Raising Wood

Last night we learned some lessons while watching an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation.

When you hear a pop sound from the laundry room, it is not always benign.

Sometimes it is an egg gone bad after 18 days in the incubator. Sometimes those carefully heated eggs go pop and explode all over the inside of the incubator.

In about 6 minutes, the smell will waft it’s way to the couch where your vigilant wife will notice a foul stench. Your dog will not even stir.

In that intervening six minutes, the husband manages to make a bowl of popcorn from the cabinet right next to the incubator. He will also pour a beer with his head 12 inches from the incubator on the shelf. He will not notice anything amiss, but he is inordinately proud of the head of foam he produced in the glass.

The wife will go and take the lid off the incubator. She will see the rotted gray green goo splattered all over the interior and will begin to wake up the neighborhood with her protests and gagging over the smell.

Soon thereafter, even the sleeping dog and the covid survivor husband will realize “oh man that is AWFUL”

For the next hour and a half, going right up to midnight, the husband and wife will be involved in sorting and cleaning the good eggs, and the entire incubator twice. You will be throwing out all the malicious looking egg grenades remaining from that one hen your farmer friend gave you to feed your pig because it laid funny looking eggs and you were like “ain’t nothing wrong with these eggs, let’s incubate them!”

You will take everything outside to chemically sterilize under a flashlight. Your bottle will run out of sanitizer. The husband will be helpful and go get the wrong sanitizer.

Then every cat you own on 10 acres will come up to you scrounging for the snacky snack they smelled from the far end of the property. The cows and goats will stir from their sleep and demand snacks, because they have seen the farmer and the farmer is kind. Then you go to bed knowing that is the cleanest the incubator has been since it came from the factory.

It was a good episode of Star Trek though.

After months without rainfall, North Texas caught up in a hurry. Over 4 inches at our place in a day. News reported over 9 inches elsewhere in the DFW area. Now the record books won’t reflect our struggles because they gets us back to near average, but who needs glory of hard times when you’d just rather have the rain?

For us, there is much rejoicing. Scarcely a week ago we were hauling hay bales out to pastures to feed cattle. It’s time consuming, expensive, and not the best for putting beef on frames. There’s no substitute for fresh grass, everyday, all day. There may be a good second cutting on the market this year to get everyone squared away for winter.

Moving hay is a two man job everytime. Someone drives and someone manages the gates and trailer stowaways.

The rain came in with effective volume and deep soaking. There are still huge amounts of dew each morning from the ground humidity coming up. This native grass is resilient in drought and bounced back very quickly. We’re haven’t planted anything on it and will continue to cultivate what grows on the range here.

A new experience for us is significant erosion from the rainfall. It smoothed out a lot of peaks and valleys from tire tracks over the years. It also carved large swales and valleys of it’s own in the low spots.

We also made our first beef drop this Monday. Very happy with the quality and cleanliness of the butcher shop. I am certain we brought more flies in on our cattle then they had in the entire shop. Very much looking forward to collecting all the beef and delivering for our shareholders in a few weeks.

Somehow I never noticed the volume of food waste I produced. Well, not just me but my household. Kids are amazing at taking a plate of food, eating a tithe and walking away forever. By then I don’t want it, they don’t want it, and it’s too good for the trash. Dogs get the runs off it. What to do?

When the garden is up and running, we process an abundance of whole fruits and vegetables. Even without a garden, the family runs through lots of fruit waste. Banana peels, strawberry caps, melon rinds, squash caps, ect. Are there ancient solutions to modern problems?

Enter the chickens and the piggies. Omnivorous and eager, they consume all of our squandered wastes. Chickens get materials in their size first, then pigs get the rest. We’re not into cannibalism either so no chicken or eggs in the chicken stream nor pork in the pig stream.

Previously we used it for compost, but food in the compost invariably attracts vermin and I don’t need vermin. I’ve attempted vermicompost (worm bin) systems but the mighty wrigglers couldn’t keep up. Those systems don’t have the eager excitement or contented full look of the livestock. It’s just fun to give scraps to these protein conversion systems.

The USDA notes one third of prepared food in the USA goes into trash. Bring home 60lbs from the store and throw 20lbs away? What a waste. https://www.usda.gov/foodlossandwaste

Can you imagine a world where people feed the waste to chickens and piggies and lowered the cost of protein for everyone? For many men across man years, that was normal. Our separation of prepared food into trash is very abnormal.

How about eggs in abundance and bacon for dinner. It’s easier then you think to keep some hens, why not pull eggs from your trash?

No rain for 52 days. No grass growing for about 40 of those days. Feeding hay to cows and goats for 20 days now. We’re making plans for hay feeding into next April, and cost overruns are going to happen.

Agriculture is the original boom and bust economy. The boom years are great, the bust years are not. When you can’t grow grass, you feed hay. The hay economy is largely local because hay bales are bulky and heavy to move over the road.

I made a drive to Lufkin this week and noticed many trailers loaded with hay headed back into the DFW area. Our local hay retailer is selling out of every trailer load within two days at double the price per bale as last year.

 Trying to build a solution for the future, last year I set up a handshake agreement with a baler 2 miles from our farm. When we talked this summer to schedule a pickup, he replied that he was in Houston riding his bike because the grass turned to dust and wouldn’t bale. “If anyone tells you farming is a good way to make great money, they been lying to you!” He says.

So we get connected through church with someone who does hay 40 miles away. Make some deals and pay for the delivery included. His seventeen year old son makes the delivery and is far above his peers in maturity and capability. We’re looking forward to what ours will be like at that age . The last load he has available unloaded this past Sunday morning. Thanks to his abilities we have hay to get to Thanksgiving. But what about the actual winter?

Hay is often cut again in August for a second cut, keeping the market filled and ready for winter. But without rain, there’s not going to be a second cut of hay. Might could be one if it rains solid in August for an October cutting. Demand will be very high. Prices will be very high from fuel costs and fertilizer costs being through the roof right now.

Inflation takes time to move from producers to consumers. Because cattle are being culled to cut costs, beef will be cheaper at the store for the next few months. Starting next year expect a whiplash where beef will cost more, double triple range. Inflation and reduced supply are inevitable.

Solution? Buy a freezer, meet a farmer, put beef away today. Buy the dip!

The little spider was eaten by the large spider. My zoology contacts say it’s likely the female ate the male. Doesn’t sound good to me, but the garden moves forward without Mr. Arachnid.

I stopped at the end of the driveway to check the mailbox. When I get back in the car, a friendly grasshopper joined me. I gently encourage her to leave out the open door. While she hopped out, two more jump in. I grab them and toss them outside and quicky shut the door. Ain’t nobody got time for that!As I make the drive to the house, there were no fewer then 20 impacts on the side of my car. The grasshoppers clunk spook when you drive past so clunk they jump right into the side clunk of the car. Clunk. As crazy hot as it is right now (111f), there are the equivalent crazy volume of grasshoppers.

Jenny and some of the kids are down sick, so I’ve got all the animals and garden responsibilities this night. Usually I do the animals and maintenance tasks around the farm while Jenny cultivates and nurtures the garden after livestock. After several years of my anarchy gardening strategy, she has come along and enforced rigid rows and strict water disciplines. It’s working, even with the onslaught of grasshoppers doing their best impersonation of locusts this year. Clunk.

Gardens are busy places. Among the tomatoes I found flowers in the pollination stage, green tomatoes leveling up, and ripe red tomatoes for harvest. In the middle was a zipper spider, ready and eager to capture and consume grasshoppers tearing through the place. Look! Even a baby spider coming along nicely.

Taking a step away from any garden helps bring perspective. The distress and violence in always in the micro. It’s in the conflict of the insects and arachnids, weeds competing for water with the productivity plants, rampaging fungus flowering in the shadows, and dismal leaves rotting from ground contact.

When you see the whole macro garden you see abundance and re-creation. You see canopies of green making life from sunbeams. You see seeds wrapped in nutrients meant to be consumed. You see nothing is wasted, even the losses cycle back into the system for new life. I see the father God in that cycle, and it’s a reminder for me how he looks at the heart of the man and not just the problems obvious in the micro view.

One nights harvest, so many melons to eat and preserve and share. Time to turn these chickens loose of the clunkers.

We built a second version of a chicken tractor for the incubator champion chickens and moved them outside to the grass.

The design is heavily influenced by the ubiquitous Joel Salatin builds from Polyface Farms. Since we had a truck bed liner salvaged from a neighbors trash, we used it for the canopy in the back.

Every day this gets moved to a new patch of grass, the food bucket is checked and the water is managed. Protection from predator and wandering off while befitting from the pasture and fertilizing the grass. Wins all around.

The chicks pecked their way out of the shells and moved cheerfully into a chick pen.

Jenny set up a brooder heater. Last year we used a traditional heat lamp and has success with it. This year we are using a flat panel heater to lower the risk of fire and burns on little fingers. It is working well, with one problem.

The problem is the chicks want to roost. They specifically want to roost on top of the heater, freely depositing chicken manure across the surface of it. Our Good&Cheap(TM) solution is a foil pan fitted to the top. It blocks the surface access without causing any new problems.

One surprise was how many different times and places the chicks managed to pry under the foil pan. We would hear distress cheeping and discover one roosting in the foil pan oven on top of the heater. The fourth iteration of the foil pan finally blocked all of these intrepid adventures.

There was another surprise this weekend. A new kitten joined the workshop. We’re calling her Blue Belle, and more on her in the next post.

The chicks pecked their way out of the shells and moved cheerfully into a chick pen.

Jenny set up a brooder heater. Last year we used a traditional heat lamp and has success with it. This year we are using a flat panel heater to lower the risk of fire and burns on little fingers. It is working well, with one problem.

The problem is the chicks want to roost. They specifically want to roost on top of the heater, freely depositing chicken manure across the surface of it. Our Good&Cheap(TM) solution is a foil pan fitted to the top. It blocks the surface access without causing any new problems.

One surprise was how many different times and places the chicks managed to pry under the foil pan. We would hear distress cheeping and discover one roosting in the foil pan oven on top of the heater. The fourth iteration of the foil pan finally blocked all of these intrepid adventures.

There was another surprise this weekend. A new kitten joined the workshop. We’re calling her Blue Belle, and more on her in the next post.

This spring we are planning on hatching chicken eggs. Jenny is actually, I’m mostly observing this project.

In planning a Hatch, there are steps. First, a daddy rooster and a momma hen… What’s that? Ok, you get it.

Because we’re American, modern, and do not have a broody hen, the fertilized eggs go in an incubator for three weeks. It’s like a spa for 22 chicken eggs that doesn’t at all remind me of humans hatching in Huxley’s Brave New World.

Now there are details to manage and this engineer farm lady is all over it. Adjust this dial to manage humidity, that one to manage temp, this one there to manage turning. Did I mention the turning and the lights? Because this little R2D2 unit is making sure it’s still busy at night on my dresser when sleep is what’s happening.

Sunday is our big day, although maybe we see some pips coming in Saturday. Who knows?? Or maybe nothing and our rooster is no good with his hen harem!

We are planning for life though and have the brooder pen ready with pine shavings, heat bed, water and feed. Give’m a month and they’ll be ready for outdoor time; just in time for the phase two hatching to commence.

Scarlett earned the nickname of “The Blimp” because she was getting huuuge in late pregnancy. Then Jenny noticed her milk dropped and the hip tendons loosening up. Delivery is coming soon, maybe, so we isolated The Blimp to her own pen.

We came home from church and found her laboring and delivering the second kid right after we put our own kids to bed. She is a champ momma and was busy trying to clean up both kids. Then Jenny noticed another tiny hoof coming out a tiny way… But no delivery labor.

We monitored for ten minutes with no movement. Jenny went and did some gentle checking and adjusting. Very shortly afterwards, another delivery and three good sized healthy goats joined the flock.

We help dry off the kids that Scarlett couldn’t get to and watched until everyone learned to latch on and get milk. Then off to bed, before midnight this time.

The next morning one of the boys charges back up to the house. “Mom! Scarlett had 4 baby goats!!”

Turns out she didn’t, a milk marauder found her way to join the fun and nurse off yet another distracted momma. Jenny fixed that and it’s been all cute sleeping and fun games since then.