Chickens – Raising Wood

May 5, 2025April 22, 2026

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.

Before the 3 hour drive back when the AC broke, everyone was happy

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.).

Total costs for this run of birds. Does not include infrastructure investments.

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:

An additional sink improves sanitation and processing speed

The birds ended their travels across the drive from the processing station, minimizing travel time for the next bird up

Working together in stages of 4 birds at a time

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.

Bonus picture: The wind power museum in Lubbock is worth a 90 minute side trip. Ravens out there making nests on wind mills out of barbed wire scraps.

April 23, 2025April 22, 2026

Spring Cometh

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.

He is indeed. Now there’s a bird nest behind this in the shop

January 11, 2025April 22, 2026

2024 Grab Bag: – Incremental Improvements & Answers

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 25, 2024April 22, 2026

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.

214qts of cooler capacity=1 half of Zeus without additional ice

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.

Bright yellow fats and odd growth? Yer out.

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.

Y’all keep your eyes open. Scammy tactics like this are waiting to catch you. (Cheaper per shell in 12 pack vs 18 pack)

May 31, 2024April 23, 2026

Meat Birds Results

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.

March 13, 2024April 22, 2026

Springing into Meat Chickens

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.

The only time the goats didn’t jump on top was this picture

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

January 15, 2024April 23, 2026

Redeeming the Roosters

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.

November 4, 2022April 23, 2026

A Pepper, A Blue, Them Chicken Gardeners

New puppy. Kitten is now a cat. Chickens prepare a garden bed. Conflict around the house.

If you can say Pepper with German inflection, let me know

Pepper the puppy has joined the household. She’s west German working line and comes from friends who raise dogs with effective even hands. I’ve been around many dogs and raised my own. This little pepper girl is incredibly intelligent and managed potty training before 4 months old. She has a bright future here with the family.

Some friends did some minimizing in life and eliminated their chicken setup. We were happy to make a win win deal and bring it home. Now it is set up for winter. The plan is to add high carbon materials like grass clippings, hay and wood chips to the ground. The chickens will poop on it and then use their feet to claw and turn the chips.

Carbon+nitrogen+biome= soil. Come spring, we’ll take this down and plant seeds for a garden in the prepared bed. That’s the theory, anyways.

Blue the kitten has grown to Blue the cat. He has worked out how to climb the coop and hunt the chickens inside. He’s very pleased with his little lion king self. I’ll have to add a roof segment or netting.

Pepper and Blue have not come to terms yet. Hissing and barking abound in my shop when I forget to shut the door. But I’m optimistic they will become friendly, the other cats and dogs all get along just fine.

October 11, 2022April 23, 2026

Chicken Tractor Refurbished

We moved all the hens into the A-frame chicken tractor, and we have some chicks who need a new home out on the grass. While our original mobile chicken coop was empty, it is time to make some repairs.

It was a laundry list of small repairs. Rusted metal with holes that needed patching in the roosting box. Metal screens detached from the frame thanks to some grain hungry goats shoving their heads in. Wheel frames bent and making it difficult to pull around. Broken ramp to climb into the roost box. Roosting bars unattached and falling everywhere.

Wonderful fall weather made the entire process fun and enjoyable. Somehow we did the entire batch of repairs in perfect harmony, not a single disagreement on how or what to do. These are good days.

August 17, 2022April 23, 2026

Food Recovery Systems

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?