Dropped Lelee the heifer off at the butcher Friday morning.
Two year old is crying while we drive home.
“Are you sad she’s gone?”
“NO I WANT TO EAT LEEEEELEEEE”
She Gets It
A Year of Chicken and Dune Knows What’s Up
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.
We Have The Meats
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.
Bacon Quest
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.
Build Beef Better
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.
