Notes from Chickenland

200 Chickens? Sold!

2008-09-18T00:00:00.005-04:00

Today was fairly uneventful... until I got a phone call around 1pm this afternoon.

I had placed an ad in the local "Free Ad Paper" for the ISA Brown and Bovan commercial laying hens that we were rehabilitating. We get the chickens, several hundred at a time, from battery cage laying operations and pay anywhere from nothing to $2.00 each for them. This last batch, since they are brown egg layers, were $2.00 each.

When we first bought the birds, we thought they were $1.00 each. It was a huge miscommunication - although deep in my dark little heart I think that the mix-up was a tad on the intentional side, as far as the seller goes. Anyway, $400 worth of 70 week old laying hens turned into $900 worth of hens awfully darn quick. The breakdown in communication wasn't clarified until hubby and I were already over an hour from home and the seller had loaded all of the birds onto our truck and trailer. Deep sigh. I wrote a check for the balance of the birds... I already had some of them sold in advance and figured I could make the money up fairly quickly.

A side note on this story: the birds that we have gotten from "egg farms" previously didn't look that great, with feathers missing and a bit on the skinny side, etc. These latest birds... no joke... were naked. Some of them didn't have a feather on them. Literally. No way could we sell these naked chickens. We ended up calling them the "Zombie Chickens" because they looked like dead chickens, already plucked, just up and walking around. Crap.

Well, I managed to get 100 of them to a sale barn the morning after we brought them home and sold them for $3.00 each. Not too bad, seeing as how we never even took them out of the travel crates.

Over the next couple of days I sold a couple hundred to the Burmese families for $2.50 each. Not a good price for me, but I had negotiated the price with the Burmese back when I thought the birds were costing me $1.00 each. Including feed, I probably lost a few pennies on those particular birds. But, in terms of a "loss leader" in order to keep the Burmese and their friends and families as happy repeat customers, it was worth it in the long run.

We've sold a few more of the girls here and there... some as brown egg layers, a few as meat birds to an African lady that has picked up a couple chickens and a few dozen eggs from us.

And then, today, the phone call. We got the price settled at $3.50 per bird and I made sure that the buyer knew how hideous they look... although they do look considerably better than when we brought them home over the Labor Day weekend. We talked it over and the buyer figured he could take between 100 and 150 of the birds.

Turns out, he took 200.

Wow. I am so unbelievably happy. Not even just to have made a little money, but to have finally gotten my money back on these birds. I already know that I'll never again get birds from the guy I bought these from - I just have a bad taste in my mouth after our last dealing - so I'm just glad to be shut of these hens and to put the whole business behind me.

We probably have between 15 to 20 of the birds left, and that will be fine to keep the flow of brown eggs going. No more purchasing $2.00 hens for me, though. Uh-uh, no way.

...And 3 Months Later

2008-09-17T00:12:00.003-04:00

Where does the time go?

There is hardly a day that goes by without something "blog-able" happening on the farm, and yet, here it is, months later, and I'm just sitting down to write. Sigh.

So what sorts of things would I have been blogging about, had I been writing? Let's see:

Selling chickens and ducks to ethnic groups; especially the Burmese community that comes out to the farm.
Buying 525 "retired" commercial egg farm hens... and paying twice as much for them as I thought I was going to.
Making friends with Carmen and her over-the-top Mexican family, and becoming a part of that family by way of food, Spanish lessons and a small local auction.
Selling off all of our goats.
Getting a total of 6 new geese for the farm.
Getting our first goose egg - wow!
The new chicks that various of our hens have managed to hatch so late in the season (we have chicks that are only a week or so old right now).
Having all three of our vehicles break down in the same week. Of course.
About how being broke doesn't mean being poor.
How one of our teen-aged daughters (16) has moved out.
All about depression, how it sucks, and how it sucks the life out of you.
Going to Chinatown in Chicago with two teen-aged girls (my 15-year-old and one of her best girlfriends) and having the most awesomest time ever. Not to mention trying Vietnamese food for the first time - amazing.
Almost moving to Seattle (okay, not really almost, but it kind of felt like it for a couple of days).

I'm sure there's more, but when you don't keep up day-to-day, the days do manage to meld together and become a bit formless and less memorable.

I'll do my best to fill in some of the blanks that are suggested by the bullet-points above. Until then, I'm alive and mostly well and really getting ready to enjoy fall, my most favorite of seasons.

Weather from Hail

2008-06-21T13:41:00.005-04:00

Well, I just spent 20 scary minutes in my basement.

I watched the storm form on the radar map, had out my weather radio, and, with just a tiny bit of prompting (rather sudden, golf-ball sized hail was all it took), I think I moved faster than I have moved in a long time! My route from the back bedroom, to the bathroom to grab blankets from the linen cupboard, through the living room, into the kitchen and down the stairs to the basement might have taken me 2.2 seconds. It's all a blur, I'm not sure.

I did actually make a detour to look out the kitchen door on my way down the cellarway stairs and saw the ground literally blanketed with hailstones. The large maples behind the house had branches that were blowing straight out. I couldn't see the barn. It was very dark outside (1:15 in the afternoon).

It occurred to me in my panic to wonder where Hubby and his brother were. Turns out they were in the big barn running electricity. Uh-oh. They, did, however, weather the storm just fine - along with the goats, chickens, geese and other barn dwellers.

As for me, it was me and my Great Dane under the basement stairs sitting on the lip of the old cistern, cowering under an old wool Army blanket and a flannel sheet (they were what I managed to grab).

As is evidenced by this post, we made it through okay. The hail and straight-line winds were the worst of it (bad enough if you ask me, I'm a weather wimp of the highest order). After the deluge of rain that is now falling stops, I'll go out and survey any damage.

We have actually had two small funnel clouds hop the property in the last two years. One was just a couple of weeks ago that ate up a bit of the corn field and the other went on the other side of the house last year. It tore out a field of Queen's Anne Lace (wild carrots) and split a tree. This quickie storm that just passed was just as terrifying as either of those occasions. I was certain this was going to be "the big one."

I hate this year's weather. I know that lots of folks do. And that isn't even taking in account the folks that have lost homes, towns, loved ones, etc. God watch over us and protect us all from that kind of weather / natural disaster.

My family is from Louisiana on my mother's side (Alabama on Daddy's) and I drove down from Indiana to New Orleans when Katrina came through. My mother was there and I couldn't get in touch with her... so I loaded up the station wagon, the Great Dane, supplies, cans of gas, a chain saw and a logging chain and away I went (God bless Hubby for understanding my need to perform these sorts of acts now again... but hopefully never again). My family, by the way, was okay - windblown and wet, but okay.

Like so many others, I can look back to that time and see that it was the beginning of a larger pattern of severe weather and dangerous storms. I'm not a proponent of global warming - preferring instead to use the term "Climate Change". This few years of wacky weather is, I'm certain, just the beginning folks.

Now, if you like me and wish to continue reading my blog, that is awesome - I'm sure that if I met you, I'd probably like you, too - but you have to know that I am a bit of a kook and continuing to read this particular post past this point may negatively impact your perception(s) of me.

You were warned, here goes:

The trends for Climate Change are vast. The earth has constantly, since the beginning of whatever time you believe in, changed in cycles: heat, ice ages, flooding, aridity, etc. Deserts, oceans, islands, they all come and go. Some slowly, some more quickly (on a geologic scale, "quickly" is a relative term).

Our magnetic poles are actively in the process of shifting - geologic evidence shows that this is also a cyclical occurrence and we are, quite frankly, overdue. The science is explained at the NASA website.

Natural disasters are becoming fairly commonplace around the globe. The question of a natural disaster hitting close to home is quickly becoming less of an "if" and more of a "when".

Our local weather is a drop in the bucket. 90s one day, 70s the next. Out-of-nowhere storms. Unpredictable patterns (not that Mr. Weatherman was ever great at predictions, but isn't the technology supposed to pretty good right about now?).

I didn't get my first plant in the ground until the first of June this year. Quite late for this area. The main reason was fluctuations in the weather that were messing with the moisture content and "workability" of the soil. At one point, my garden ground was so hard, we joked that we had produced a bumper crop of naturally occurring adobe. But it was no joke that the tiller, literally, could only just barely scratch the surface - and what it did scratch almost instantly blew away - modern-day dust bowl anyone?

Here is my advice, for the devalued two cents that it may or may not be worth:

Stock up on non-perishables. Rotate the stock. Can / preserve your own when you can.
Invest in keeping heritage / heirloom seeds on hand. Learn how to save your own seeds and how to keep them for extended periods.
Be prepared for your first, or even second, garden planting to be destroyed and have a contingency plan. If your life depends on making a good garden, you need to have a fall back if your first attempt or two don't make it.
Have a storm cellar or other area of safety in your home. Different regions require different types of safe places, so do what is appropriate for your area.
Track weather trends and long term patterns. What was the weather in your area 100 years ago, 50, 15? Get a weather map and learn how to use it.
Keep an emergency preparedness kit.
Run drills for your family. Just like a fire drill, but for weather, too.
Know what to do if you are caught in weather away from home. I was in a furniture store in Fort Wayne, Indiana years ago when a tornado tore through the parking lot, strip mall and building. There were shoppers (myself included) that were yelling "tornado" and directing folks even before a terrified employee thought to initiate a "Code Black" over the p.a. system. Remember, the people around you are just as scared as you may be and just because they are an employee of a store, they aren't necessarily equiped to deal with an emergency any better than you are.
Be informed. Try and believe that folks that talk about extreme weather are not "Chicken Littles" and know that these new weather patterns are here to stay - at least for a while.

I suppose that is enough for now. The rain has stopped and the sun is peeking out. I should go walk around and see how the property faired.

Good luck - and may Mother Nature only turn her warm and smiling face toward you this season.

Carpeting the Garden: A Primer

2008-06-19T18:19:00.010-04:00

As I had mentioned in a previous post, we are using scavenged / recycled carpet in our garden this year. It is my first time trying this, and thus far I am very happy with the amount of necessary work and the results.

There are multiple benefits to using old carpet in the garden:

It is a wonderful method of recycling / reusing
The carpet is a tremendous barrier against weeds
The carpet insulates the ground, maintaining a steadier temperature
Moisture is retained between the rows, encouraging root growth
The trapped moisture means more time between waterings, and less water usage overall
The covered soil is a great environment for earthworms
Rows are clearly defined and easy to avoid - nobody accidently stepping on seeds or young plants
Plants that vine or produce "laying fruit" (watermelon, cucumber, etc) are more accessible and cleaner

The following is a step-by-step primer on the method that I am using to carpet our garden.

A wide angle view of the garden

A closer view of the rows

Various widths of carpet between the rows - the width is dependant on the types of plants grown - wider strips of carpet between vining plants, narrower strips between onions, etc.

Note that the ends of the strips of carpet must be weighted down. We learned the hard way that dry carpet can blow really far across the garden. This seems obvious in hindsight, but it never occurred to me beforehand.

I have put an old plastic sled into service as a sledge to drag rocks and bricks from around the property down to the garden. So much easier than a bucket or wheel barrow!

This is the garden from a different direction - note the carpet that hasn't yet been used in the background. I keep it spread out and ready to cut. This keeps the carpet from getting waterlogged, saves me effort on rolling and unrolling, and also provides all of the benefits listed above for the portions of the garden that are not yet planted.

An example of soil that has not yet been under carpet.

Soil that has been under carpet for two days.

Earth that has been under carpet for just over a week - notice the shriveled thistle to the left, just at the end of the shadow.

Close-up of the shriveled thistle.

Thistle elsewhere in the garden that hasn't been carpeted.

Step one after getting your carpet is to site your row. No different from doing this for a garden that isn't to be carpeted.

I use a gas powered Roto-Tiller. I will till in one direction and then come back over the same row, back to where I started.

The row after it has been tilled and retilled.

Now I pull the dirt from the first "hill" of the tilled row onto the second hill.

Pulling the dirt over gives you a nice high hill for planting and provides a more even surface on which to lay the carpet. The process also gives you an opportunity to pull out any organic matter that might reroot itself (thistle, for instance) and to remove any inorganic matter or rocks that you have tilled up.

The new row after all the dirt from the outside hill has been hoed onto the center hill. I leave the dirt on the other side alone - this gives me extra soil for adding to the hill if I need it later as I am planting.

I use the handle of my hoe to measure the distance across the row.

Using the handle of the hoe to mark the spot on the carpet where I will cut the needed strip.

We have found that the best thing to use for cutting the carpet is, you guessed it, a carpet knife. When using a carpet knife, keep in mind that the razor blade head is double edged and *very sharp*. Always use proper safety precautions.

I pull back the carpet as I cut.

For ease of movement when relocating the carpet strip to the row, first fold the strip in half lengthwise...

Then fold it in half again. I am generally doing this by myself and the folding makes the carpet manageable when moving and when laying it safely into the new row.

The carpet placed into the new row.

Weigh down the edge of the carpet.

Place happy plants or hopeful seeds into the soil of your new hill and repeat as needed.

Ta-da!

Are You Garden Obsessive?

2008-06-19T13:25:00.010-04:00

I just came in from the garden and was thinking about gardening and gardeners in general. I'm not sure if anyone but me would ever find it funny, but I started composing this list based on personal experience - or at least, personal thought process:

You may be Garden Obsessive if:

The house looks like hell, but who cares? The garden looks great!
Some folks have birthdays and anniversaries on their calendar; you have plant, sprout, bloom and maturity dates on yours.
Instead of family pictures in your wallet, you carry around cut-outs from your favorite seed catalogue.
The guy at the green house asks if you'll be "having the usual?"
When you walk into the hardware store, the cashier says "Nope, no other plants or seeds on sale yet" before you ever open your mouth.
You've received seed company gift cards as gifts for a holiday or your birthday (mainly because that is what you asked for).
You've ever named a tomato plant.
You have ever, even once, threatened someone's life for stepping out of a row (and meant it).
You've compared the cost of plants (or pots, or seed packets, or bags of soil) against the cost of paying whatever bill is due.
Your friends call you when they find a great deal on plants or seeds, not to tell you about it, but to ask how many they should pick up for you.
You have attempted to justify another plant, packet of seeds or another row by telling someone "But we can sell the produce, or give it away!"
You truly feel that the weeds have something personal against you and your garden.
You don't understand how anyone could ever consider saving seeds to be "optional".
If your family wants to spend time with you, they had better be pulling weeds.
For several months out of the year, your highest form of social interaction is talking to the plants.

Happy (Obsessive) Gardening!

Brrr...

2008-06-19T08:46:00.005-04:00

So, here it is, 8:30 in the morning and I'm on my way out to open the barn, bottle feed the goat-babies, feed the chickens, hay the goats and horse, etc. I am attired in my "typical" farm gear for this time of year: denim shorts, cotton shirt and faux crocs.

I get out to the barn and open up the big doors. I throw some corn for the chickens. I turn around and come back inside.

Over my shorts and shirt I have now put on fleece pants and a fleece zip up jacket. I think I'm good with the crocs. It's flippin' freezin' outside! Actually, weather.com says it's "58 and feels like 58". I say it's 58 and feels like 42.

The New Goat & Goat-Babies

2008-06-18T23:18:00.007-04:00

We have added to our little goat family and I thought it was about time to put up some pictures of the cute little guys!

Ivan and Kenji came to us from Roll Farms in Marion, Indiana. They are twin bucklings born on June 11. Their dam is 1/2 Saanen and 1/2 Nubian and their sire is Nubian. We are bottle feeding the boys and they are doing very, very well!

Getting ready to "go home" - it was going to be a long drive!
We named the white buckling Ivan and his brother is Kenji.

Kim of Roll Farms is awesome - and awesome at diapering goat-babies!

One week old and doing well.

The look on Kenji's face says "Why aren't you feeding me?"

They are as different as night and day. Ivan is taller and weighs a couple of pounds more than his brother. But developmentally, they are on equal footing... er, hoofing?

And our other recent addition is a Boer buckling named Brutus. My daughter purchased Brutus at the Wolf Lake Swap Meet in June. She felt that he was not being handled / treated properly and was in a dog carrier that was much too small for him (he couldn't stand up). Between compassion and having money in her pocket, Brutus became a member of our farm.

This is Brutus on the move. I think that he thinks that we have food for him.

Brutus is inquistive, but was a bit stand-offish at first.

We think he is about 2 months old, so we are calling his birthday the same as our Nubian buckling Jonathan, April 11.

This is our Nubian herd buck, Joseph. He and Brutus really were the first to get along, but the does are getting there, too.

More Recycle Stuff & The Compost Bin(s)

2008-06-18T22:17:00.011-04:00

This afternoon, I constructed the compost bins from the "Trash Amnesty" pallets that we found and here they are:

They may not be beautiful, and they certainly aren't perfect, but they are functional and were pretty much free. The only thing that keeps them from being totally free is the gas we used driving to gather stuff and get home, the baling wire I used to put the pallets together and - sigh - my time. There is also room to the right of the second bay to add a third section; we found more pallets this evening but will have to go back out to pick them up.

And all of the yard waste that is filling the compost bays is also from Trash Amnesty. I love it! I filled two compost bins with someone else's hard work!

We did go back out for a short while this evening and picked up the following goodies:

5 enamel camp style cooking pots (perfect condition)
6 40-pound bags of play sand (great for chick grit and mixing with soil for planting)
2 small laundry baskets
a plastic milk crate
a galvanized metal bucket (probably about 3 gallon size)
a complete set of allen wrenches in a case (rusty, but Hubby cleaned 'em right up)
a plastic portable tool box (lid is cracked, but duct tape fixes everything!)
a hula hoop (the kids were with us... sigh)

Not a bad haul for being out less than an hour. We were also in the van instead of the pick up truck, so space was limited. Hubby printed out a map of town so that we can better chart our course and mark where things are that we would like to try and go back for when we have the truck - the additional pallets we spotted, for example.

I love this time of year! The plants are growing, the chicks are cheeping, the baby goats are playing and there is all kinds of stuff free for the taking and using. What could be better!

Pre-Scavenging - Recyclers Rejoice!

2008-06-18T11:22:00.008-04:00

The town we live near has an annual little thing called "Trash Amnesty" in which all the good citizens that live inside the city limits can put any and all trash, garbage, junk, etc that they have collected for the last year out on the curb in front of their homes. Everything is then picked up, no matter what it is, by the solid waste people (this year the pick up is on Saturday, June 21).

The joy of this particular event, which we refer to as our Favorite Holiday, is that for a couple of weeks before the pick up date, recyclable goods are free for the taking. We have been "pre-scavenging" already this year and so far we have come home with the following, in no particular order:

2 cinder blocks
a Snap-on brand 2 level roll around tool box
assorted tools (Snap-on brand, they were in the tool box)
an area rug
various copper coils out of old TVs and monitors
3 wheel barrows (yes, really)
1 extra wheel barrow tire
several sheets of 3/4 inch plywood in brand new to nearly new condition
a lot of boards of various thickness and length
a yard pond / fountain thingy with a mosaic of koi on the inside
10 terra cotta pots with saucers
4 watering cans (missing the "sprinkler" end, but usable)
3 garden hoses (all in great shape, one missing an end)
2 50-gallon rubbermade style garbage cans with lids (perfect for feed)
3 five-gallon buckets
1 galvanized metal bucket
1 packet of brand new hearing aid batteries
several circuit boards out of old computers, etc (it's a hubby-hobby)
a Zimmer bone saw (and it works - creepy)
7 old fashioned double pane windows with glass intact
lots and lots of used carpet for the garden
6 hardwood pallets
21 large trash bags of yard waste

The pallets will be constructed into a couple of compost bins this afternoon and filled with the yard waste. I have already filled my "self-heating" cold frame for this winter with some of the yard waste and some household compostables, and am very excited about both projects.

We'll be cruising around town in the pick up truck again this evening, I'm sure. There is new "trash" out every day... and we bring new "treasures" home every night.

Food Banks Ask Gardeners to Grow Extra for Hungry

2008-06-17T23:54:00.004-04:00

By Clare Trapasso, Associated Press Writer

LANGDON, N.H. — Sharon Crossman hadn't tasted fresh fruits or vegetables in a week. Since her husband had two heart attacks and stopped working, she has relied on disability checks and the free food provided by a food pantry.

But lately, the only fresh produce available at the Fall Mountain Foodshelf where she volunteers has been shriveled potatoes and sprouting onions.

Pantry director Mary Lou Huffling expects that to change soon, as she has begun asking local gardeners and farmers to grow extra rows of produce to donate.

"Almost everyone around here has a garden," said Huffling, who also runs a program that delivers meals to the hungry in this rural part of southwestern New Hampshire. "If they would grow a row for the food program and the Friendly Meals program, it would help so much."

At least 50 families have responded to Huffling's request and she thinks about 100 will end up participating. In July, she expects to feed fresh vegetables to 100 to 130 families each week.

"People have been very excited about it," Huffling said.

She has learned that her idea and even the name she chose for it, Grow a Row, are not new.

Sharp increases in food and fuel prices and the shaky economy are creating alarming shortages at food banks and pantries around the country at the same time that demand is surging.

Programs like Plant a Row for the Hungry, a national campaign that encourages gardeners to grow extra produce for donation, and New Jersey-based Grow-a-Row, are similar to Huffling's.

"Because of the rising food costs and gas costs people are unable to buy what they need," said Carol Ledbetter, program administrator of the Virginia-based Garden Writers Association, which began sponsoring Plant a Row for the Hungry in 1995. "There's a greater need for the food and so our program is even more important."

Helene Meisser, director of the Northwest New Jersey Community Action Program Inc. in Phillipsburg, said that last year her food bank received about 70,000 pounds of produce from the New Jersey Grow-a-Row through a combination of volunteer farming and food gathering. The food was distributed to charitable agencies in three counties.

At the same time that costs are rising, demand is surging at food banks and pantries around the nation.

Produce donations can't come fast enough in a country where almost 11% of households had trouble getting everyone enough food in 2006, according to the latest U.S. Department of Agriculture estimate. About 4%, or 4.6 million households, experienced some form of hunger.

Huffling says demand at Fall Mountain has shot up from 30 to 40 families a week last year to more than 130 this year, and she can no longer afford to stock the pantry with milk, cheese and fresh produce.

Nationally, America's Second Harvest, a national hunger-relief organization based in Chicago, said some food banks are reporting demand 20% above last year's. Spokesman Ron Fraser said the increase is higher in places, and food pantries have even had to close because of shortages.

There are no known statistics on the national impact of programs like Grow a Row. Fraser said that is because donations are made locally and aren't always tracked.

One of Huffling's first volunteers was Susan Esslinger, 53, a high school job coach who runs a farm in nearby Alstead with her husband.

"I know people who are disabled and who are not working," said Esslinger, who planted extra tomatoes, cucumbers, carrots, beets, lettuce and green beans in May. "I also know people that have a lot of children and just can't make ends meet. Many people in the town go to the Foodshelf to help extend their dollar."

Crossman, 63, and her husband, a former electrician and service engineer, were financially stable until two years ago, although she said a workplace accident had forced her to stop working. The Crossmans were even able to help their three daughters pay for their weddings.

Then Crossman's husband had two heart attacks. He stopped working and lost his health insurance as operations produced hefty medical bills.

Sharon Crossman said they were hungry until they found the Fall Mountain Foodshelf about six months ago. She said they didn't have any bread and were eating a lot of oatmeal. They stopped celebrating holidays and considered a chocolate bar she received from the pantry on Mother's Day as a "real treat."

Now she and Huffing are looking forward to the first batch of donated fruits and vegetables this summer.

"When you don't have lettuce, tomatoes, peppers or anything else that's fresh vegetables, you miss it," Crossman said.

Load Up the Pantry / Wall Street Journal

2008-06-02T00:54:00.004-04:00

I've been preaching this for a while now... and then there it was, black and white, in the Wall Street Journal. I don't know if I should feel validated or terrified. Oh, and a another note on this article: plant yourself a garden and learn how to preserve the things you grow. *Very Important*

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120881517227532621.html

Load Up the Pantry
April 21, 2008 6:47 p.m.
Brett Arends at brett.arends@wsj.com

I don't want to alarm anybody, but maybe it's time for Americans to start stockpiling food.

No, this is not a drill.

You've seen the TV footage of food riots in parts of the developing world. Yes, they're a long way away from the U.S. But most foodstuffs operate in a global market. When the cost of wheat soars in Asia, it will do the same here.

Reality: Food prices are already rising here much faster than the returns you are likely to get from keeping your money in a bank or money-market fund. And there are very good reasons to believe prices on the shelves are about to start rising a lot faster.

"Load up the pantry," says Manu Daftary, one of Wall Street's top investors and the manager of the Quaker Strategic Growth mutual fund. "I think prices are going higher. People are too complacent. They think it isn't going to happen here. But I don't know how the food companies can absorb higher costs." (Full disclosure: I am an investor in Quaker Strategic. [Original author's notation.])

Stocking up on food may not replace your long-term investments, but it may make a sensible home for some of your shorter-term cash. Do the math. If you keep your standby cash in a money-market fund you'll be lucky to get a 2.5% interest rate. Even the best one-year certificate of deposit you can find is only going to pay you about 4.1%, according to Bankrate.com. And those yields are before tax.

Meanwhile the most recent government data shows food inflation for the average American household is now running at 4.5% a year.

And some prices are rising even more quickly. The latest data show cereal prices rising by more than 8% a year. Both flour and rice are up more than 13%. Milk, cheese, bananas and even peanut butter: They're all up by more than 10%. Eggs have rocketed up 30% in a year. Ground beef prices are up 4.8% and chicken by 5.4%.

These are trends that have been in place for some time.

And if you are hoping they will pass, here's the bad news: They may actually accelerate.

The reason? The prices of many underlying raw materials have risen much more quickly still. Wheat prices, for example, have roughly tripled in the past three years.

Sooner or later, the food companies are going to have to pass those costs on. Kraft saw its raw material costs soar by about $1.25 billion last year, squeezing profit margins. The company recently warned that higher prices are here to stay. Last month the chief executive of General Mills, Kendall Powell, made a similar point.

The main reason for rising prices, of course, is the surge in demand from China and India. Hundreds of millions of people are joining the middle class each year, and that means they want to eat more and better food.

A secondary reason has been the growing demand for ethanol as a fuel additive. That's soaking up some of the corn supply.

You can't easily stock up on perishables like eggs or milk. But other products will keep. Among them: Dried pasta, rice, cereals, and cans of everything from tuna fish to fruit and vegetables. The kicker: You should also save money by buying them in bulk.

If this seems a stretch, ponder this: The emerging bull market in agricultural products is following in the footsteps of oil. A few years ago, many Americans hoped $2 gas was a temporary spike. Now it's the rosy memory of a bygone age.

The good news is that it's easier to store Cap'n Crunch or cans of Starkist in your home than it is to store lots of gasoline. Safer, too.

A New Mailbox

2008-05-28T12:27:00.003-04:00

It really is the simple things in life!

Over the long weekend, my husband and daughter concocted a plan to replace our old decrepit mailbox (it was covered with rust, the hinges were broken and it was whopper-jawed to the point of no longer closing) with a refurbished one.

Taking an old and slightly dented mailbox out of one of the barns, hubby cleaned it up, painted it red and decided to design it to look like a barn. With painting help from my daughter (and eventually some from me - I did most of the lettering), a "new" mailbox was formed. In addition to the painting, hubby had to straighten the new box, remove some rust, put in a new bottom and put new screws in the hinges - but it still started out better than our old one finished up!

Combining the new mailbox with a section of vinyl fencing that we pulled out of an unsuspecting donor's rubbish heap, the new "mail station" in front of our farm was formed. We plan on taking the paperbox down soon and repainting the "Post and Mail" on the side in red, as well.

For your viewing pleasure, may I present, Our New Mailbox:

Washing Eggs (or Not): A Primer

2008-05-21T14:47:00.001-04:00

Everyone knows where eggs come from, right? So, just by the nature of their existence, most folks feel that eggs need to be washed, and washed well. For the most part, I disagree. My disagreement stems from both personal opinion and documented fact.

However, opinion and documentation aside, our farm holds an Indiana State Egg Board Seller Certification, which means that eggs taken to market must be washed. Okay, them are the rules.

For the sake of education, here are several egg washing myths compared to the reasons why eggs really shouldn't be washed, don't really need to be washed and actually do better if they are not washed.

Myth 1 - Eggs must be refrigerated.
Nope, they don't. The average egg, if left unwashed, can be stored on your kitchen counter in a bowl for up to two weeks prior to having any obvious aging effects. In fact, if you have any desire to successfully boil and peel a true farm fresh egg, you really should sit it on the counter at room temperature for several days. A truly fresh egg that is boiled will not peel, large chunks of the white will remain attached to the shell and the egg will be badly torn up. The reason for this is that the shell is porous and not airtight. Air is constantly transferring into the egg from outside the shell - this is what causes the white to separate from the shell, allowing the shell to be peeled away. More on this later.

Myth 2 - Eggs aren't "clean" until they are washed.
Nope. When a chicken lays an egg, there is a microscopically thin membrane that covers the shell. This membrane is called "the bloom". The bloom actually blocks the pores that allow air and germs to transfer into an egg, causing aging and possible contamination. Eventually, the bloom will wear away because of handling, etc, allowing air to transfer into the egg - and maybe some other stuff, too. Leaving an egg unwashed allows the bloom to do its job. If the bloom is powerful enough to seal a fertilized egg and allow a healthy, viable chick to grow inside, it is undoubtedly powerful enough to keep the egg "clean" for you.

Myth 3 - But, grocery store eggs are washed and they stay fresh longer.
Nope, they really don't last longer. A refrigerated unwashed egg and refrigerated washed egg, from day one, do not age the same. Guess which one stays fresher longer? (I hope you knew to go with "unwashed" on this one.)
A little something that many folks don't know, but could deduce if they thought about it, is that the eggs in the grocery store are, generally speaking, not fresh. In this, I am speaking of large scale egg producing operations for the commercial market.
First, the egg is laid by a chicken. The egg is sorted, washed, graded, etc and generally packaged into shipping flats. Some producers final package their eggs in house, most sell to another company that will brand and package the eggs. The initial process of inspection, etc, takes time on the scale of a day or so, depending on how many eggs are produced and how many employees are sorting eggs, etc. Now, regardless of how quickly the eggs may have been inspected, they have to wait for the truck to come and pick them up. The trucks are scheduled in advance and may be arriving the next day, or maybe not for another week, again, this depends on the size and scale of the operation.
The eggs are now shipped, not to the grocery, but to a warehouse where, if they were unpackaged, they are now double checked (things break in shipping and eggs are fragile), resorted and packaged. How long does this process take? Following this, we are again waiting on the truck that will be making delivery of the eggs. The truck comes and picks up the eggs.
The eggs are now taken to a distribution warehouse where they will be sorted into other trucks that should be taking them, and other perishable food goods, to their final destination. Here we are, waiting on the truck again. Oh, and these eggs, once on any of the trucks, could be heading for who knows where over who knows how many miles? Distribution on this scale is generally not localized, so we need to be calculating transit time on the various trucks, too.
Okay, so now the eggs have arrived at their final destination, they are offloaded and placed in the back of the cooler. Eggs aren't necessarily selling at the speed of light, so they may be in the cooler for a couple of days (or much more) until they make it to the consumer's home.
Saying that two weeks have passed since the chicken produced the egg and the egg was cracked into a skillet is generally considered to be a conservative estimate. Yum, two week old eggs! These eggs are "good" only because consumers are told that they are and don't have much to compare them to. I promise, a two week old that has sat on my kitchen counter, unwashed and unrefrigerated, is better and fresher than any commercial egg you pick up "fresh" from the local Multi-Mega-Mart.

For my family, we wash the egg when we are ready to use it. It is floated, washed, dried, cracked and cooked. Oh, "floated". Let me explain that, too.

The freshness of an egg is easily determined by "floating" it in a bowl of water (pictured below). Place an egg in water that is cool, but not cold. If the egg lays nicely on its side, it is fresh. As an egg ages and you have the transfer of air through the shell and into the egg, the egg gains buoyancy. At first, the egg will just barely sort of tilt upward a little. As more days have gone by, the egg will stand more and more upright. Once the egg reaches the fully upright position, we don't eat them anymore - but the dogs and cats do. An egg is officially bad when it not only stands upright, but leaves contact with the bottom of the bowl. These eggs are "floaters" and they end up in the compost.

Here is the process by which we wash the eggs that we deliver to a retail market. We gather the eggs, float the eggs, wash the eggs, package the eggs and deliver the eggs all on the same day. The market to which we deliver is 15 miles away.

Fresh and local.

Eggs fresh in from the barn.

Closer view of the colored eggs.

Floating a group of brown eggs before washing.

Washed green & blue eggs air drying.

Blue and green eggs in the package.

The package.

Close-up of the packaging.

Free Ranging Chickens: A Primer

2008-05-19T23:56:00.001-04:00

Whenever discussing our hundreds of free range chickens, the question that I always have posed to me is "Why don't all the chickens just leave? What keeps them there?"

I think, that after responding to this question so many times both verbally and in email, that I've gotten a pretty standard answer down pat.

We have 3 acres on a major state roadway... we have hundreds of free range chickens, plus ducks, guineas and geese and have never had a chicken cross the road (ha-ha!)... or even try, for that matter. Additionally, the only fencing we have on the property is for the horse / goat pastures. There are no fences between the property and road or the corn fields or garden, etc.

Above all, chickens are creatures of habit. They need a coop or pen or hen-house... chickens must have a steady, regular, consistent place to roost - if this place can be secure inside of a barn or building, so much the better - if the weather is really bad our chickens can "free range" inside the barn... This also gives the hens safe places to nest and lay their daily eggs.

Anyway, unless you have an established flock to show your new hens what is expected of them, keep new chickens penned up in what is to be their new home for a couple of days. Make sure they have plenty fresh food and water. On the third day or so, let the chickens out. Keep their food and water inside the pen. Be prepared, as you may have to do a bit of a chicken round up... just keep an eye on where they go to roost and, if it isn't in their designated area, collect them and put them where you want them after they are roosted - generally after dusk / dark. If they give you a bunch of "flap", just hang them upside down by their legs (make sure their beaks are pointing straight down)... this "hypnotizes" them and they calm right down. Just turn them over and gently set them on their feet on the ground when you get them to where they are going.

After a few days, move the feed and water outside of the pen, but return it before dusk... eventually, you can move the food and water outside of the pen permanently.

To assist the chickens in finding their way "home" at night, you can put a brooder light or small "nightlight" in the pen, turn it on a bit before dusk and then off once they are settled in for the night... Chickens "follow the light"... We have "herded" our chickens through the barn and to their coop by turning different lights on and then off in the barn and having them move from place to place in order to follow the light - ending up in their coop - tada!

In raising our "peeps" and chicks, we don't allow them to free range until we can let them out of their pen and they move about in a cohesive group or several small but firm groups. A chick alone will get lost or eaten or picked on, etc. If we open up the chick pen for the first time and they just sort of straggle out and run around, we round them up and put them all back for a day or two and then try again. Our chick pen is in the main bay of the barn with natural light and all the chickens can see the chicks and visa-versa... we have yet to have a problem integrating new chicks with the flock. (Aside from the normal pecking order establishment, etc.)

Also, your rooster is your friend. Your rooster should assist your hens in finding food and water, chasing bugs, getting up in the morning and settling to roost at night. When you get your dominant rooster to go to bed in the right place at night, the hens will follow.

Now, all of this is merely my personal experience and opinion... there are probably 100 different ways and means that people free range their flocks. For me, I have found that chickens are quite habitual (and generally predictable) in all that they do... day after day they lay their eggs in the same places, roost in the same places, etc, etc... It is just getting them to identify the place that you want them to use instead of just any 'ol where that they want to call home.

Carpeting the Garden

2008-05-19T19:10:00.002-04:00

I have outsourced the tilling of my garden this year to the sons of a dear friend of mine. Wednesday should be the day.

My plan for preventing weeds this year is simple: I'm going to carpet my garden.

Yup, carpet.

Once the garden is tilled and the rows are mounded up, salvaged carpet is laid down between and over the rows. You cut a hole or leave a bare strip where you intent to place your plants or sow your seeds. The carpet is put in shaggy side down, so the brown woven underside is what shows. Of course, if left up to my 14-year-old, the shaggy side would go up and be quite visually interesting.

There is a carpet and tile shop in the town nearest our home where we can pick up carpet that has been removed from peoples' houses. This carpet is used and generally several, several years old, so any production chemicals should be long gone. Also, the carpet is free, as we will be dumpster diving to get it - so there is a frugality to it and the recycling aspect.

The carpet allows moisture to get to the soil, but completely blocks the growth of grass, weeds and any other plants that would normally be growing up where the carpet has been laid down. Additionally, the carpet holds in the moisture for times when there is little rain, helps regulate soil temperature, and makes a great cover for the earthworm population. An additional bonus is the joy of seeing peoples' faces when I tell them I am carpeting my garden!

Of course, there is always the possibility that my daughter might talk me into a couple of shag side up rows, too, just for the fun of it!

What is Chickenland?

2008-05-19T14:48:00.001-04:00

I didn't start out calling my little farm "Chickenland" - actually, except for this blog, I really don't call it Chickenland at all.

Four years ago or so, I convinced my fairly staid husband that the economy was going to go to hell in a handbasket (or some other suitable container) and that we should cash out the 401(k) and all our savings and buy a farm. And so we did.

We haven't recouped our savings and really don't have any kind of financial cushion at this point (donations always accepted), but we have three acres of soil, eight outbuildings, chickens, goats, a horse, a couple of geese and the ability to hand pump water from our well if the power should go out.

A little extreme maybe, for some, but working out pretty well for me.

Hubby telecommutes about 50% of the time and has an half-hour drive the rest of the time for work. My work is here, on the farm.

As to why I'm going with "Chickenland" it has to do with, as you may have guessed, the chickens. We have over 500 right now. All of them free-ranging and egg laying (except the roosters, they free-range, but don't egg lay).

We sell chicks, chickens and eggs. I give advice and assistance with raising chickens. I love being outside and working with the animals and in the garden.

That is the briefest of run-downs. As time goes by the portrait of our farm will become clearer (and hopefully dearer). Information regarding what I know about animal husbandry will be cataloged. Adventures and misadventures will be shared.

Welcome to Chickenland.
Population 500+.