My run of bad luck with horses continued right through 2011 and I’m hoping with all my heart that it’s over going into 2012.
Digger was retired from his short show career in July due to a torn suspensory ligament. He’s cleared for trail riding and if it ever stops raining and snowing around here we’ll get out to it.
Thanks to the generosity of my friend and trainer, I have a new reiner to ride, her horse Bill.
Bill knows way more than I do and so we’ve had some getting to know you (learning how to ride you) growing pains over the busy holiday and vacation season of November – January. Hopefully this morning’s fairly solid ride is the first of many, better, days.
He’s got quite the personality to go with his ability, and so I thought that he should have a showy pair of bell boots for our practice rides. I’ve been told they’re not show pen appropriate, but that’s okay, we’ll get plenty of use out of them!
Butchering day 2011 has come and gone, and 74 finished birds headed for various freezers. This year’s birds turned out a pretty consistent size, at an average of 4 lb 10 oz and a cost of $10 each ($2.17/lb). A pretty favorable comparison to our costs the past couple of years. There are a few things I’d do differently next year that would likely increase our costs a bit, but more on that later.
There’s a lot of fear and revulsion surrounding the Cornish X broiler, and a lot of it was emailed to me after my last broiler post. But you know what? At the end of the day they’re just chickens. They’re a bit more fragile, a bit slower, a lot younger, but they still chase bugs, they still appreciate treats, they still like to bathe in the dirt on a sunny day. And they still lived a happy carefree life until they met their swift end with a sharp knife.
We didn’t lose any birds after the first 2 weeks (3 in the first 48 hours and 1 at two weeks old) and then we culled one with a non-healing broken leg (I stepped on her at the 2 week mark) at 6 weeks because she wasn’t doing well. In the last 10 days I lost 3 more to aerial attack by a hawk. She must have spent days figuring out how to get in between the flash tape strands and then it took me until the third dead broiler to realize it was a bird and not a raccoon killing them. A lot more flash tape and we stymied her – she sat in that tree and screamed at my mother and I for quite a while before flying off in search of accessible prey.
Butcher day dawned clear and very very cold. It was 24F when Mike and I got up to do morning chores at 6am. At 8:30 when we were filling the scaling pot it was still frozen solid.
Luckily as we got underway it warmed up and got to almost 40F in the sun. We got into a rhythm, and while it turns out my little brother Sam plucks birds far faster than any of us managed, we finished the butchering and cleaning part of 74 birds in about 4 hours. Not bad for our 4th year working as a team.
Mike and I cooked up a fresh 4-1/2 pound bird for dinner the next day and wow, that’s some seriously good chicken. It was great off the grill and the rest of the bird made lunches and then one of our favorite soups. Can hardly wait to eat these all winter.
What would I do differently? What did I learn about raising Cornish X? I’ll take a few things away from this year to do differently next year. And yes, we will be doing Cornish X again, rather than the longer growing Slow Broilers.
I’ll feed the birds a bit more. We did a 20% broiler mash from start to finish. Because I was worried about the birds growing too fast I pulled feed for 12 hours each night. It meant we didn’t have any health problems caused by them growing too fast, but we did end up with a few really tiny birds at the end and only a few over 6 pounds.
Next time I’d give them feed for 16 hours a day and might add another big feeder. I expect it would increase our cost per bird by about $1.50 but would probably not affect our price per pound as they’d be bigger birds. It will be a balancing act as we all agreed the sweet spot is 4 – 5.5 pounds, which is where 75% of our birds finished up this year.
We raise our birds in a shed with attached pasture/yard. This year we went through a lot more pine shavings as well as ended up with a dirtier shed at the end. I typically deep bed the shed – which means you keep putting fresh bedding on top as needed and clean it all out at the end. Turns out that these guys, while they had access to the outside starting at 2 weeks, don’t spend as much time outside which means we needed fresh shavings a lot more often.They seemed to go out first thing in the morning and in the late afternoon to chase bugs and each other. They took their dust baths in the middle of the day when the yard is in full sun. But they spent a lot of time napping inside by the feed. Next time I’ll move their feed/water outside on nice days to get them out of the shed to not only get them outside, but to reduce our bedding costs.
I’ll get them earlier in September. It really is easier to raise them in the fall around here. The weather is reliably better in the fall than it is in the spring and we didn’t have to worry as much about keeping babies warm in September than we do in February. That said, we didn’t get them until the end of September which pushed butchering into mid-November. We seriously lucked out on the weather – the days before and after our butcher day were miserably cold, rainy and windy. By getting them Labor Day week we could be butchering just after Halloween – before it typically gets nasty.
The decision to try raising Cornish X was driven mostly by our desire not to be butchering at Christmas time, but in the end, I think experimenting with them was a good thing. I never really doubted Nita’s position on them, but at the same time since we don’t tractor/pasture our birds I just wasn’t sure how it would work out. All in all, I’m pretty happy with the way these birds turned out and I look forward to even better results next year.
I’m very pleased to announce that there will be a 5th annual Dark Days challenge. The wonderful writers at Not Dabbling in Normal have graciously volunteered to help me organize and run it this year.
What does that mean to you? It means that you’ll use the form below to join by December 4th, and I’ll post announcements and help with recaps, but recaps will be done by the Not Dabbling contributers and will appear on the Not Dabbling in Normal blog.
With all this fresh enthusiasm (and help!) we’re going to recruit far and wide and try to make this the biggest and best year of the challenge to date! We’re still finalizing all the details, but there are likely to be THEME WEEKS and PRIZES and a whole lot of other reasons that this will be the best challenge ever.
So what are you waiting for? Sign up! Join in! Cook the winter blahs away with fabulous local food all winter! But seriously, I hope you’ll join us in eating locally, sustainably and fantastically well this year!
Dates
The challenge runs from Sunday, November 27th, 2011 to Saturday, March 31st, 2012.
What’s the Challenge?
Cook one meal each week featuring SOLE (sustainable, organic, local, ethical) ingredients, write about it on your blog and email your happy recapper a link to your post. It’s really that simple, but at the same time, it can really be that hard. Need more details? See the links in the right side bar to the past Challenges.
What does local mean?
Traditionally, local food challenges call for a 100 mile radius. Winter time is more difficult in many climates, especially if you’re new to eating locally, so my default winter definition is 150 miles. You can choose to make your radius smaller or slightly larger as you need. Typical exceptions to the local requirement are oils, coffee, chocolate and spices. If you’re making fewer or more exceptions, please note that on your first post.
What if I can’t find every ingredient locally?
That’s why this is called a challenge! If you can’t find every ingredient, or heck even most ingredients, please still write about your attempts. This is just as much about what we learn, the obstacles we find, and the decisions we make as it is about cooking with SOLE ingredients.
What if I don’t have a ‘good’ camera or I’m not a great photographer?
Take pictures with what you’ve got and do your best – for this challenge, taste and creativity are what counts, not looks. If you don’t have a camera, no worries, just tell us the story and we’ll use our imaginations.
What if I don’t have a blog?
You are still welcome to play along, you just won’t be included in the weekly recaps. Instead, we ask that you come by each week and add your meal/experiences as a comment to one of the recap posts.
Are there deadlines for posts? When will recaps go up?
We haven’t yet decided if there will be weekly or bi-weekly recaps – it depends largely on how many participants we get. But generally, you’ll need to have your posts up by Sunday evening and recaps will go up Monday or Tuesday. Full details will be emailed to participants as soon as we figure it out.
How do I sign up? Registration for the 5th Dark Days Challenge is now closed. Please join us over at Not Dabbling in Normal for photos, recaps and more! If you missed the sign-up, you’re welcome to cook along, just add a link to your meals in the appropriate region’s recap each time.
That, my friends, is the largest bag of broiler feed ever. When I called up to In Season to order my feed we agreed that it sounded like I need a half tonne (metric). I assumed that meant I would get twenty-five 20kg bags like usual (they’re brown paper and recyclable). Luckily I had Mike drop an empty pallet where I wanted them to leave it when they delivered while we were at work, or we’d be trying to figure out how to move this monstrosity. Looks like we’ll be hauling feed to the birds in a 5 gallon bucket this year…
The past 2 years we did broilers in the spring, butchering right about Memorial Day. This year though I just didn’t have myself together enough in February to have broiler chicks arrive so we decided to do a fall batch instead. Then I forgot to order the chicks to arrive in August (and it was HOT). That was when I decided, based on Nita’s success and advice, to try our hand at the fast-growing Cornish X.
They arrived on Thursday morning, a day earlier than expected, and have been subjected to 80 degree weather ever since. We ordered 75 (100 was WAY too many last year) and the hatchery sent 81, I think. It could have been 82, I lost track once I counted to 80. I guess we’ll know when we count heads at the end.
We’ve lost 3 so far. The first two didn’t surprise me as they were weak when they arrived. The third caught me off guard earlier today. I thought we were going to lose a 4th, but he/she seems to have rallied tonight. I think they were stressed by the hot weather in shipping and then I’ve had a hard time regulating the temperature of the uninsulated shed with the hot/humid weather during the day and the cool/clammy nights. I actually had to turn the heat lamps off for most of the afternoon as it was oppressively hot in the shed. Hopefully the arrival of cooler weather this coming week will help us all out a bit.
They were cracking me up yesterday. One of them found a small beetle in a corner of the shed. They must have spent 15 minutes chasing each other around and trading off who had it. Poor beetle was alive and kicking through the whole thing as 3-day old chick beaks weren’t strong enough to kill it. I finally had to go do other chores so I’m not sure how the game resolved in the end.
Tonight I was watching them sleep and thinking that they’re a bit like the Borg. They never truly stop moving. Always readjusting themselves, moving further under or away from the heat, snuggling up to a neighbor, deciding it’s time for a refreshing sip of water. I love watching them when they’re this tiny, fluffy and cute. Especially since I’m well aware that they won’t be cute any more in a week…
56 days and counting and they’ll be in the freezers and we’ll be done for another year. Seems that deciding to go with the faster birds could cut our costs by 1/3 or more even with all organic feed and free ranging them.
Ever since Michael Ruhlman wrote about Americans being too stupid to cook (or at least thinking we are), I’ve been noticing in conversation how many of the people I know (friends, co-workers, cousins) are intimidated by cooking from scratch. They think that cooking is hard when, really, it’s only as hard as you want to make it. A couple of recent conversations with my friend and trainer Kari (hi Kari) really made me aware how many intelligent people would like to cook, but have no idea where to start.
She was asking me (again) if I really like to cook and if I really cook most nights (yes and yes) and I was saying that this time of year almost doesn’t count since I’m usually just steaming a veggie from the garden and serving it with a protein or starch – simple and quick. After a bit of hemming and hawing she admitted that she wasn’t sure how to steam a vegetable. In further conversations it was revealed that she’s intimidated by things she’s not good at (aren’t many of us) and I volunteered to teach her to cook this winter.
But it all got me to thinking how easy it is to take the ability to cook for granted once you gain some knowledge and some confidence. I couldn’t cook the way I do now when I first moved in with Mike a dozen years ago. But what I did know how to do (thanks Mom!) was a few really basic things like cooking white rice, steaming veggies, and roasting a chicken. Those skills kept us fed fairly inexpensively and fairly healthfully until I decided to learn to cook shortly after we married in 2004.
While I can whip up a gourmet meal these days without too much anxiety, I still default to simple meals with simple ingredients, just cooked with more flavor and skill than I used to have. I expect that as I teach Kari how to cook this winter those are the types of skills and meals we’ll start with, after all you have to learn to walk before you can trot, lope or gallop.
In the spirit of that idea, I realized tonight while whipping up dinner alongside a canning pot full of diced tomatoes (did you know that 25# of tomatoes makes 24 pints, diced?) that what I was making was a good example of a simple, delicious, fairly inexpensive meal that everyone should have at their disposal.
Dinner tonight fit my mostly local, sustainable, organic preferences and required little effort and no skill on my part. It would have fed 2 people for less than $10 and took me only 15 minutes to make. Sure, it’s not really gourmet, but it’s a heck of a lot better than any canned pasta sauce or frozen pasta skillet meal I’ve ever had.
Ravioli with Tomatoes and Basil Serves 2, takes 15 minutes
fresh ravioli – 2 serving package
butter – 1 to 2 tablespoons
vine ripe tomatoes* – 2 medium, diced (from farmer’s market)
walla walla sweet onion – 1/4 of one large onion, diced (from neighbor)
fresh basil – a handful, chopped (from garden)
salt and pepper – to taste
Italian parmesan** – shredded, to taste
Bring a pot of salted water (add a couple of tablespoons of salt) to a boil. While the water is heating put a skillet on a burner over medium heat. Melt the butter and add the onion. Cook it for a few minutes until the onion gets soft and goes a bit translucent around the edges. Add the tomatoes, basil, and a bit of salt and pepper. If you like a bit of heat in your sauce you can also crumble a bit of crushed red pepper in at this point. Cook the sauce until the pasta is done – I usually assume fresh ravioli takes about 5 minutes. Drain the pasta, split it into two bowls, cover with sauce and cheese.
To go with this you can make a simple salad and/or a bit of toasted bread topped with butter and parmesan and put under the broiler until the cheese browns a bit. Or you can be like me and eat all that pasta with a glass of wine by yourself while your husband is off chasing elk with his bow. It was really good and I refuse to apologize for my gluttony…
*or sub one 14.5 oz can of quality organic diced tomatoes
** I’ve tried all the local versions and most of the quality US versions, I prefer Italian. I often buy a really nice chunk and grate my own, no harm in buying it pre-shredded if you prefer.
D tolerates hanging out with the hens. He'd rather be out on pasture, but his bum fetlock has him cooped up in smaller spaces to keep him from moving faster than a walk. Mostly he ignores them, or pushes them out of his way, herding them wherever he doesn't want to be.
Of course the girls aren't sure what to make of him either...
Blue Andalusian and Black Star hens looking around. What's that?
But eventually everyone settles down. Digger to eating grass and the hens to scratching for bugs.
I’m trying to get back into the photography/blog groove. To make that easier I think I’m going to lower my post requirements bar – so be prepared for some short, sweet and infrequently funny posts in the coming weeks. Because really, if one is going to have a blog, one should damn well write on it more often than once a month!
On a sunny evening, sometimes a cat just needs somewhere to hang that's up off the ground.
I was simply checking camera settings when I took this, but for some reason I find it hilarious to have a picture of a headless horse. And, hey, he's a boy horse so does that make it a picture of a headless man horse?
Digger is now our only horse (long story) and has become quite the friendly people oriented creature. This was him wondering if there was a) a treat in my pocket, and b) if he could have it. Yes to both.
This year's late July garden looks like any other year's early June garden due to a combination of a late spring, nonexistent summer, and a late start on my part. We've got salads and broccoli and who knows what will happen with the rest... Oh well.
Digger and I got our picture taken by a local photographer yesterday and I can’t decide which of these two is my favorite of us. I guess maybe I’ll have to get prints made of both…
And now I’m off to put the dogs out, check the cats, and kiss my pony goodnight.
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