming spring. Fun for them, saves me from having to do more work. Where I throw their kibbles, they scuffle and prepare for spring.

That’s the plan. How did it work?

It’s gone alright, a solid C grade. 2 roosters continued to escape to try and hang with the ladies through a fence. The remaining roosters have done good work but the density is low. I have two other roosters preparing a different bed they haven’t escaped from after they left the jungle. Hard to deal with winter weather issues in there though, no shelter. You can see the irrigation lines running across the beds. The birds don’t mess them up like a tiller or cultivator would. This will take some tweaking for next fall. The proof of concept is good. We now have a way to redeem the roosters.