Raising Wood

In ancient times, including my own childhood, board games consisted of endless variations of Sorry, Candyland, Clue, and Monopoly. Nothing need be said the miserable experiences Uno and Skip-Bo bring to the table. Mix some classic peer-to-peer strategy in with Checkers, Chess, and Backgammon to complete the repertoire.  Today, let’s look beyond that for more interesting, cooperative, and enjoyable options.

The Raising Wood Project includes 4 kids, ages two to ten. As part of building and sustaining attention spans, there is very little screen time provided to the children. As part of building relationships with each other, we prioritize and invest in interactive and cooperative games.

The cooperative game model has grown in the US market in a huge way over the past two decades. Previously the domain of the European socialist entertainment mongers, it turned out to be a lot of fun. Eurostyle should have always been part of the USA game dynamic. Seriously, not every game must end with one winner and everyone else as a loser.

You know that feeling at the end of the game against someone else, where you can’t win and you must waste your life so they can pursue moving fiddly bits about to document the progress of their victory. You dread it, so you don’t start the game, either to avoid the loss or dragging someone else through the struggle session. Now no one is having fun.

For children today, we can do better. Out of the two dozen or so games in the house, here are some winners. They’re so good you can even play them with your children together. These are battle tested, surefire winners and you can slap them on the kitchen table with confidence the first time, and every time.

Imagine you have your own flying saucer, and your task is to abduct cattle. You get an intelligence card with the placement of the different obstacles in the pasture, the placement of the cattle about the pastures, and go use your magnets to pick them up.

This solo puzzle game is quick and easy to pick up, and difficult to master, a superb piece of design and game development. Works for all ages, and can present a good diversion for after dinner drink time when the parents want to keep hanging out. For kids, it develops problem solving, dexterity, mental resilience against failure, and buckets of laughs. Probably does the same for adults.

The sun is rising and the baby owls must return home. Use color cards to travel the loop. Everyone is responsible for all the brother and sister owls making it home. No owls left behind, if you will.

Really crushes in an age 4-7 crowd. The cooperative element is well done and the game plays quick. Even better, children can continue the game while the parent must divert to responsibilities. Skills include paying attention to groups status, not just your own player. Also develops task oriented conversation and problem solving.

All the deductive thought requirements of Clue without the tedious, mind numbing, time stalling, ridiculous affection of using dice to move about a Manor. Instead, it addresses the classic question of man: Who am I?

Players must solve for 3 categories of clues to reveal their own identity, which is concealed to the player. All other players can see the identity and assist with a yes/no question sequence for matching elements. This plays fast and will surprise you with how often the kids can beat you with their own skills. Those skills include deductive reasoning and rapid processes of elimination

Honorable mention in the who dun it category is Outfoxed. Clever secret decoder system to qualify in/out clues and a time limit as the suspect may escape. Longer set up and tear down makes a barrier to entry compared to a single stack of cards in Deduckto, so it stays on the shelf more.

Cooperate together to escape an island that is flooding. Escape with the artifacts to win. I don’t enjoy this and prefer Pandemic far more, which is a dynamite family game for up to 5 players. Kids love Forbidden Island without me, and the game will usually make it through a second play before everyone moves on. Skills include probabilistic reasoning, cooperative resource management, and moving quickly.

You stand upon the walls of the citadel. The trees are distant and the goblins teem on the edges, just out of bowshot. You know they’re soon going to come from all six sides. You also know your brothers and sisters stand alongside, ready to dispatch the enemies and rebuild walls as they collapse. This game is hard, often very hard and you’ll lose a lot. But you’ll win and lose together, and the cooperative mechanism is tight. Good for children, adults, and a mix together for up to six players. Builds skills of planning, allocation of effort, and dealing with suddenly bad problems.

Dishonorable mentions, because I found them tedious and dull yet my children love them, allow the into your home at your own peril: Settlers of Catan Jr and Taco vs Burrito.

Keep an eye out for these, they make great gifts for Christmas, birthday, or reward for something done well or character development inflection point in a budding child’s life. Have fun out there.

Joel Salatin goes by many names and titles. One is The Lunatic Farmer. He tries new things, keeps what works, and rejects what doesn’t. If you’re engaged with the regenerative agriculture movement in the USA, you recognize he’s an inspiration to millions (and a profitable farmer to boot).

One of his ideas for pasture management is using temporary shade in open fields. It can draw cattle into low growth patches of grass. These Cattle loaf in the shade and then take care of their business in that shade. They ain’t shy. That fertilizes (‘manures’ as the old timers say) the soil and builds water retaining organic matter. Give it some time and boom, explosive grass growth.

Salatin has a very good book on projects for the regenerative farm: Polyface Designs. Where most farm build books are heavy on pictures but lite on specifics, this book skews heavily to dimensions and step by step CAD rendered build processes.

To make a shade mobile, you start with a hay wagon. One popped up on Craigslist for an absurdly low price, on account of some damage to the hay holding frame. Well we don’t want to hold hay on the hay wagon, so it was perfect for us.

Remove the broken hay holding frame. Extend the back axle to maximum length. Build some uprights. Bolt them in. Brace them together. Straighten out the broken frames. Weld them to hold the straightened repair. Bolt them to the uprights. Add crossbeams. Paint all the wood. Add shade cloth, which is landscape fabric right now. Screw boards in from the top to sandwich the cloth to the crossbeams, maximizing the clamp surface area to minimize wind tearing the fabric.

Then pull around with the quad atv and turn the cows loose to loaf in its shade.

It’s late enough in the year that they don’t care much for it now. But I am looking forward to next summer and the revitalizing power of the shade mobile.

Or if it doesn’t work, then convert it to something else. It’s all an experiment.

If you let it, and nurture it, Homestead life can establish its own outlook on life

This means feeling the flow of seasons and the rhythm of weather. Discerning the quality difference in pasture beef, pork and poultry compared to any industrial version. The joy of planting, the care of cultivation, unto the pride of harvesting. The zest of integrating systems both mechanical and organic. The excitement with two boys when they find these bizarre new mushrooms, oblong spheres the size and shape of cowpies that explosively decompress when you step on them.

This also means feeling the downside emotions. I’ve touched before on a dark reality of small scale livestock: sometimes they just die. On the small scale these critters have names. Each has taken time  and snuggles, consideration and care.

We Moderns are proud of our ability to breezily skip past the mud and the blood. We try our best to scroll past fear, uncertainty and doubt. We have amusement and therefore we feel distance from death. Sure, we’ll dabble with it in our fiction, but we want to control it. Then when the dark times come and we can’t heal a family member and can’t get the doctors to just fix it, it becomes a severe crisis that we never trained for.

Some hobbies fight this trend. They engage our core being to reground truthfully with our surroundings. Those who hunt and process their own game feel it. Gardeners know it also. A great director can bring us to the brink of understanding. A great novelist can pull you deep into expanding that understanding. Jesus lived through a dark world then and lives through it with us now. His greatest miracle may be the patience to let us each grow and develop that emotional depth in our own time. Surely it’s easier for Him to just call the whole broken place to an end and start over without the suffering.

This is Dot: bred, born, snuggled, raised, pastured, trimmed, dewormed, bred herself, now mothered three set of twins under our care.

One of these twins was easily a third smaller then her brother. Frequent interventions by the shepherds to coax her into nursing  were required. It worked, and behold, great joy and satisfaction from all of the family involved.

Dot’s mother, Phoebe, gave birth a week or so earlier. A single kid, the first of the season, very lively. The name Skippy was correct and applied within a week. Great joy and satisfaction, the children gave this one many snuggles.

Last week brought a change in the wind. Dot showed a range of signs of infection, and even with treatment required a put down within four days of symptoms.

Simultaneously, that happy kid Skippy no longer skipped, but stood alone in the pasture as the sun set. Momma phoebe stayed in the pasture, knickering to call Skippy to the rest of the herd. Turns out Skippy couldn’t walk anymore and we couldn’t fix it. In the morning, the children demanded to take Skippy to the vet. Jenny and I relented. Skippy passed in the waiting room. No known cause of death. Deep emotional impact and lots of processing together in conversation. This ain’t Paw Patrol, y’all.

So it’s Friday night. There’s a Texas Rangers game on the radio, and Terrik Skubal is wrecking our bats. There’s a family digging a goat grave together for more then 2 hours. The seeds of emotional maturity we are planting together in this process will bear fruit in days to come. Like most cultivation, there are thousands of indirect decisions that feed into the final product. This is part of our process of Raising Wood.

Well, we have two goats who need milk. We have one goat in milk without a kid. Checkmate Phoebe, you have a new job. Three or four times a day, we will hold her so the kids can nurse. Hopefully she’ll adopt them as her own. If she does, it will be through their persistence and not her eagerness. The persistent widow of Luke 18:1-8 comes to mind, and boy are they persistent.

It’s beautiful when an adoption takes place. The contrast of salvaging life from death is a satisfying emotional experience.

Few things last forever, nor do we want sorrow to linger. The weekend was enjoyable while gathering with friends. No one dwelled on the hard things, that season has passed. Come monday night, Valentine gave her own set of twin kids. The children will feed her leaves and snuggle the kids and come up with names for them. The resonant satisfaction of that experience will also yield its own fruit in season.

This is Raising Wood. It’s good for the children and good for the parents. We are very blessed to be able to do this together, and I encourage you to find something more then modern to engage your family with.

When I was a wee lad of 11, I remember a wise Doctor, a friend of the family, who recommended Dune by Frank Herbert. I borrowed a copy from the library and devoured it. Sandworms and spice. Muad’Dib and Bene Gesserit. House of Harken vs the jihad across the stars. All interesting, with the added fascination of the stillsuits. Water is life, and in the desert not a drop can be wasted. You dry up and you die.

This story has decades of staying power. When Jenny and I were early married, we did a fair bit of backpacking. One trip was around a lake north of Austin, a lengthy drive from our home. “Who cares, we’ll hit the trailhead after sundown.” We hiked the trail well past midnight before setting up camp. Along the way was a good time to play an audiobook of Dune to catch Jenny up. It was part of my educational efforts to nudge Jenny into drinking more water. Dehydration is for the birds. 

Another decade after that, I am reminded of the lessons of Dune in a very different context.

Spring has come, time for another batch of meat birds. We started with 45 and ended with 33. Thanks to some just die young, 5 owl victims, and some just die older. Not a rate of attrition we like, but likely the rate we deserve (somehow. Jenny blames firework debris.).

We dialed back the protein portion of the food from 22% to 20%. We thought it led to too many rapid growth deaths in the fall. Remember kids, gluttony kills.

Previously we used a drip system to water the birds. They tap the nipple and get water. It’s efficient and clean and all the birds understand it. This year Jenny added some bell water systems, where the water needs to be flushed clean and refilled more regularly, but is more openly available. The birds preferred it to the point we abandoned the drip nipple system.

We made some additions to the processing and optimized the workflow:

Our net results were positive in every dimension. Biggest average weight. Biggest single bird. Heaviest low weight bird. Better skills to part out 12 birds into breast, quarters, and wings. Cost per pound down from 2.30.

8.4lb average bird, up from 7lb.

Biggest bird was 10lb 6oz. (!)

To give a feel for the size, it’s 2.5lb average breast pair package without the tenders

Best we can figure, the overall cost per pound is 1.70. That final extra pound and a half of bird costs 1.88-2.30 in feed. In a profit maximum frame the sweet spot is to process the bird at 4.5 lb. This maximizes the weight on the bird with the most efficient window of feed inputs.

We’ve come to a different conclusion. The most expensive part of raising a year worth of birds is the labor time on processing day.

It starts the day before: Prepping the work stations and clearing the carport. It continues that night with buying ice from the ice machine until it runs out of ice, while the sun is down and the Seattle Mariners spend the fifth inning obliterating Ranger pitching. It starts again by seven the next morning with digging disposal holes, sharpening knives and sanitizing coolers and work surfaces.

Then its family watching the littles while you work without stopping until the last bird is in the cooler at noon. Then cleaning and prepping for bagging until 130. Eat some tacos. Watch a vid on parting out a bird. Weigh and part and bag and freeze the birds. Then its final cleanup and it’s 6, and it’s time to go out to dinner to celebrate.

With that kind of effort, I’d rather get 33 luxury weight birds.  It’s the same amount of time as 33 profit maximum birds. 2 extra weeks of feeding (6 vs 8) means 132lbs more meat for the same pair of long days.

What drove the higher weights?

We’re attributing it primarily to better water access. More water in they get the munchies and eat more feed. Turns out dehydration isn’t really for the birds either.

The Fremen were right, water is the key. As I write this, a storm is coming in. The water will fall and wash the chicken manure deep into the soil. The grass will flourish and the stickers will be abated. This restoration agriculture project will continue to nourish the family with the finest pasture run, non-gmo, completely clean chicken that man can make. Even better: the host of lessons and discipleship opportunities with each child along the way to filling the freezer.

Spring is here. Beautiful time of the year. Everything springs to life. Doors and windows stay open. With the Four Seasons, noted time traveler Vivaldi captured a bit of this energy. Let’s see what’s happening with four movements here at Raising Wood.

Our open market economy sells trees in pots RIGHT NOW because everyone has the itch to plant them. Jenny is reworking a peach tree from 3 years ago in this picture. Cardboard base, heaping piles of mulch, and deep watering all go together. There’s fruit budding on this tree now and we should get our first harvest off it. Jenny also planted some fig trees and has plans for pear trees. There is a lot of excitement about future harvests around here, even before we address the berry patch invitations.

Mesquite trees are a pain. Literally, full of thorns. They grow in the pasture and need to be be taken out by hand. Or, alternatively, you can water around it and let pasture pigs waller around it to destroy it. The pigs like this option. So do I.

Goat mothers are interesting creatures. Dot here gave birth to twins. The boy is enormous and thriving. The girl is rickety and slow. Dot recognized this from birth. She triaged the situation by focusing all her care on the boy while comprehensively neglecting the girl.

Fortunately we’re accustomed. Now we have kidding pens to set up our own triage. Five days of keeping them separate from the herd. Four times a day forcing nursing sessions for the little girl. Three goats learning to be a family. Two determined shepherds. Now one self standing and self feeding girl goat. Success is satisfying.

2am. The flock guardian Ashok is barking in the pasture. Jenny investigates. Jenny sees the problem and rouses me from bed. There is a dead chicken in the meat bird tractor. Cause of death matches three chicks from four weeks prior. The head is fine, the organs are fine, the neck is fine. The legs and thighs are sliced into chicken burger and feathers are everywhere.

Turns out Ashok was barking at a 3ft tall owl. Jenny watched it sneak talons under the lip of the tractor to grab chickens l. When the chick was 12oz, it was a good snack. Now these birds are 7lb and they don’t fit under the frame. Owl doesn’t care and just tears off a talon full of thigh meat.

I can’t always tell when an owl will show up. I can add a PVC pipe flap on the gaps. They are working for a week now and no more sliced up birds.

Well, not til we process them in early May to fill the freezer, as is right and proper. Happy spring y’all.

I’ve been out of town training for work this past week. Our running joke is that things go wrong when I’m gone, and Jenny suddenly has to figure out what to do. This time it’s been quiet and I’ll be home tonight.

Then this morning , a happy development.

Video call from Jenny, a discovery in the morning mists, a new kid in the herd.

Nursing is working and the kid is already cleaned up. A perfect overnight/early am delivery from one of our sturdy does.

Oh yes. Hello Phoebe. Thanks for picking a warm and dry morning!

I find carpentry projects relaxing, mechanical projects educational, and fencing projects routine. I have no experience with welding projects.

Then this particular mix of carpentry, mechanical, and fencing projects combined into a welding project. I set off down the YouTube rabbit hole of DIY welding. 2 hours later I was convinced I could totally do this, no problem, and the cheapest wire feed flux core welder at Home Depot would be fine.

This gate post was bent out of shape thanks to an aggressively growing tree. I cut the bars previously connecting it all together, and now pushing it all out of place. I used a come-along to pull the post back to vertical, then put overlap metal rods on the fence rails to tie it back together with sister joints. Then used the grinder to remove splatter and numerous sharp edges.

Turns out, I was right, but not about what I was convinced of. The smallest cheap Lincoln kept throwing the 20amp breaker in the shop so I moved to generator power. Then the welder was undersized for the thickness of the metal and ran into thermal overload very quickly. Each time added a twenty minute cool down period.

After this project I returned the tool and sized up the the next one. Both problems solved. The welds are all ugly, and these kind of farm applications are great learning opportunities for my hands.

All projects need interruptions. Miss Molly Tamale the new puppy was happy to oblige by getting her head stuck in this fence chasing Hay Bale the barn cat during one of the shut downs.

The other end of the cattle run needed a control gate. Maple is quieter than steel and I need calm cattle. Now there’s also a loop I bent and welded for the sliding latch to anchor against. I am inordinately proud of this whole assembly, thank you very much.

The big win at the end of these upgrades is a cattle run to reliably load cattle onto the trailer. The picture above shows where the stock trailer will back up to, this is the gate opposite the repaired gate. Now they will pass through to either pasture or trailer, at our direction. The log is there to bridge the gap when the trailer is fully backed up.

It does work. We have done the three easiest loads ever over the last week while getting the AI process done on two cows.

I was also able to convert some old bedframe steel into a dolly for a pig feeder. One afternoon of messing around and a lot of convenience added to the pig feeding process. New welding skill, for the win. Headgate attempt is next.

2024 was our smoothest year. After 4 years of tweaking, adjusting, improving and optimizing we had the lowest ratio of labor + chores : production yet.

The biggest improvement this year has been integrating two boys (now 7&9) into dog and chicken management. It is a daily task to manage feed and water for the Livestock Guard Dogs and the Hens, as well as collecting the eggs. They are compensated per egg, so it varies by the day. They are really quite good at it and I’m proud of their efficiency in the task.

We cleared a huge range of branches on the north end of the pole barn and replaced a broken gate system. While we did the replacing, we went ahead and moved the placement of the gate to better fit our trailer access needs. Incremental improvement!

You will notice the red Packout tool storage system on the 4×4, and also in this picture in the house while I remodeled the bathroom. Huge time saver, a lot less walking back to the shop and much faster access to each tool, because it always has a home. Even for a DIY Homestead grade guy like me, this system is worth the investment for the time savings.

On the topic of organizing tools: Love getting the extension cords off shelves and workbenches. Now there is a single hanging organization system, another incremental improvement that pays dividends. When it is time to string up cables for deicing water tanks, easy access to each cable.

Family nearby replaced their wooden garage doors. They kept the wood for me and I converted them into worktop and shelving space in the shop. Nice improvement in feed & supplement storage and access for a low cost. Milk crates fit perfectly in the second level, making organization on the shelves a success. It’s a wonderful feeling when the shop is a asset to walk into, not a liability you groan and try to avoid.

While we’re in the shop, let’s talk about these Enbighten wifi electrical outlets. Originally I installed motion detecting LED panels in the shop. The idea was they would auto off when I was not in there at night. It’s a great plan, except the cats keep the lights on most nights. The shining is annoying in my bedroom window. Now I can turn them on and off from an app on my phone. Additionally, I can manage the electric fence remotely from the phone. Find a break and need to fix it? Turn the fence off. Make the repair. Turn it on. Huge time savings for electric fence maintenance, easily dozens of hours in a year. Incremental Improvement!

Since we’re looking at extension cords, diligent children, and a home remodel, check this out. There’s a green extension cord on the right side of the driveway. That 300ft of connected cable is there because the boys wanted to get our Nativity scene set up at the end of the driveway. I was in the middle of fussing with replacing trim and said “go help me by getting the power lines out there.” They knew where the cables were in the shop and ran them out without assistance. They were proud of their work, and they should be. It was a great help and gave them skin in the game as we set up the Christmas lights together.

Looking at equipment that drags gear around, sometimes you just barely manage to finish chipping wood and get the tractor in the barn while the steam is blowing out the radiator. Not a great feeling, and this is going to be some time investment to find the root cause and remedy the overheating.

Since we’re in the barn, time for hay! We haul the cattle hay around on the utility trailer. To feed the goats, we tip a bale over and cut it open, then peel hay off to toss into the feeder systems. I just like this pic of the girl and the goats playing around, so now you get to see it too.

Jenny developed an incremental improvement to this feeder from last year. She salvaged broken halves of 5 gallon buckets to make a new hay base . This prevents the tiny bits of hay from packing together and cementing the bottom of this wire arrangement and encourages more comprehensive eating of the hay.

Another Jenny concept: Affixing sheet steel on the north end of the barn. This greatly improves the storm resistance of the goat area in the winter. In the summer there’s still plenty of cross breeze to keep it from overheating. This expands the functional area of feeding hay to the goats, resulting in a healthier flock over winter.

Down at the south end, the other half of the flock has its own area. Jenny’s idea (see the theme?) was to add a passthrough gate for the farmers to farm better. Now it has a gate. Incremental improvement worth 2 minutes a night for 100 nights each winter. That’s time well spent.

You may run the numbers in your head and say “Well Robert, that took you both 3 hours to arrange and install. That’s 6 man hours. Not a good investment, that is a 2 year return to your labor!” To which I will say, “any minute saved on a daily chore is a minute farther away from frustration, annoyance and burnout. Taking 3 hours on a nice Saturday to make this a joyful experience for the family year round is worth it. Or in economics terms, the opportunity cost of our labor every night is high compared to the opportunity cost of a slow and peaceful Saturday morning. See also, that smile up in the pic.” Incremental Improvement!

A picture of a kid with a kid with another kid in the background is a good segue to some of your questions following the latest chicken processing day:

Q: “The air drying: I had not heard that needs to be done, I assume this is because you give the birds all a good rinse and just want to keep that moisture off of them for freezing?”

A: Bird skin will struggle to crisp up if it’s frozen with soggy skin. Drip/air drying helps with that. Eviscerate on the table, spray off with a hose, dunk in water in a utility sink for 10-20 minutes. After it sheds heat in the sink we move to a cooler with ice. Target is under 40f within the hour. The joints will feel stiffer when cold. Then drip/air dry for 15-20 minutes with those stiff joints. I run a big shop fan on low to keep air moving over it gently. Longer is fine too.

Q: “For bagging, you’re not using a vacuum sealer or anything, but the bags look nice and tight to the bird. Are you just dipping the bag in water to push the air out and then sealing it?”

A: I fully recommend these, We use them because Neighbor J.P. uses them because he learned to use them on a nearby pasture poultry operation. 100% success rate for both of us. texaspoultryshrinkbags.com/products/10-x-16-shrink-bags Unless the bird is over 8lb, then we size up to the turkey bag. There’s a straw that goes into the bag in the cavity of the chicken. When you dunk in 195f water the plastic begins to shrink. Remove from water. Pull the straw out and tighten zip tie completely with pliers. Let the bag dry and then label with included labels, which have excellent adhesion.

One for the road folks! There’s always some Wood to raise in 2025, Godspeed on your endeavors.

November is a busy season. Ideally our cattle go to the butcher in the fall. This maximizes weight from summer grass and minimizes winter hay costs. Meanwhile it cools down enough to run Cornish Cross meat chickens.

Then there’s plenty of barn clean out and winter prep to do. Our efficiency in winter chore time requirements has improved each year and that requires proper staging.

Early in October we completed goat meat deliveries for local customers. We ran a bit of a discount to clear freezer space for the incoming beef and chicken.

For beef, we took two steers to the butcher. One, they were the right size. Two, they were both very mooey and their time of serenading in the pasture was at an end. One was Beefy, a scrappy looking Angus type we picked up off Craigslist. His origin was with a family where each spouse thought the other wanted the cow, but neither would do much caring for him. Turns out neither wanted a cow and a sudden unemployment motivated that realization. Beefy looked cheap and was sold cheap. Then the healing power of grass, sunshine, and kelp went to work. Warts fell off, bald spots covered over and happy ears returned for his two years here. After turning his health around, he was a good investment for us and puts some very high quality beef on family tables.

The butcher did very well splitting our cuts this time. Sorting and delivery was smooth, and all meat delivered still frozen solid right into customer freezers. Happy customers, happy us, another success of grass made beef from Raising Wood.

Then it was time for the chickens.

In the spring we wanted a 22% protein blend of food and settled for a 20% protein feed, on account of availability. This fall we were able to get ahold of the 22%. I relished the thought of averaging 8lb birds. I had done the math, see, and we would process a week earlier then spring with great results

Didn’t work out that way. We started with 45 birds and ended with 25.  Strange and frustrating deaths persisted throughout our the raising process. No predation, just frequent “that’s a dead chicken” moments. I am guessing the feed was too strong and many bodies didn’t maintain health with the accelerated muscle growth. Back to 20% in the spring.

We moved some work flow stations around and then dispatched the boys to bring in fresh birds.

I made a lower height kill station and brand new shiny steel cones. The birds didn’t fit in the cones, so it was right back to the buckets we made in a hurry in the spring.

We abandoned the propane water heater solution and went with this electric unit from Roots&Harvest. Vast improvement in temp consistency and reliability. Double wall tank retains heat very well and there’s no flame to quietly blow out. You drain and wash it after the last scald, then refill and reheat to seal bagged chicken. That turn around takes 2 hours, which is long. Clean this first then heat it over lunch.

Then the bird goes to the plucker. I added a foot pedal switch to the circuit. Instead of bending over to it a switch every time, just step on the foot pedal. Great ergonomics.

Sometimes you find something in the bird that just ain’t right. We just remove that whole bird from the harvest and count it as loss.

I’m sure these are always removed from the food system in a factory, every time, right?

Home brew design for air drying the birds before bagging. This was new and experimental. It solved several problems from previous generations. It collapses into a smaller shape for storage. It is thicker pvc so less wobbly posts. It has braces on the bottom of the top x beam to minimize tip risk.

After thanking our friends who joined, we put 19 chickens in the freezer. Avg weight 7lbs. $2.90/# per bird in total costs. (Chicks, feed, ice, bags) Labor was made of love so no costs I guess.

A smoked seven pound bird is good for 3 dinners and 1 gallon of stock. At one per week that covers a lot of dinners, and we get a healthy bird on the table for the family. We’ll do this again in the spring.