Winter on the Farm

Winter poses a variety of challenges even for a small farm like ours. Though our goal has never been to receive an income from the farm, it still needs to operate like a business and generate profits from some parts that pay for other parts - feeding us along the way. With this in mind we've been trying to keep up egg production this winter. A lot of hobby farmers put their layers in the freezer come winter as it's not worth the hassles. I might agree in some ways but it's nice to have a relatively steady (albeit tiny) income from eggs sales which will eventually go toward our hay purchase in the summer. Our two lambs will go to slaughter soon and we hope to sell some lamb to friends and coworkers then. Here are some of our solutions to the obstacles that winter provides.

Lack of Light

As anyone who has kept chickens would know, chickens need a supplemental light source starting in the fall to encourage egg production. The pituitary gland behind a chickens eye is stimulated by light which creates a hormone that eventually reaches the ovary via their bloodstream and kicks egg production into gear - amazing! So with two incandescent bulbs on for several hours at the start and end of each day, these ladies are showered in light for 15 hours/day. With this we've been able to keep the chickens from molting and maintain pretty solid egg production. These girls were 18 months old when we got them at the end of September so their egg-laying days are numbered anyway. Overall this fall/winter, egg production has been rather good from our 40 - then 35 (cat attack) - now 32 (1 drowning in the big water trough, 1 egg eater was "offed", 1 skunk attack) hens.


Frozen Eggs

As Christmas mail volumes have increased at work (I'm a letter carrier) I've been getting home later in the day. This means the eggs aren't collected as soon as I'd like so two problems have resulted. The first is that the eggs have been freezing and second is that the chickens aren't coming outside due to the cold and then get bored and end up eating their own eggs. This is a strange behaviour that can be difficult to change as I understand. Our neighbour Edie gave us some egg-like rocks she found on a Lake Superior beach last summer and I've added those into the laying boxes in hopes that a harshly unsuccessful peck at the "egg"will discourage further attempts. Otherwise, I've loaded the two end laying boxes and all of the lower laying boxes with straw in hopes that some insulation might help with egg freezing. Usually we get a lot of sunshine in the winter and this is less of a problem as the barn is south facing but this hasn't been the case this winter thus far. All this put together has resulted in cleaner eggs and more of them so some moderate success.

Chicken Sh!t




Another issue with winter, again with the chickens, is that they don't like to venture too far. Starting in the fall these "free-range" ladies weren't getting much further than the barnyard and once some colder weather set in the furthest they would get was into the part of the barn where the sheep, llama and alpacas eat and sleep. Unfortunately, the quaint little scene of chickens mingling with the mammals is incredibly frustrating because the chickens will invariably end up perching atop the manger and sh!tting all over the fresh hay. Obviously, no one is interested in chicken excrement flavouring on their hay and
it goes untouched and thus wasted. So with some fencing I picked up at the free store (dump) a few months ago, I put together a bit of a chicken yard for the hens. They don't use it as much as I'd like them to but if I'm able to keep some wasted hay or straw on top of the snow they will come outside and get some nice fresh air. I usually dump kitchen scraps into this fenced area instead of in the barn and that gets the hens outside at least for a few minutes.





Hydration Station

Keeping all 43 beings out there well watered in the winter is a bit of a challenge. My friends Brendan and Marcelle at Sleepy G Farm have this great setup with a frost-free outdoor faucet conveniently located near their chicken barn. That is definitely the way to go but before we invest in such a thing I use a good old toboggan to haul water out to the barn. It's good practice for the syrup season to lug buckets of water up from the basement everyday! In order to keep the water in liquid form I've got a heating element in the big trough and an aluminum covered element that sits under the water fount for the chickens. Both work rather well, though our electricity bill does reflect this additional load.

With all these extra issues in mind we're contemplating whether or not to continue with egg production for the rest of the winter. The mammals are relatively easy to take care of in the winter. All they really need is a constant supply of hay, water and shelter and they're happy. Ippi and Izzy will go to the abattoir soon so hay needs will decrease a bit. The chickens on the other hand are a bit of work. Feeding, watering and egg washing take up a fair amount of time and though I really like having them around it may be more economical to keep hens just in the Spring/Summer/Fall. If we end up putting the layers in the freezer, eventually destined for the soup pot, I'll be sure to first freeze many dozen eggs worth of blended eggs into ice cube trays to enjoy for the rest of the winter. I've done this in the past and when cooked they're almost as good as freshly scrambled eggs, but without the trip to the grocery.

Some of the livestock we acquired over Christmas....

And a pic of Nina.....

Ella saying hi to the sheep...

 





And finally, another tricky thing about winter is keeping kids' mitts and boots on. We use duct tape to seal them to Ella's coat. It works rather well.

Sugar Shack Addition

Last spring as the syrup season approached the weather turned very strange and it became clear that we wouldn't be able to tap the trees. We had 25 degree days in the second week of March, which melted all the snow, dried the soil at the bush and we felt it best to simply not have a season. In the end I'm glad we made that tough call as it would've been a tough summer for our birch trees and further stress from tap holes would not have been good. So we had a break from birch syrup production for a year, a bittersweet experience. 

Unfortunately, I had just laid out a good chunk of cash for a reverse osmosis filtration system which will aide in making our syrup production much more efficient. The unit went in the basement and construction of an addition to the sugar shack, in which the RO unit would be housed, was put off till this fall. So last Saturday construction began.  

The week prior I bought and had delivered the lumber needed for the project. As is usually done I hauled the wood in using the ATV. After many loads, the materials were safely stored in the shack. 

This past Saturday, Larry Bockus and I headed out to get the addition started. We got the floor on, posts and beams up and one rafter cut to serve as a template for the rest of them. The following day, Dave Sr. and I continued on. He drove up to Thunder Bay on short notice to help out and with major rain destroying the highway at Wawa, dad was forced to take the long way round Superior through Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota! He made it though and put in a few days of hard work out there.

By Sunday, we had the headers, rafters and strapping on, ready for the steel/plastic roofing. 

I took a vacation day on Monday and we got the steel on.

On Tuesday, after work, we took to the OSB sheathing. To get it into the bush we made a travois, the suggestion of Dave Sr. (aka MacGyver). It worked really well! 

By Tuesday at about 6:30pm the project was done! Fast work, I'd say. I'm glad to have this up as now I can get the plumbing for the RO in place and insulate the room so the family can spend the odd night out there this winter. Thanks to Larry for helping to get the project rolling and a big thanks to Dave Sr. for making the drive north to help with this! There's not much better than building something with your dad. 

The Flock/Herd

It took me a long time to decide on a name for our cria but I've finally decided on Nina. A good Spanish name that I think suits her. Here she is with her mom Ivy. 

This is how Nina spends most of her time each day. Ivy is a great mom and stands for long periods of time to let her baby nurse. We're not used to this as the lambs are so aggressive when nursing. They kneel down and slam their mouths onto their moms udders, sometimes lifting moms back end off the ground slightly, suckle for a few seconds and it's over. The alpacas nursing sessions are so relaxed and nurturing by comparison. Nina will spend up to 5 minutes under there sometimes!

Here's Esther. A lot has been written about her here already but to summarize Esther, she's a: carrot and apple loving, affectionate yet temperamental, brave but timid guard llama. She's great at her job, despite some new competition from Domini.

Here's a few of the girls all in a row. I tried to take individual pictures of everyone today but it's in their nature to stick close together when feeling threatened, even by me. From the left there's Mirabelle, Hazel or Henny (I STILL can't tell them apart), Izzy, Freckles and Ippi. Mirabelle is the ovine matriarch around here. She's mom to Freckles, Hazel and Henny. We're quite happy with our little flock now and it's fun to have all the ewes very closely related. We'll bring in an unrelated Ram each year to service the ewes and with only four of them the genetics are quite easy to work out.
Ippi and Izzy are great lambs. It's hardly fair to write too affectionately about animals that will go to slaughter in a few short months, but it's our philosophy that in order to really live a good life here a name and a relationship with the animal helps. Ippi is a lot of fun and he's developing a common tendency of rams that is to be very friendly with humans. When we book an appointment for him at the local abattoir I'll be sure to get his fleece back as the black and white will make a nice sheepskin. Ippi's sister, Izzy, is a lovely little sheep. She's still very timid but cute as anything. I took her to the vet a couple months ago as she had a lame foot. Turned out to be just a sprained ankle (or equivalent thereof) and after some pain medication she stopped limping. Though costly to visit the vet it's worth it as Izzy runs around now as if nothing ever happened.

 Hazel and Henny, seen below, are never far from each other. In fact, I'd bet they've not been more than 50 feet from one another since birth. They look nearly identical, except that Hazel has a patch of black fleece on the right side of her neck. You can't see it unless you move the fleece around and find it so telling these two apart is very difficult. They're still quite young and neither had a successful birth this Spring. They've grown up a lot this summer though and have matured a bit as they're not as skittish as they used to be. I'm hoping they produce some nice lambs next Spring and I think they'll be much more ready to do so then.

Mirabelle, the matriarch and leader of the flock. She does whatever she wants whenever and those who want to follow can...and usually do. A couple weeks ago she reasserted her role as leader by bringing Freckles down a few notches. I don't know how it came about but these two butted heads with one another for hours one day and eventually it was obvious that Freckles had lost.
Mirabelle has the loudest Bah of the lot and when I feed the chickens each morning before work I try to do so without being seen by her. If she knows I'm around she bah's to "ask" for grain and I fear that all the neighbours will be awoken.

Domini is an interesting girl. She's nice enough but has an edge to her and we've not yet established a good relationship. Interestingly she seems to be fixing to take over as guardian, or at least as an early warning system. She's got a keen, though often misguided, eye/ear and alerts us all to things lurking along the tree line with her high pitched impression of a cartoon squeaky wheel. Always on the lookout, I fear that Dom will greatly reduce my chances of filling my deer tags right off the farm this season.

Carrots, Kale and Tomato Ketchup

After a couple couple good frosts the carrots were ready to harvest. With Ella's help we pulled them all a couple days ago and now we'll store them in a plastic barrel with about an inch of water in the bottom. The carrots sit on a slate tile which is elevated from the bottom of the barrel on bricks. The micro-climate in the barrel maintains good humidity level which keeps the carrots crisp all winter long.  

 Here's Beth showing off some of the larger carrots, under the watchful eye of Esther, the carrot-loving llama.

We grew a lot of different tomatoes this summer, some of which were heirloom varieties, thanks to our friend Will. When he was laid up after a knee surgery Will started a whole bunch of tomato plants and gave some to us. We lost track of which were which but they're all delicious. Now that they're finally ripening, after sitting in the sun in our spare room, we have to deal with them. We've got a batch of pasta sauce on the stove right now and yesterday I made ketchup - for the first time ever. I found a recipe by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall of River Cottage fame and it called for 6kg of tomatoes - perfect.

One of the heirloom plants yielded about 30 of these guys!

The toms were all sorts of colours from pink to deep red and yellow. 

 I used the apple sieve to separate the seeds and skins. 

The recipe said it would take about an hour to cook the sauce, but it took way longer. A few glitches along the way and I got 12 bottles in the end. The spices that went in the ketchup included cinnamon, mace, celery seed, all spice, cloves, mustard, pepper, bay leaves, garlic and paprika. It's pretty good but if I were to do it again I'd lay off the celery seed as it's a bit strong. I think that because the ketchup took so long to reduce down to a thicker consistency it would have been best to remove the spice bag earlier. 

We pulled the kale plants yesterday and today I blanched it and froze it. 

We're nearly done processing all the food now. Just a few more spices to dry, more pasta sauce to freeze and these three squirrels will be ready for winter.

Cria, Steel Roof, Local Food Potluck

A lot has happened here since my last post. First, and most excitingly, our cria was born. She arrived on  August 31st at about 10am. Beth had checked on Ivanka (mum) at 9:30am and didn't witness anything abnormal. When she checked again at around 10:30am the cria was out, standing, and still wet. When the animals birth like that it's a lot less stressful than being there for the whole thing and trying to "help". The cria, still unnamed, is doing really well. She runs around the pastures every evening and once she reaches a certain speed she prances along with all four legs bounding simultaneously, like a reindeer. It's fun to watch her run circles around everyone else. The lambs are growing out of their playful stage already so the cria plays by herself. It's really cute. I forgot to take pictures of her when newly born, but I did take a short video. Until about a week old she had one ear that was sort of flipped inside-out. I put some tape on it to train it into position and now it's fine.

 And a picture from yesterday. She's growing quickly, which is no surprise as just about every time I see her she's nursing.

Last weekend Laura and Craig came over to help out with the steel roofing over the deck. In about 5 hours we got it all up and the next day I did the flashing and ridge cap. 

Done! I'm so glad to be finished this project. It only took from May till now! We'll be enjoying some shade next summer finally. With the gates up and railings all done too, the whole deck serves as a playpen for Ella. 

 This past Sunday we hosted a local food potluck. Back in May we challenged all our friends to try to grow/raise/hunt/fish something over the summer to bring to our place later in September. People were up for the challenge and 57 people came over. We had a fantastic meal with dishes like: Slate River Valley squash, Dexter beef curry, Grouse pot-pie with king bollette mushrooms, a roast Townline Farm chicken, venison stew, tomato soup, Nym Lake pickerel, cabbage coleslaw, Ham in birch syrup etc etc. It was a great dinner, enjoyed by all I think. Later, we played some games including and egg on the spoon race, potato sack race and a hay bale toss. Beth and I were so busy on the day that we forgot to take pictures but Paul got a couple snaps from the potato sack race. It was a lot of fun and we were happy the weather cleared and became nice on the day.

And finally, a snap of the potato crop. Given that the potatoes sole purpose this year was to help in establishing a new garden plot we were happy with the yield. We got about 40 lbs of spuds in a few varieites: Yukon Gold, Russets and Fingerlings.  

Freezer Bound Chickens

 On August 24th, the broilers made their way to the deep freeze, with some help from Paul and I.
They had reached the ripe old age of 10 weeks and were huge!

It's hard to see from these pictures but these birds, guts all in, weigh about 12-15lbs.

Here's the makeshift abattoir.  I made some "killing cones" out of plastic buckets. These are meant to calm and restrain the chicken while it's being killed. It's not an easy thing to do by any stretch but you do get used to it after a few birds. The cones keep the bird upside down, which calms it, and once their throat has been severed they bleed out quickly.

From the cone the bird is immersed in a 180 degree pot to loosen the feathers for plucking. I don't have a photo of the plucker in action but it is something to see!

Paul's job was to eviscerate the birds. After watching a few videos on YouTube we felt we were educated and ready. Over the course of the day Paul got so fast at this that I couldn't keep up. To make use to his time, and because I had ripped the skin of one bird so badly in the plucker, Paul butchered one of the chickens completely. He did a great job of it and butchering is definitely the way to go if there are enough hands. 

In the end, we processed 27 birds in about four hours. Next time we'll be much faster I'm sure.
The freezer is so full now I wonder if filling a deer tag would be necessary this fall.

Following the chicken processing I raked up the wood chips and put down a bunch of lime over the area which neutralized the top layer of chicken-innards-sodden soil. There wasn't any time for a smell to develop so it's like it never happened. 

On another note, we are inundated with these green squash! We've named them 'Kuiper squash' and though they are tasty we've got too many. We gave Paul a few to use this winter with his dogsledding guests and we've processed loads of them. 

The roof over the deck is coming along. I started this project in May with my dad and have had little time to work on it since. When Beth and Ella went to S. Ontario for ten days recently I got it to this point; rafters done, strapping on, angled bracing up, railings up, gates on. Now I just need to convince a couple friends to come over to help put on the steel roofing.