“Why I am Sad”, or, “Satsumas Are Nearly Finished”

There’s a town, not too far away from me, called Satsuma. I thought I’d start off by mentioning that. It’s a pretty lame town, and I guess I don’t really want to talk about it. So.

Satsumas are pretty popular in most areas of the country right now, in fact, I remember reading a somewhat recent article about them listing in a rank of ‘trending foods’. It seems that the worthy fruit hasn’t  been in the public consciousness long, at least not outside it’s growing range, and I’m going to go ahead and put on my hipster glasses that I’ve been into satsumas waaay before they got popular.

If you haven’t had a satsuma, and are still struggling day in and day out to peel oranges, I would have to recommend you find your nearest satsuma dealer and rectify the situation.

A satsuma is a citrus fruit, related to the mandarin, usually smaller than an orange (some varieties get pretty massive, though), but bigger than a tangerine. Unlike tangerines, however, it doesn’t have that strange off-flavor that I find so unappealing.

They are sweet, ridiculously juicy, and completely seedless. The fact that the skin falls off in such an easy, silky smooth fashion is icing on the cake. King of citrus. Hands down. No contest. I honestly don’t understand why anyone eats any other citrus. Except maybe grapefruit, which has an awesomeness all of it’s own.

Anyway, I’m sad because our satsuma trees are nearly done fruiting, and we’ve eaten or juiced most of them in a depressingly short period of time.  It’s pretty neat to be able to pluck one off the tree whenever I pass it, and partake of it’s juiciness en route from the house to the garden.

They are pretty easy to grow, and can be grown in places too cold for other citrus. I don’t know what the exact temperatures it’s supposed to withstand, but we’ve gotten in the upper teens/low twenties since I’ve had it planted. While they die back a good deal the next spring, the tree is still plenty healthy and produces a ton of fruit all the same. A few years ago I would cover the trees with dropcloths when the temperature dipped, but I never do that anymore, and haven’t suffered for it.

There are many different varieties, we have Owari and Armstrong, and they are both good. I really couldn’t recommend one over the other, in fact I can’t even remember which is which any more (pro-tip: write down what you plant where- tags wither and die).

So. Moral of this post: Go buy satsumas. Go plant a satsuma tree. Tell your friends about satsumas. This is an awesome fruit that deserves more recognition!

Deciding Between a Homemade and Commercial Brooder Box

A long time ago we build a brooder box out of 2×2′s and plywood. It was simple; I believe we got the plans from an extension service pamphlet, and it didn’t cost very much to build.

We started by using it outdoors;  it had a plywood top with hinges. We build an attached sunporch for them to hang out outside. For a few chicks every now and then it worked fine, but it soon became much more of a hassle than it was worth, so we moved our brooders into our newly built (at the time) barn. Raising them in the open air barn in chicken wire boxes on the ground.

You can see the thermometer and thermostat in the back

We still used the original plywood box for our week old chicks, because it was much easier to keep warm by keeping drafts out, and it helped the babies get off to a good start. We kept a heat lamp in there, along with your everyday tray feeders and 1 gallon plastic waterers. Then we moved them out after a week to the bigger brooders (I should probably post about those, come to think of it).

After holding up faithfully for nigh 4 years(?), the plywood has begun to rot away, so we had to make a decision- build another one, or buy one from a farm supply company?

The pros in favor of the commercial brooder ended up far outweighing the cons.

• The commercial brooder has a built-in thermostat and heater. It kicks off at the desired temperature, and kicks back off when it’s too hot. Our brooder was heated by infared heat lamps, which would burn out sometimes, and had to be watched very carefully to make sure the chicks weren’t over/under heated. Since it’s coldest at night, this can be hard to do, since, you know, we like to sleep as well.
• The Commercial brooder is made of metal. Nothing too study, just galvanized sheet metal, but you can tell by looking at it that it’s going to last a lot longer than our previous box.
• The commercial brooder is cleaned out by removing a tray that slides out the bottom, so you don’t get litter build up that was such a pain to get out with a shovel.
• The commercial brooder has all the feeders and waterers on the outside of the box. They reach their heads through slits on the side to access it. This is good on several fronts:

1. You don’t have to open the box and reach in to feed and water them. This removes stress on the chicks, who invariable run in terror when the notice a hand that’s twice as big as they are themselves reaching towards them. 
2. The chicks can’t stand in the water or feed, this is essential for good sanitation.  
3. The waterer does not have to be filled much, since it’s fed by a five gallon bucket sitting on top the brooder

Automatic waterer with float

We do have to cover the whole thing with a blanket, since it’s in an open air barn, and there’s a lot of  slits along the side of the brooders the would simply drink in cold blasts of northern wind. But we did that with our old brooder in the winter as well.

The only real downside to the scheme was the cost, which was $200 with shipping. Really, not that bad considering the cost of farm equipment in general (there’s pastured poultry pens offered by the same company for like 1000 dollars). Yes, we could have built one for cheaper, but I’m starting to realize that making something yourself isn’t always the way to go.

Anyone who has ever worked a day on a farm knows there’s always more to do than is going to get done, and the simplicity of paying others to do things for you gives you more time and makes you more productive in other areas. As much as I love the idea of the sustainable farmer who makes everything he needs with his own two hands, I love the idea of a nice brooder that will save us work on a daily basis even more.

Composted Feathers for Fertilizer

So we’ve been making a pile of chicken feathers for about two years.

Yah, out of context it does sound kinda weird.

You see, Feather meal is a rather expense, but very good organic fertilizer. It’s like 12-0-0 or something like that (to lazy to Google it, that’s your job now).  My friend Luther uses it with seedling mixes for an epic seed starting mixture.

I don’t know of a source for it anymore. Getting it in those tiny bags at garden centers wouldn’t be cost effective for my large-ish garden. There was a plant in Mississippi, not very far from me, that wasn’t producing it as well as chicken manure pellets and selling in 50 pound bags, but they shut down. (Sad!)

We pluck a decent amount of feathers in our pastured poultry business. And I don’t like to put them in the compost pile, because they take forever to decompose, and if you dont spread them veeery thinly, they clump up and get nasty. Also, being so high in nitrogen I’m afraid I’ll throw off the C:N ratio too much.
I raked the top feathers off yesterday, and after several inches of very un-decomposed white feathers, I hit gold:So, instead of mixing the feathers with the compost, we made a pile next to it, just for chicken feathers. Not covered, but I think I will cover it in the future. We kept adding and adding to it, and now, two years later, we have a somewhat respectably sized pile.

My Complicated Relationship With Geese

It all started two years ago, in the late summer. We have an acre of blueberry plants, and an acre of grass is quite a lot of grass to cut. Especially in the summer, when the bahia grass decides for a few months span to devote it’s energy to taking over the whole planet;  before giving up, exhausted, to the usually dry fall weather and cool nights.

I got tired of constantly running the weedeater up and down just short of 3000 feet of blueberry rows. In all honesty, though, I didn’t complete the task as often as I should, and the grass would get super high, and brambles would grow up in the rows, and it was generally a big mess.

Being the clever man that I am, and a devoted sustainable farmer, I started to look for a sustainable solution to the problem of high grass in places that a lawnmower couldn’t effectively cut. The internet is full of purported solutions to problems, 90% of which, I’m beginning to suspect, are lies propagated by- at least in this case- bahia grass during it’s yearly attempted coup.

Geese. Geese were the solution, according to the internet. ‘Weeder geese’ was a term that kept coming up in searches for grass control in orchards. The best part about it was that geese, according to what I read, will eat grasses and other weeds, but not broadleaf plants. Or not ‘most’ broadleaf plants. I don’t know about you, but when I read the word ‘most’, my mind reads ‘all’. ‘Most’ implies excellent odds, at the very least. And I’m comfortable with that. Suffice it to say, it’s a bold faced lie. More on that later.

So I got some goslings. We ordered them from the hatchery as ‘weeder geese’. As a side note, while the term ‘weeder geese’ pops up now and again, it is not a particular breed. When a hatchery advertises ‘weeder geese’, that’s shorthand for ‘a random selection of leftover goslings).

They arrived in the mail very healthy, and they quickly grew into 12 strapping young specimens. Sadly, as is the way of  farm life, hungry unidentified predators (nope, still haven’t ruled out swamp monsters), turned into 7 over the course of that year.

Now, the flaw in my plan  tohave have geese eat grass along the blueberries rows, was that geese have two things that weedwhackers do not have. Namely, wings and feet. I took the feet into consideration, and employed the movable electric netting we use so often around here. We don’t have a permanent fence surrounding the berries, and its a clear shot from the orchard to the house, and more importantly, the garden, fence wise. The wings I didn’t take into my calculations, and it burned me in the end. As they say, failing to plan is planning to fail.

Quick little segway: Young geese are the cutest thing ever. Not  baby geese, and definetly not adult geese, somewhere in between. When they start forming ranks and patrolling in their uniquely goose-like way. Ok.

So the electric netting soon proved useless in confining them. The would charge it, flap their wings in a labored manner, and manage to clear the top. Except for one or tow of the heavier breeds who would pace back and forth along the fence line, clearly suffering from a mixture of acute seperation anxiety and jealousy.

So, at least until we put up a fence around the berries, the geese were not staying in there. We didn’t want to spend the money on that so I went back to weedwhacking. And it wasn’t a total loss, now we had 7 geese who were fascinating to watch. The lived by the pond, and rarely bothered anything. I continued gardening, they continued swimming. When our paths did cross, neither treated the other with much respect. They would hiss and charge and bite my leg, and I would hiss back and shove them away with my foot, but

Then, as is to be expected among living things, a next generation emerged.

Broody geese are terrifying. One hen decided to make her (enormous) nest in the middle of our barn. The barn that has all our chicken brooders, and that we work in everyday. Throughout her entire….pregnancy(?) she would hiss and holler at anyone who stepped foot in the barn, and she never got used to it. If you really ticked her off she would charge at you. I swear, she reminded me of nothing more than the Velocoraptors in Jurassic Park. She had my 80lb German Shepherd refusing to go anywhere near her out of sheer terror.

She was faithful to the end, however, and her reign of terror over the inhabitants of the barn eventually subsided. The end result was that the flock was increased  by 10. Ten rather nondescript geese- half African and have Toulouse (Toulouse was the mothers side).

Within weeks, the flock dynamics changed. They became noisier, they fought more (a sadly amusing spectacle where one goose will chase and bite another while the rest honk honks of encouragement), they were much more insistent about their daily grain ration being delivered on time. To the point that most mornings they would saunter over to the house, all 17 of the little devils, and wait for us to get up. And poo up a storm on the front lawn as a silent protest. Visitors started complaining.

It was about this time that they discovered the garden and all progress therein abruptly halted. It turns out they do not bother measuring the width of leaves before deciding whether or not to eat them. So much for that. Anyway, that was when I decided it had to end. Christmas goose was on my mind.

But charity, mingled with laziness and extreme doubt as to whether they had much meat on them, stayed my hand. We had received funding from the NCRS to do some cross fencing on the property, so it was decided we would drop our current projects and get the little goose-a-sauruses fenced in around the pond.

Mission Accomplished, and now we have 17 geese that we really don’t want. Hearing their raucous screeches all hours of the day is a bittersweet experience; bitter, because of all the trouble they’ve caused, and sweet from the feeling of regaining control over a gaggle of wicked dinosaur-birds.

A Brief, No-Nonsense Guide to Raising Meat Chickens at Home

Finally some rain!

I honestly can’t remember the last time we have had any rain, and I spent some time thinking about it. We got a little this morning, just enough to wet the ground, really. But I went out to the pasture and noticed it was enough for the ryegrass I planted forever ago to come up. Finally!

Magnolia Murder

I sell free range chicken and mushrooms.

To be a little more specific, I sell free range chicken and mushrooms under a magnolia tree.  At the farmer’s market in Covington, La to be exact.

It’s a small magnolia tree, but a tree nonetheless. I used to sell under a healthy, vibrant magnolia tree. Nowadays, because of some maniacal tree trimmer with a license to kill from the City of Covington; I sell under a mangled magnolia tree.

Here is the photographic evidence I took last weekend, and just noticed on my phone. I wish I had a before picture to show the difference, but I never thought I would need one, since there was no reason to believe, after years of uninhibited growth, that anything would happen to my wounded comrade.

 Current mood: Very anti-establishmentarian

Putting Up Cross Fencing

So the past few weeks we’ve been working on cross-fencing the property. With several hundred broiler chickens running around, good fencing becomes very crucial to keep out the multitude of foxes, coyotes, dogs, possums, and possibly swamp monsters (you can never completely rule out swamp monsters….anywhere!).

Sadly, when we purchased the farm, there was no real cross fencing of any kind, and what little fencing there was got royally owned by Hurricane Katrina. We use, currently, rolls of eletrified poultry netting (which is a really good product, btw) to protect  our birds, but it’s turned into a ridiculously labor  intensive process. The rolls of netting make a rather small foraging area for the birds, and since we keep them in movable pens, the netting must be moved ALOT, as the pens move.

Permanent fence is much better.

So, through the NCRS’s EQUIP conservation program, which gives grants for certain types of conservation/agricultural development projects, we will be able to cross pretty much the entire property into 4 or 5 paddocks. Much of the land is forested, so we had to do quite a job of work clearing the fence lines.

So that’s what my pa and I have been up to, here’s some of our progress.

We rented an auger for the tractor. With the ground as hard as it is right now this was a must. Even with this I ended up having to stand on top on the gear box and hop up and down a little to get the auger to “bite”. Doing that, btw, is an excellent way to kill/maim yourself. It also looks silly.

Finished product with the auger.

Partial view of the first north-south fenceline

Gate by the pond on the north-south fenceline. There will be an east-west line coming right off the other side of this gate.

So that’s it for now, later this week we will be pulling the wire!  The wire will be a 4ft field fence, with two strands of barbed wire on top, and offset electrified wire along the bottom. Excited!

Morel Patches Finished

…So I took an hour this week to go ahead and a finally make use of those bags of spawn i was sent. I made the outdoor patches near an old oak tree out in our woods. Morels can stand a little bit of filtered sunlight, but I wasn’t taking any chances. Also, the location underneath the old oak makes the patch much easier to find.

I made the patch according to the directions, which were to spread the sawdust spawn I was sent (see this post) on a well cleared patch of soil, and cover with more sawdust, plus a mix of sand and pea gravel. As a crazy unrelated side note, I LOVE pea-gravel! I like holding a handful and shaking it in my palms. It makes a very satisfying slightly crunchy, slightly swish-y noise! After that, I covered it with cardboard.

This method confused me a bit, because I thought morels didn’t grow on wood? So why the sawdust?

I really hope this works and I get some mushrooms out of it. Morels are highly sought after everywhere, especially places like here where they don’t grow in the wild. I’m really crossing my fingers on this one. This could do wonders for my self-esteem! Unfortunately, won’t know for sure until at least the spring.

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Ground scratched bare of vegetation and litter, so the spawn can make contact with the soil

The spawn, spread on the ground

The finished, watered down pile. Yes, I can’t see it either. It’s a cellphone, guys…

Ringless Honey Mushrooms

I’ve been on a mushroom kick lately, as you can tell by the last couple of posts. By “lately”, I really mean the past year and a half. Perhaps a better way of putting it is “I’ve been on an extended mushroom kick”.

You know how when something is brought to your attention you start seeing it everywhere? That’s more or less what it’s been like with my mushroom obsession. I see mushrooms everywhere now, even when I’m not looking for them. I’m pretty much a total newbie when it comes to identifying wild anything, and wild mushrooms are no exception, but whenever I see one I haven’t seen before I rush to look it up online and see if I can figure out what it is. It’s fun to find something mysterious and unknown, and then put a name to it.

However, I’m consistently plagued by self-doubt, and with the exception of some easily identified mushrooms (puffballs, chanterelles, oysters), I haven’t actually had the balls to eat any of the mushrooms I’ve found that I determine to belong to the (depressingly small percentage in my experience) list of “this one won’t make you gag, get sick, or kill you.”

All this brings me to a phenomenon that occurred over the past week- which was the sudden and ubiquitous emergence of these pretty little clusters of yellow/brown mushrooms.

EVERYWHERE. Not an exaggeration. Like one every few feet. If I had a mind to, I could probably have filled several garbage bags full. And I’m talkin’ the big 72 gallon bags.

So of course I rushed doubly fast to the computer, a specimen in my lap, and began to scour the small section of the web devoted to figuring out which mushrooms are which. I determined, with like nearly 99% certainty, that my farm was being overtaken by Ringless Honey Mushrooms.

I saw it described at being “technically edible”….Heh, not a ringing endorsement.

But still I thought to myself  ”Aha! I can eat this!”  Of course, I didn’t. Because like the many, many birds I have cavorting around the farm (who, incidentally were not eating any of the mushrooms either),  I was chicken. The part of my brain wired for survival started to think that maybe this mushroom looks EXACTLY like all the ones with the little skull and crossbones icon next to their pictures in the field guides.

One day I will be brave, bold, and sure of my identifications- but not today. Today, at least I am alive, and am not in the process of having my stomach pumped. Anyway, anyone ever eat one of these?

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