A Home For The Piggies!

Jan26

As if taking care of chickens, growing vegetables, anticipating the arrival of a new greenhouse and working a real job for a living isn’t enough, we decided that raising a couple of pigs for meat sounded like a great adventure! With Basil the dog’s knee surgery I found out through conversation that one of the vet techs at her vet clinic breeds pigs and sells piglets to raise for the freezer! These folks also can do vet medicine for all sorts of farm and ranch animals including our chickens and pigs! Woohoo!

We have a great place to dedicate as a pig pen. It will allow them to root around and turn over the dirt and create mountains of fine fertilizer for our garden!

As with keeping a dog, a pig’s needs are pretty basic: shelter, food, water, some shade and a place to wallow around in mud because they don’t sweat. We will buy them next month (March 2015). It takes about 5 months to raise them from 30 lbs to 250 lbs. The vet tech (Kayla) also recommended a processor that does good work. From my never ending reading and research (my wife teases me that I need to be so well versed on these subjects that I could teach a class! – and that’s bad why?) a 250 lb pig will provide between 150 to 180 lbs of meat. This is in addition to the 4 legged composting machines that they are. All of our scraps, Whey from Zina’s job, rooting around and, if I can swing it, produce discarded from local grocery stores, will provide meat and fertilizer. Of course they eat a lot of corn, but corn in the corn and wheat belt is pretty cheap!

I found a ranch and farm supply house up north of us that sell pig shelters. Being the cheapskate that I am, I had designed one that I was going to build. But low and behold! This one was the same dimensions and cheaper! Brilliant! I called up there and they had them in stock. I just needed a flat bed trailer to haul it.

Our local Uhaul rental center had a trailer available that was 6 feet by 12 feet in dimensions. The shelter is 6 feet by 11 feet! VERY tight squeeze! I figured, because it is a half oval, that they could put it in upside down (curved side down) and I’d be able to just slide it out. WRONG! They picked the thing up with a tractor equipped with skid blades and it JUST fit in the trailer curved side up. The problem is that it weighs over 100 pounds and it was just yours truly to get it the hell OUT of that trailer. Suffice it to say that there were many problems getting it out. MANY problems!! Had they put it in upside down it would have only taken a couple of minutes. The way they put it in the trailer, it took over an hour and much cussing. MUCH cussing!! I stood there at one point wondering if I’d have to take it all the way back up to the store and have them flip it. At one point I was gasping and cursing out the stupidity of getting older thinking that I MUST get this out of here because I am quickly losing my strength. As usual, I he-manned the sucker out. The next day I was so wasted and drained of energy that I lay around groaning and reading, wondering if this whole farm thing was a colossal mistake. BUT!! The ex-powerlifter tuff SOB got it out! ALL BY HIS LONESOME!!

So I now have the luxury of pulling the shelter into place with the tractor. I only need to install one side of fence to complete a rectangle and then string some electric wire and then bring on the piggies!

Here is the shelter IN the Uhaul:

Here it is after Godzilla heaved it out of the trailer!

Damn I’m good!

New Additions To The Chicken Flock

Jan26

One very fun experience with this whole farming craziness is going to the Post Office to pick up a cardboard box that cheeps. I have had the pleasure of having little kids in line when I arrive. Getting to see the look of astonishment on their faces when I lift up the flap so they can see them is a hoot! Today was no different. The box was cheeping like crazy and the kids were thrilled.

We selected a mixed batch of chicks this time. They will eventually go in with our Buff Orpingtons and 3 roosters. Our goal is to begin managing our own flock and hatching our own chicks. We may still buy some meat birds to keep the freezer stocked, but these new ladies are considered heavy layers; heavy meaning they are larger birds and lay lots of eggs. Considering most of our eggs are fertile and we do have an incubator, we are going to embark on a system of making stew, stock and roasting birds, along with replenishing our layers as they age.

They are the cutest durn things. Our whole basement is cheeping. The little buggers are eating and drinking and look as healthy as can be. They will stay in our brooder until the first week of March when they will then join the rest of the crew outside.

It is also amazing to watch nature in action. Chickens need about 12 hours of daylight to keep them laying eggs. As we approached the winter solstice our egg production dropped to only a couple of eggs a day. After that time, the days get longer by 4 minutes per day. As this has happened over the past month, the number of eggs per day has begun increasing! Considering that eggs are REALLY meant to produce more chickens (not just giving us breakfast), it makes complete sense. Why lay eggs when the eggs and the chicks might freeze to death? I did some looking and this is why we have eggs and bunnies at Easter time. At Easter the eggs are in full production by then and the new baby rabbits also begin emerging from their burrows. The cycle of life! Too bad the religious nuts hijacked these celebrations. I wouldn’t have grown up wondering what the hell eggs and rabbits had to do with bleeding Jesus! Ha!

Here are the new ladies……

Happy 2015!

Jan4

Its been awhile since my last post (Thanksgiving actually). With the wrap up of the harvest and the onset of winter things slowed down some. We are still waiting for our greenhouse kit to arrive but even if it did show up the drifts outside would make it pretty tough to assemble!

Grandma made her appearance for the holidays as well. Things have been pretty mellow and we are now starting to turn our attention to the seeds needed for next spring. As cabin fever began to set in, I had to get something green going so I planted bunches of lettuce, kale spinach, and chard in the basement hydroponics and seedling tables.

Aaron has learned some woodworking with dear old dad and has become pretty adept at flying quad-copters (small drones that can take aerial videos). If I can ever figure out how to post one of the videos from it I will post it. We have one that is a fly over of the farm and it is pretty fun to see the place from the sky!

So I hope everyone has a wonderful 2015. Of course, we will all still be mistakenly putting 2014 on everything for awhile. Its just the usual transition.

I figured that if I am going to live true to myself I would have to give up everything but the mountains and the farm! Hmmmm, pretty intriguing thought! Maybe that will need to be my resolution: No more “have to’s” Wouldn’t that be nice!

The JAZ Farm Weemins say Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Time to get back to what’s important!

Aaron learns some woodworking skills with the old man.

Zina’s Christmas present: A grain mill and table.

In anticipation of the greenhouse the raised bed boxes are built. Now to order the dirt and compost!

The Thanksgiving Pause

Nov29

Just some pictures of the dog, the JAZ Farm sunrise and Zina’s new grain mill and table. We had all of the fixings but had JAZ Farm chickens instead of turkey. We have spent the day making about 2 gallons of chicken stock and a gallon of chicken soup from the leftovers.

Zina is going to try out her new grain mill soon so we can attempt bread with our own wheat flour. The dog continues to recover from her knew surgery, and of course the house is warm from the stove and all of the smells.

Hope everyone had as nice and relaxing a day as we had. No stress, no strain, just rest.

Happy Gratitude Day!!

Nov27

We are waiting on Jon to finish the last of the chef-ing. We have been fun recounting the JAZ Farm progression for the past couple years. December 4th 2012 was the closing on this place. Not quite 2 years. Basil the farm dog will have been with us 2 years tomorrow. I was sitting around Thanksgiving of 2012 wondering if the closing would actually happen (the first place we bid on fell through and I thought I would commit Harakiri). I started to think, whether or not we get the farm, I need a pooch.

I started surfing and found Basil. I emailed the powers that be and they held her for us. Off we went and the day after Thanksgiving the cutest little turd joined our family.
In less than two years we have refurbished a house, coop and garden from bottom to top and left to right. The farm in its second summer has produced almost all the core foods we need since around July of 2014. The work has been amazingly difficult but more worthwhile than anything I have ever done. We know the future includes more of the same and will soon include a huge greenhouse and a pig pen (if my wife can handle sending the “cuteness” of the piggies off to the bacon maker).
Our Thanksgiving dinner is all of the fixings but we are having chicken instead of Turkey. We did an inventory and the farm has produced far more of what we are eating than what we had to purchase.
We made the bread for the stuffing
The chickens were raised here
We raised the potatoes, onions, garlic, beans, carrots, chicken and squash.
We had to purchase the apples, raisins, canned pumpkin and cranberries and celery.
We figure that 85% of what we are being Thankful for today was grown by our own hands.
I love this place more than I have anything else ever. Happy Gratitude day everyone.

The Newest Projects for the Upcoming Year

Nov7

I have this habit of dreaming stuff up and then actually making it happen. Most of what I make happen involves time, money and back breaking work. The projects for 2015 are no different it seems. Any new work on the farmhouse has gotten to the point that it is stuff that needs to be contracted out. We have plans to install a wood burning stove, solar hot water, and eventually solar panels (although our electric bill here is pretty meager). The heating and hot water are the two biggest expenses as propane is never going to get any cheaper. Those things need to be professionally installed. The farming infrastructure, however, still falls to my back and hips. This year is going to be no different. I just got off the phone with the manufacturer to order our new GREENHOUSE!

Ironically, because it needs to be assembled on relatively level ground, it is going in the area we laid out for the pig pen. The pig pen is going to move over by the garden which actually makes more sense as they will have access to the garden when we want to have them go in and root around in the fall.

The greenhouse is coming in a kit. It looks like it is a pretty straight forward assembly job but as with everything else I do it seems it will be bulky and heavy. I am drafting my son and one of my other farmhand volunteers and according to the owner, I should be able to have the frame up and anchored in a couple of days. Delivery is supposed to be sometime toward the end of December. If true, then we very well may have the thing up and operational by spring planting. Should that happen then we will not be planting the garden in the city this year. It will likely get dismantled, salvaged, the dirt smoothed flat and Xeriscaped with pollinator oriented plants. Zina will be happy because I will not need to hack back the ash tree that is back there as it has sprawled over the years and shaded large portions of that garden.

We will still be starting the seedlings in the grow room, but when they start to get lanky and need to be hardened off we won’t have to suffer from the pain of watching them get destroyed by hail. Allegedly this thing can withstand 100 mph winds and golfball sized hail. They have several pictures of ones they put up in Colorado and they look to be pretty stout puppies.

We will be adding ventilator fans to it and I have a solar charger that can power them so it won’t be grid dependent. As with the garden in the city we will put in raised beds and drip irrigation for efficiency. With respect to keeping it cool, the manufacturer suggests putting up shade cloth over it that lets a certain percentage of sunshine through but also helps keep the building cooler during the blast furnace of summer.

I guess, as I always say, if it isn’t fun I wouldn’t be doing it. Should this all work out not only will we have the kind of harvest we had this past season, we will also have pork, eggs, chicken, our own home ground flour, and all the salad fixins you can shake a stick at. Not to mention, just a really nice place to go hang out and meditate on my belly button.

Woohoo!

A Little Midwest Pragmatism

Oct28

This article was posted by a friend on Facebook. She and her friend have been members of the sustainable living and environmental movement in a significant way far longer than I have had the privilege. I think this article helps to shed some light on what is -and may not be – important to the notion of localizing our food system. Once a movement gets momentum there is always a fringe (and this case more than a fringe, especially in the city) that take a minutia of the movement and blow it up into monumental significance. In this case, the micro-managing and obsession of cooking. You know of which I speak. When I was in high school my family was one of the first around to take up long distance bicycle touring. We had decent bikes and we wore those old white helmets that looked like half an eggshell. But we did it in T-shirts, shorts, and tennis shoes. Now 30 some years later, everyone thinks they need to shave their legs and look like a competitor in the Tour de France simply to go on a nice bike ride. This has now happened in cooking. While having good equipment is nice and having a gathering of friends over wine and a nice meal contains a soothing animal warmth, the hipster movement has made cooking the Tour de France of food. While yes cooking is important, the movement now has a plethora of those who are still out of touch with how their food is produced and the simple pleasures of eating foods that comfort like grandma used to cook. A loose quote from the article is that if you cooked like your grandmother you would likely never open a cookbook. Having to open a cookbook is indicative of how much of our roots, traditions and simple self-sustaining skills we have lost. I would suggest that instead of learning how to cook Thai cuisine or attempting to become the next Julia Child, go to the farmers market, buy some great produce, and cook yourself up a good old fashioned hearty stew. You will glow with satisfaction and you will have the basis of a recipe that you can build on and change and let evolve, that doesn’t require you to wear a stupid white hat and apron.

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/11/03/shut-eat

Another Homesteader Who Sums It All Up

Oct23

All credit to the author. It couldn’t be stated any better.

http://myhealthygreenfamily.com/blog/wordpress/why-i-am-not-vegetarian/

Stage One of the Pig Pen

Oct19

The three of us got out today and laid out the 30 x 60 foot rectangle for the new pig pen. Wow did we get anal about that! We even made sure it is parallel to the house! We got out the long measuring tape, measured the front edge from the farm house and equidistant from the sidewalk, put down the rebar, measured the hypotenuse of the right triangle to make sure it is squared and then put the posts in their proper proximity to the holes that will need to be dug. They will all go in 2 feet deep leaving a 4 foot top. Livestock panels and a gate will get attached and I am designing the shelter, water and feeding systems as well as shading areas. To make this work we are going to have to find a couple of participants who want to buy into a whole pig or a side. We will use one a year but they need to be raised in two’s or three’s because they are social. Either that or we will get a few and then simply send one to the processor from time to time. If we do that then we are given another set of variables; that being water heaters and heated shelters for winter. Farmer Jon is thinking not. That headache would fall squarely in his lap just like the chickens. Unless I can quit my job…. HINT! I can’t be out here to take care of wintering livestock. Client livestock has something to say about that! So we will probably get them in April and send them off to become freezer dwellers six months later and repeat every spring.

The Birds Enjoying a Good Dust Bath and a Snack!