UFH – Grains Challenge – Flock Block

Somehow while wasting time on the internet, I came across a post about Flock Block, a Purina product you feed your chickens. Like any good bleeding-heart, eco-conscious liberal, I had to read the ingredients first:

Cracked Corn, Whole Wheat, Whole Milo, Whole Barley, Whole Sunflower Seed, Molasses, Oyster Shell, Calcium Lignin Sulfonate, Dicalcium Phosphate, Granite Grit, Salt, Propionic Acit (A Preservative), Choline Chloride, DL-Methionine, L-Lysine, Pyridoxine Hydrochloride, Thiamine, Biotin, Vitamin A Acetate, Nicotinic Acid, Riboflavin, DL-Alpha Tocopheryl Acetate, Cholecalciferol, Menadione Dimethylpyrimidinol Bisulfite (source of Vitamin K), Folic Acid, Cyanocobalamin, Manganous Oxide, Zinc Oxide, Copper Sulfate, Calcium Iodate, Sodium Selenite.

Yikes, there’s a lot of stuff I don’t recognize (underlined), and I’m a biochem major!  In a fit of economy and can-do-it-ness, I immediately started thinking about how I might make my own, from reliable sources and on a strict budget (these things cost $12!).  I’ve previously given my chickens trimmings from the vegetable department at the grocery store, but since they are free-ranging, they pretty much ignored them. I have to assume that they’re going to ignore the cabbage-tetherball idea too.

Other posts on the Backyard Chickens Forum indicate that their chickens prefer Flock Block to any other feed, and accordingly, use it strictly as a treat.   So clearly, I have to make a decision whether or not I’m making merely Chicken-Chow or Chicken-Delight.

The Purina website indicates that this stuff is only about 8% protein, and you already know that layer hens should be up around 16% protein.   Of course, they need all sorts of other useful amino acids and minerals like calcium.  For their daily meals, I give my chickens In Season Farms Layer Mash [PDF], and they include the ingredients neatly stapled to the bag.  I really liked Scratch and Peck Mash too, but the Fish Meal made the eggs taste fishy to me.

The Poultry Hub (see Table 2) outlines the percentages of protein, fats, carbohydrates and other minerals for egg-laying chickens, and since one of mine is moulting right now, I’ll probably want to use a pretty-high protein recipe (16-17%) with measurable amounts of Lysine, Methionine, Tryptophan, Threonine (all amino-acids), Calcium (with limestone), Phosphorus, Sodium and Chloride.

So, shoot, what am I going to put in it?  Harvey Ussery, the oracle of the Homesteading Movement, explains his ingredients for daily poultry feed clearly and concisely.  He includes spreadsheets with 100 lb lots which you’ld have to scale down to a manageable size.   For example, for winter layers, I’ll need 4.5 lbs of his premix, with 7.5 lbs ground corn, 6 lbs ground peas, 2 lbs ground alfalfa, 3 lbs whole wheat and 2 lbs whole oats or barley.  Looks like I’ll need to get a heavy-duty scale too!

Winter Layer Feed Recipe

I should point out that sprouting your peas and grains would increase your protein amounts, but I don’t know by how much. You’ld have to do your own research based on how long they’ve been sprouted.

This is just a vestigal post; I wanted to do some cost analysis, but I’ld better just get this thing posted for now.

UFH 06 – Protein

This month’s Urban Farm Handbook Theme is Protein.  I started exploring this last year when I attended a Seattle Farm Coop Chicken Butchering Workshop led respectfully by UFH co-author, Joshua McNichols. I always knew that if I got into chicken farming, the newest fad in the United States, that I would have to prepare for the end of the chicken as well as for the beginning.

When our beautiful Golden Wyandotte went broody this spring, our neighbor with a legal rooster gave us some fertile eggs, and the grand experiment began.  One brief moment when the morning light warmed the nesting box enough, she would jump up, run out squawking, have a quick dust bath and a bite to eat, then run back inside and sit again.

Chiaroscuro Eggs

Fortunately, we had already downsized our flock to 2 laying hens.  Unfortunately, we bought 3 new chicks a month ago, so we knew we’ld have to ‘deal’ with the result.  Knowing our coop would be too small for three ‘generations’ and 10+ chickens, I got out my handy saw and built a mini-cooper, and an extra nesting box.

The Mini-Cooper with her racing stripes

The extra nesting box primed with golf ball

Hatch Day!

Hatching Chicks and Worried Mama

The teenagers:

Big Sisters have bonded

Growing Up -

Scratching Lessons

Permeable Fencing

Getting Bigger

Free Ranging

As the summer drew to a close, and as the chicks were now fully adult, we realized that of the batch of 5 that hatched, 4 were roosters and would have to go.  I began preparations by building an outdoor sink for the chicken butchering, using a thrift-store sink, an interior door left over from the bathroom remodel, and some plumbing and lumber bits.

Testing the sink

As my friend Tara Austen Weaver wrote in her book, The Butcher and the Vegetarian, she described visiting several working farms that raised animals for meat.  At Prather Ranch in San Francisco, she noticed a quote by Temple Grandin displayed:

“I believe the place where an animal dies is a sacred one.  The ritual could be something very simple, such as a moment of silence.  No words, just one pure moment of silence.  I can picture it perfectly.”

On butchering day, I asked my husband to take my younger son out of the house. My older son, at 9, decided to stay and watch. The whole process was slow and deliberate. I sharpened and set out the knives, set up the sawhorses and tied a stout bamboo pole across it, and pre-cut some lengths of twine. I lined a bucket with a heavy-duty contractor’s bag and laid one below to catch the drips. Finally I was ready.

For each rooster, one by one, I went into the coop, caught him and brought him up to the patio. I gently wrapped him in a towel to keep him from flapping much, tied the twine around his feet as Joshua showed me a year ago and tied him to the pole. I paused. I took a deep breath, and steadily drew the knife hard and with resolve. I held each chicken firmly until the flapping stopped, and let each one drain into the bucket. It took over an hour to kill 4 roosters, but I know each one had been respectfully raised and respectfully slaughtered.

Now the long process of preparing the roosters for the freezer began. I had my huge pot for canning fruit on the stove, boiling away. I brought it outside and one by one, I dipped each rooster head-first into the pot and plucked it, placed it in the outdoor sink with ice and water, and continued to the next one.

I then singed off the funny hair-like feathers, removed the head (sorry, into the trash with the feathers – I had tried composting the feathers last year, but it didn’t work very well … they lingered quite a while). Next came the crop, the vent and the internal organs, and finally the neck and feet (for soup). I kept the hearts and livers, but not the gizzards. You can now find some honest blogs online with useful pictures of the steps to butcher the chickens, but with just me and my messy fingers, I didn’t take photos this time.

I weighed each rooster, and they barely cleared 3 lbs, but I figure I got 12-14 meals for all 4 roosters: 2 bags each of 4 breasts, 4 thighs, 4 wings, 4 drumsticks. Add 4 backs and 4 necks/hearts for soups.

Chicken stock

I don’t know if this counts as a “challenge” since I did this last year with two chickens, but this is the first time I did this all by myself. To push myself for next year, we’ll need a bigger freezer, or figure out some sort of meat-bank since we really don’t have the storage for a winter’s full of meals. Here are some places I’m going to start with:

Sustainable Eats – Meat
Skagit River Ranch
Local Harvest/
Pastured Sensations

Sidewalk Farmers Market

Laying out the seeds

We’ve talked about having a sidewalk farmers market for several months now and finally decided to put it into action. I promised the kids that they could keep any money they made from what they sold, as long as they bought ingredients from me if they wanted to sell baked goods.  It’s been a great home-schooling summer project that included construction, horticulture, and economics.

From the dumpster-diving woodpile, we absconded with several crates. We pulled off one plywood piece and and filled up the crate with some lovely homemade seed-starting soil. Added seeds, water, and hope, and to their delight, things grew!

Then we took some more scraps, a couple of wheelbarrow wheels, and an awning rescued from some fancy, but discarded, sandbox and built an awesome sidewalk cart.  Although I helped with the saw, Jack did the measuring, drilling and assembly.  A couple of coats of chalkboard paint on another piece of plywood and we were in business!

My big farmer carefully thinned the radishes, and then bicycled around the neighborhood ‘advertising’.  My little farmer picked some bouquets and kept everything nicely misted.  I really liked how well they handled long-term planning, construction, advertising, the boss/employee relationship (Jack paid Thomas for minding the store), and their entrepreneurial spirit.

Misting the produce

Bunching Radishes

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We’ve noticed that more people buy cut flowers than vegetables, so we’re starting to plan for next year to grow succession crops of herbs, four-seasons of cut-flowers, and of course, backyard eggs.   What are your plans for a backyard economy?  Get inspired, and plan to attend next year’s American Community Gardening Association conference in Seattle.  The topic: Ad-Hoc Economy – Urban Farms and Community Connections.

UHF – 05 – June Botanicals

Rose Geranium Leaf in Sugar

I am a wimp. I skipped the May Foraging challenges. But it’s simmering in the back of my mind, and when I went geocaching in Discovery Park, I was seeing all sorts of things I could eat. Thoughts are percolating and as soon as I can get my youngest to eat vegetables, I’m trying nettle-quiche!  Who can resist eggs, cream and pie-crust?

This month’s Urban Farm Handbook challenge is all about botanicals – using flowers and herbs to make lotions, salves, infusions, tonics and flavorings.  You probably already do this when you make stock – a simple bouquet garni of thyme, bay, and parsley will flavor broth and raise simple to sublime.

I thought about trying the Hydrosol challenge, but didn’t want to go out and buy something used for only one purpose (a clean fire-brick). I spend far too much time in the big box hardware stores looking for screws and wheelbarrow parts (teaser: see why in my next post).

Technically, we already apply the infusions technique when we make our own vanilla, splitting a pod and dumping vodka on it.  With the new WA state alcohol laws, pricing on hard-liquor has gone up, so I haven’t restocked yet (Soapbox: Never shop at Costco; I have a rant that I amuse my kids with when I describe shopping there, and the techniques they use to make you buy more stuff than you need).

This month, all the effort and credit should go to my oldest son, who attended the Tilth Wild and Medicinal Plants summer camp this last week.  He made teas, flea-powder, mullein tea, comfrey compresses, calendula oil and garlic-vinegar infusions.   He has permission to pick all the mint he wants for tea, and I’m content to let our neighbors grow it for us, since it is quite vigorous.  We’re looking forward to some home-made additions to our summer sidewalk market.

Stracciatella – (c) David Lebovitz

I was inspired by my e-friend Meg to make a simple syrup for cocktails, using the lovely rose-geranium I bought on a whim from the Seattle Tilth May sale.  We didn’t measure.  Just snip-snip a couple of leaves, dump in approximately a half a cup of sugar (though honey might be good too) and cover with water.  Simmer, cool and serve.  Very tasty in cocktails, not so much in coffee.  But I’m really looking forward to adding it to some vanilla ice cream with Stracciatella.  We don’t have an ice-cream maker, but I think we’ll be pretty successful with making it in my mixer-bowl, putting it in the freezer, and setting the timer to remind us to beat it frequently.

UHF 04 – Garden Challenges

This post is a bit “Dear Diary”. Sorry, there is a lot to squeeze in. It has been a busy month, much of it spent kid- and chicken-wrangling and wasting time installing crown molding, Geocaching and searching for the Emerald City Search medallion (tune back in Oct 21st). Now that I have my life back …

This month’s Urban Farm Handbook challenge theme is gardening:

1. The Seed Starting Challenge- Erica Strauss, NW Edible: start a new variety of seed
   Last year I charted a seed starting spreadsheet to outline when I needed to start things.
   

   Transplanting with a dibble into terracotta pots

   Even though I’m way off ‘schedule’, I have been transplanting seedlings much earlier, just after the first cotyledons appear. I think the spreadsheet will help me more in the summer, when planning for winter crops, which I started too late last year.

   I have expanded my seed starting to include more perennials, obtained from unusual seeds provided by the HPSW’s seed exchange. This year I’m trying Dahlia ‘Bishop of Llandalff’ successfully, and gosh, way too many things unsuccessfully. It is probably due to older seed.

   Plant at least 1/2 of the entire seed packet in a 4″ pot instead of just one or two seeds in several small pots. It just wastes your time to make many labels, and keep the pots together when watering or moving outside. Additionally, if something needs a cold-period, or many months to germinate, it is much easier to track one pot.

2. The Natural Pest Prevention challenge- Colin McCrate, Seattle Urban Farm Co-op
   

   cutworms

   Our biggest pests are the kids cutworms and birds. For several years, I’ve been finding a lot of these nasties, but only just connected what the pupa looked like to the cutworm. I have since discovered that they make tasty chicken-treats! I tend not to cover my crops and let the critters have what they will, but last summer was my first chicken-season, so I am starting to install new movable fencing and hope to construct a couple of chicken tractors soon.

3. The Trellis challenge- Willi Galloway, Diggin Food: support a climber
   

   Pea hurdle

   I hadn’t intended on building any trellising this year, but I happened to be dumpster diving at the Center for Urban Horticulture and found some lovely green willow. Our HPSW group made some pretty patterned willow wattle panels at the NW Flower and Garden Show, so I made some hurdles for my peas.

4. The Chicken Gardens challenge- Jessi Bloom: find alternate sources for chicken food.I’m a little ambivalent about feeding my chickens kitchen scraps since the diagnosis of Fatty Liver Disease (which was fatal) in our favorite chicken. Our chickens don’t eat the dandelions I toss into the run (but then again they’re mainly free range, so perhaps they’re picky eaters), and they love to eat worms when I till or weed a new bed. Our chickens loved the sunflowers I grew last year, but I think it would take a lot of them to make a serious crop … hmm, that bed on the south side of the house that I want the chickens to till? A good place for sunflowers.
5. The Be Lazy challenge- Annette Cottrell, Sustainable Eats
   This one is the hardest … I rarely have lazy time.

UFH – 03 – Cheese Fail

Really?  Another Fail?  Sheesh.  The Urban Farm Handbook makes it seem so easy.

Ricotta Fail:

Simple Ricotta Ingredients

OK, so I followed Andrew’s Eating Rules Ricotta Recipe with my oldest son, and promptly burned the milk.  Nothing like a talker in the kitchen.  We went ahead and added lemon juice and made the most lovely ricotta.  Which tasted nasty.  And fed the chickens.  SIGH.

Mozzarella Fail:

Disappointing Mozzarella

Then we tried Andrew’s guest post on Simple Bites for Mozzarella.  At first it was like magic.  The rennet curdled the milk in the most beautiful way, and we heated and stretched the cheese just as instructed.  But bleah, it was hard and tasteless, even with salt.  And, with only a 1/2 gallon to start, we were left with nearly two quarts of whey which we had to use up, and such a pathetic blob of cheese.  So we’re now sick of crepes, and biscuits, and polenta, and we still have another 2 cups to use up.  I’m interested, however, to try it non-microwave, by placing the cheese in 175-degree water to stretch and pull.  I think I’ll need rubber gloves, however – ouch!  I wonder if there’s an old-fashioned way to determine water temperature without a thermometer, like candy making. I can’t wait to read Ricki’s book and figure this out some day!

Yogurt Experiment – Pending

Glutton for punishment?  Did you have this many failures with dairy?

Dark Days 14 – Grocery Store Paralysis

This is my last post for the Dark Days Challenge.

I joined for two main reasons, to make more careful food choices, and to see if I liked blogging on a regular basis.  On the latter, perhaps not so much.  My ‘weekends’ are the two short days that my youngest kid is in daycare, and they tend to be filled with errands and construction projects (Crown Molding – DONE, Seed Starting Boxes – DONE, Bunny Poo Box – DONE, Mammoth Compost Bin – DONE).  I don’t want to be using power tools while distracted with “Mom, can you help … ? “

I also don’t want to be rushed to post if I don’t have a well formed point of view, and it’s really rather silly to be taking pictures of my food.  It seems like everyone and their pets are prosing on about their raw, sustainable, and whole food diets.  Now don’t get me wrong, I love reading along, dreaming the homestead dream.  It’s a great way to learn about making your own cheese or bread.  I try a few recipes, tweak them for my busy life, drop a few and keep a few.  The journey has been great.

Along the way, however, I frequently found myself at the grocery store with decision paralysis.  I would go to the store with a list, which mainly just listed “food” (helpful, huh?), and would walk up and down the aisles not finding any.  Michael Pollan has reported the same.

My youngest son is an extremely picky eater, now wanting only bagels and cream-cheese for breakfast, but I cringe when I picked up the package:

• Enriched wheat flour,
• water,
• dark raisins,
• brown sugar,
• dough conditioner (wheat flour, mono-diglycerides, guar gum, corn syrup solids, soybean oil, enzyme),
• salt,
• canola oil,
• cinnamon,
• malt syrup,
• yeast, and
• vinegar.

I’m sorry, but my recipe has only 5 ingredients (high-gluten flour, water, barley-malt syrup, yeast and salt), thank-you-very-much.  The cream-cheese was no better.  Frequently, I find myself sighing and putting things back on the shelf, because I can make it better at home.

The trade-off is time, however.  My contract on my last job ended last summer, and I am lucky enough to stay at home for a while.  I have time to putter in the garden, get flats and flats of vegetable seeds started for summer harvests and canning.  I have time to plan a week’s meals, shop once, and create stock on one night for soup two days hence.  I hate going to the store multiple times a week; such a chore with whiny kids when you’re trying to make decisions about whether or not you can buy that package of bagels.

I have time to start a new batch of sourdough bread each time I notice that we’re down to half of a loaf, and I have the energy to knead it at 10:00 at night after putting the kids down for bed, because I haven’t just spent 12 hours commuting, working for someone else, and taking care of my family.

It is a full time job to feed a family.   We ended up with convenience food when the mom went to work (whether it was Rosie the Riveter, Working Girl, or newly-divorced-mom).  Now?  It takes two working parents to support a family.  Aren’t we lucky.

And just this morning, my youngest begged for whipped cream in a can.  What?  When I actually had homemade whipped cream, left over from last week’s tea party?  Who can resist this morning’s breakfast?

Crepes with Nutella (for the kids) or Lemon-Marmalade (for me) and Whipped Cream.

Simple Breakfast Crepes

• 1 1/2 cups AP flour (Ours is from Stone Buhr in Eastern Washington)
• 1 1/2 cups whey (left over from my first attempt at making cheese.  Milk from Twin Brook Creamery in  Lynden, WA)
• 1 T sugar
• 1 tsp salt
• 2 eggs (backyard chickens)
• Homemade whipped cream (cream from Smith Brothers Farms dairy, powdered sugar)
• Lemon Marmalade (recipe below)

Whisk the flour, sugar and salt with the whey and eggs.  Pour into small buttered frying pan and cook both sides.  Spread with marmalade or nutella and roll up.  Yum.

My marmalade was adapted from Melissa Kronenthal’s mandarine marmellata:

• 1 lb meyer lemons (OK, not local, but very seasonal, so in the spirit of putting things up …)
• 1 cup sugar

Zest the lemons and set aside.  Peel and pith the lemons, saving the juice and pulp.  Whir the pulp in a food processor, then put into saucepan with sugar, reserved lemon zest and remaining juice.  Cook for 20-25 minutes, taking care it doesn’t burn.  Pour into jars (1 lb makes about 1.5 cups … 2.5 lbs makes about 4 cups), and process in a hot-water bath for 20 minutes.

My final thoughts on this is that it’s easy to get discouraged by what you find at the grocery store, and it’s easy to get overwhelmed by the tasks to get a wholesome meal on the table.  But it’s doable in small steps.  Map out a weekly task list so you know when you’re making stock, or canning jam, or baking bread.  Put an extra loaf in the freezer.  Can small batches of tomato sauce for pizza-night or spaghetti-night.   And remember that pancakes freeze well, so if you can’t make a deluxe meal in a hurry, at least you can pop a pancake into the toaster and fill it with some nut-butter and jam, as you rush out the door.

Hang in there, keep reading blogs, try a new recipe each week, or each month.  Stock your freezer and free yourself from grocery-store paralysis.

{ part of Dark Days Challenge at Not Dabbling in Normal }

{ part of Simple Lives Thursday at Sustainable Eats and A Little Bit of Spain in Iowa }