Yep. Those are goat burgers. We bought a pound of ground goat at the World Hunger Relief Farm last week and we cooked it up tonight. Nathan said, "It tastes like regular hamburger. I almost forgot it was goat." Actually, the flavor is slightly different, but it's still great! We're officially sold on getting a goat now and we're actively shopping for one.

Brandi and Abigail, pulling up roots in our garden:


Five hens pulling up roots in our garden:


As far as the photo above, the way it works is the chicken tractor (cage) stays over one patch of the garden for 24 hours and then it's rotated. During those 24 hours the five hens do a bang up job of pulling up roots and fertilizing the ground. Those five hens also lay about three or four eggs a day inside that tractor -- very cool. They're worth their weight in gold.

Some of our Cornish Cross meat birds out free-ranging:

We now have 35 birds living on our farm. We bought a couple of bantam (miniature) chickens from a guy off of Craig's List. We'd been wanting some bantam chickens because their hens are known for going broody, and, thanks to their diminutive stature, they apparently do well as full-time garden residents (bug eaters) once the plants have grown to a decent size. I didn't get home while there was still light to take a photo of our new bantams, but I'll try and do that tomorrow.

From our Goat Tour at the World Hunger Relief Farm on Thursday:




Our kids rode on the riding mower today (the blade wasn't engaged, of course):




Our neighbor came over today to plow our garden (again) with his tractor:


The garden will be ready for plants in a couple of weeks:

Now that the weather is just about perfect, it's a great day for a work day outside. We've already put in a couple of hours so far (it's noon right now). I've got to mow the entire lawn area (about .75 acres that I do on a riding mower; the rest of the land I'll get my neighbor to shred with his tractor at some point), clean out part of the barn, stack some wood, and do a few other odd jobs. Brandi plans on working in the garden, getting it ready for plants.

Here's a photo of the kiddos gathering hay this morning:

We acquired five more laying hens yesterday, so our total bird count is now up to 33. Out of those 33, 13 of them are layers. That many hens ought to give us more than enough eggs for our family, and we'll probably have a surplus that we can sell. We'll see.

It was kind of cool getting home with the five new birds yesterday. It was after dark and the kids came running out, all excited to see their new farm birds. I took them out of the container they were in, one at a time, and had Brandi help me clip their wings before we dropped them in their chicken tractor. (We'll keep them in the tractor for a few days to let the other flock get used to their presence, and then we'll slowly integrate them into the flock.)

I emailed a Mennonite hatchery in Pennsylvania yesterday and I'm waiting to hear back. They're one of the only hatcheries in the United States that is currently hatching Freedom Rangers. Freedom Rangers are broilers (meat birds) that thrive out on a free-range pasture. Unlike the quintessential American meat bird, the Cornish Cross, Freedom Rangers weren't bred to sit around and eat feed all day, but they were bred to get nice and meaty!



Anyway, Brandi and I want some Freedom Rangers as a nice compliment to the Cornish Cross chickens that we currently raise. The breast meat on Freedom Rangers isn't as massive as the breast meat on the Cornish Crosses, but, supposedly, the meat is every bit as flavorful. (In case anyone is wondering, Cornish Cross chickens are the kind you buy in the grocery store; they're an American innovation, and their advent has brought cheap, big, juicy chicken to the masses. The Cornish Crosses eat primarily feed, but, in a situation like ours, they have access to fresh grass and bugs, so they're considered to be more "natural" than Cornish Crosses from factories. They also don't live on their feces 24/7 like they often do in commercial chicken houses.)

That's the bird update for the day.

At 1 p.m. tomorrow Brandi, the kids, and I will take a "goat tour" at the World Hunger Relief Farm. "The Farm," as it's called, is only about 20 minutes from our house. By country standards, we're neighbors. So tomorrow some folks at The Farm (not to be confused with our place, which we also call The Farm) will give us a tour of their goat facilities and give us the skinny on raising goats and answer any questions we may have. They even have goats we can buy.

At some point today or tomorrow, Brandi's going to head to Homestead Heritage (only 10 minutes from our place) to buy seeds and plants for our garden. We hope to have the garden ready to go by the end of the month.

Between Homestead Heritage and the World Hunger Relief Farm, we've got a couple of great resources right down the road from us.

Brandi warmed this chicken up with her hair dryer, and he's been perking up ever since. We think he's going to be able to fulfill his destiny now as a fryer. :-) He'll join his 16 brothers and sisters outside tomorrow morning.

We had a huge downpour about an hour ago, and our meat birds didn't like it. They all seem to be doing ok, drying off and everything, but one of them seems like he's knocking on Heaven's door. He's looking pretty puny. We have brought him inside and we have him next to a radiator heater. He's still breathing, but he's not looking good.

In other news it seems like we're closer and closer to getting a goat. We want to have one sometime within the next month or two for sure. He'll spend the summer mowing our lawn and then we'll have him processed around October. That's the plan anyway.

A few photos from the past few days ...

From Daniel and Abigail's shared birthday party last weekend:

Daniel's alligator cake (I'd like to add that my lovely and talented wife made the cakes)


Abigail's princess castle cake


Abigail, half a second before she blew out her candles


Nathan and Abby inspecting the cakes


A family dinner later that weekend


Daniel and Abby, "happily" eating at the bar (they really were happy, despite their droopy faces)


Our meat birds (we have 17 of them and we'll slaughter them in less than three weeks)


Our new-to-us chicken tractor! It's pretty big, roughly 50 square feet, and I plan to put four new laying hens in there this week (notice the cool nesting box on the right side for easy egg collection)

We forgot to close the coop last night and this morning we realized that one of our laying hens went MIA. I'm thinking a pesky Raccoon or something got her. What a bummer. Now we're down to eight layers; we need at least 11 or 12 layers to keep our family stocked with eggs (we eat tons of eggs). I'm thinking I'm going to buy four or five more laying hens from a friend of ours who's selling them for $5 each (a very good price). I'll probably do that this week.

I hate waking up in the morning and realizing we've lost an animal, but that's life on a farm I guess. We're getting used to it.

- We celebrated Daniel's 9th birthday and Abigail's 6th birthday concurrently with a big celebration on Saturday. We had a great time with a bounce house and something like 20 or 30 guests. I'll post some pics soon (hopefully).

- We're going to slaughter our current crop of meat birds on March 27. We've got 17 of them to butcher, and we're thinking that the current meat flock will get us through the summer. On a related note, I'm thinking about raising a few birds -- maybe a dozen or so -- to sell to friends who may want to buy farm-fresh chickens.

- Brandi's still slowly making progress on digging up the roots in our soon-to-be garden. I think we'll be happy this year if we can get by with some tomatoes, a few greens, and a little bit of experience under our belts.

- I rode my riding mower this past weekend for the first time in many months. I love being on that thing and watching grass and weeds just disappear as I ride over them.

Next to our barn, in front of our pasture:


In front of the barn, next to our soon-to-be garden:

Brandi and I really liked this one. It was taken in the morning hours, after it had snowed most of the night.

From a couple of days ago:

Apparently we lost a duck hen last night. We own two hens and a drake (male), and I'm thinking that one of the hens got eaten last night ... or something. At any rate, she's not around anymore. I really hope our current drake and hen make it to spring time so they'll start reproducing.

Brandi and the kids loosening soil and pulling up roots:


Yes, Nathan is wearing boots and shorts. :-)

After pulling up a bunch of roots, Brandi put a couple of chickens in our small tractor (cage) and put them on top of the soil she had just worked on. The idea is the chickens will scratch at the ground and loosen it up further, eat bugs, and fertilize it with their droppings.

A country friend of mine told me that if we're going to live out in the country then we need to get used to death. Chickens die. Ducks die. Goats die. Cows die. Et cetera.

We've only lost one animal to predation, our big boy duck. I miss that duck, mainly because he was huge and I was looking forward to eating him one day. (We ended up getting a replacement boy duck and he's doing just fine.)

Of course, last week I killed our six meat birds -- and we just ate one for dinner tonight! Now that we're hooked on eating chickens that we raise, I think we'll end up always having birds around here that are on death row.

In case anyone's wondering, the kids were fine with the meat birds being butchered. While they didn't take part in the butchering process, they all say they eventually want to help. Actually, they'll have to start helping one day because harvesting meat has got to be a family endeavor, otherwise it's way too much work for one person. I think when we get set up to butcher birds here in April, I'll give the kids the job of plucking feathers.

A lot of times when we talk to people about raising animals to kill, people wonder how the kids handle it. I think being so far removed from farm life, it's a natural question, and, of course, our kids haven't been fully exposed to farm death yet. Once in a while, though, someone will come along who really seems to think that kids being around death is somehow bad for them, but, as James T. Kirk said in The Wrath of Khan, "How we deal with death is at least as important as how we deal with life." If properly prepped, I think just about any normal kid can handle a normal amount of farm-related death. And as far as it being bad for kids, I tend to doubt that.

TV? Yes, it's mostly bad. Farm death? Nah.

Brandi and I were talking today about how fresh chicken doesn't smell like anything. It's strange, but it has no odor. I'm assuming the raw chicken smell kicks in a few days after death.

We just ordered 17 more meat birds today. The chicks will arrive next Thursday and they'll be ready to harvest in early April. I'm toying with the idea of setting up a slaughter-station at our house, rather than going to the guy's house who showed me the ropes a couple of days ago. He's got a nice set-up though, complete with stainless steel tables and a commercial plucking machine. If we slaughtered these new birds at our place, we'd have to pluck by hand, but I don't think it would be a big deal. When the chickens are properly prepared (via hot water), the feathers fall off pretty easily.