Is not trying to post from your phone only for it to completely malfunction. Palm slap to face.
16 May
In Vitro Meat Hamburger
I know I said I’d post a photo of my feed label, and I shall. I spotted this article and I had to read it, though I really ought to be in bed.
Man has done it once again. Rather than correcting the problem, man’s answer is to throw science and technology at it. They believe that “culturing” cells into meat is the ultimate solution to the world’s demand for meat, or more accurately, the West’s demand for CHEAP meat in huge volumes. They acknowledge that factory farming is destroying the environment, people’s health and is extremely cruel to the animals. But nobody is asking the most important question, “Why do we need to eat so much meat?” Nope, instead they are pursuing growing meat without animals. Brings to mind the following scene. The money line is at 1:50.
16 May
The Hidden Threat in Your Chicken | Rodale News
The Hidden Threat in Your Chicken | Rodale News.
Arsenic. Just the sound of the word kinda makes you cringe doesn’t it? So what is it?
The World Health Organization tells us “Arsenic is a metalloid element, which forms a number of poisonous compounds. It is widely distributed throughout the earth’s crust, and is found in groundwater supplies in a number of countries.
Long-term human exposure, through drinking of contaminated water, is an important public health problem in some regions and countries, and is associated with cancer of the skin, lungs, bladder and kidney. Acute arsenic poisoning produces vomiting, esophageal and abdominal pain, and bloody “rice water” diarrhea.”
Well now we can add conventionally grown chicken as a potential source of long term exposure. Especially since chicken is the number one consumed meat in America. So if you are one of those sad souls who shop for the “best deal” you can find in the grocery store, or who thinks that you’re doing yourself a favor by feeding your face down at the C-F-A for convenience sake, think again.
This is yet another reason we feed organic feed. Absolutely no added arsenic. Of course Rodale says to buy certified organic chicken, but I say you should go a step further. Take the time to find a farm that raises chicken (or other animals for meat) and ask them abot their operation. Any farmer with nothing to hide will gladly take you to where the birds live and should you the feed label. In our next post will be a photo of ours. If that isn’t good enough for you, come see us.
9 May
Time is running out…
Time is running out to order your chickens and be able to pick up in August. We have to order our chicks about a month in advance so in order for us to order enough, you need to get your Chicken CSA order in this Saturday at the latest. Go to our Pastured Poultry page to order.
6 May
Neither Rain, Nor Sleet, Or Snow…
Will stop the farming. This Saturday was our first scheduled processing day for our broiler chickens and thank goodness for the ability to forecast the weather. We’ve been receiving gargantuan volumes of precipitation this year and with the knowledge that a significant storm front was moving in, I knew i needed to do a lot to get ready.
I asked for the shift off from the fire department on Thursday and spent the day tilling and planting, getting 60+ tomatoes in and 30+ squash. A part of that time was spent putting my burgeoning mechanical skills to use to keep our tiller going. Farmers have to be handy and somewhat mechanically inclined because if you use any machine long enough, it’s going to break. I’d go broke if I hauled something to the repair shop every time a belt burned off, a fuel line cracked or a head gasket needed to be replaced.
Friday I had two things that I knew would absolutely have to be done; pick up our feed order and prep a covered area for chicken processing. We have a large car port type shed next to our barn that I suppose was once used to keep a camper or other large vehicle under cover. In the past year and a half, it became something of a “catch-all” for various junk like an old riding lawn tractor, leaking hose, an antique freezer, a recliner, and garbage cans full of… well garbage. So we went to work pulling out all the junk and the worst thing was there wasn’t time to go to the dump or scrap yard. I got the call that our feed order from Countryside Organics was ready to be picked up, so I hitched up the trailer and picked it up. Then we had to sort through it and separate the order into individual orders for those who order with me (otherwise we could barely afford to feed this stuff) and get it covered up.
Once we had the new processing area cleaned out, I realized it was time for me to run to Douglasville to pick up my oldest son from his mother’s. After returning and eating supper, we moved the processing equipment into the newly cleaned out area. (Somewhere in the middle of all this we got all the critters took care of.) The I got to thinking about how we were going to move chickens from the pasture before the rain arrived. Our wagon had finally bit the dust after 14 years of hauling kids, toys, rocks and chickens. The only other option is to use a wheel barrow. So we go down to where the broilers were in the pasture and start catching and loading them into a crate. I then pushed a loaded crate with about 50+lbs of chicken uphill to the barn. That was killer. The second trip just about did me in.
If I was going to get all these birds up to the barn, I needed to do something else. So we decided to have a chicken drive. We moved the poultry netting around to make something of a long paddock that stretched from the chicken tractor to the top of the hill which would get us half way to the barn. We used a bucket of grain to try to lure them to follow us and after a bunch of chasing errant birds, frustration, and persistence we finally got them corralled in a small area. We went back to hauling birds to the barn but after a few more trips, I was done. The week had caught up with me and I could not carry another loaded crate. so we pulled a vacant chicken tractor over and loaded them in it to spend the night and weather the storm.
As I was getting into bed, Katie says over her shoulder, “Are you going to sharpen knives in the morning?” Sigh. I got back up, went to the kitchen, got out the knives and went to sharpening. The storms moved in and buckets of rain fell.
When I woke up Saturday, it was still raining. I roused up the kids and we got busy with our chores. While I was filling the scalding tank, my 9-year-old comes to me and says something bad has happened with the next flock of broiler chicks that we had moved out onto the pasture a few days ago. I walked down to the tractors that housed them and in one, there was a pile of dead chicks. These tractors are mostly covered but there is an area covered with wire. These poor, stupid, immature birds had tried to huddle together in the uncovered section and all died from exposure. I began picking up their cold limp bodies and counting. 15 small corpses were place in a bucket and two more that I could tell were on the verge of death, so I went ahead and ended their lives. I said a prayer, asked God for a positive attitude and carried on with our tasks.
The processing actually went quite well. The covered area was great and there is just enough room to get the entire “disassembly” line under shelter. I wasn’t surprised that about half of those who had said they’d be coming out to help didn’t show but our two consistent stalwarts, Amanda and Sandra joined us as did two first timers, Brad from Atlanta and my very own mother! I made an executive decision that to save us time, we would be leaving the necks attached and boy did it. It also saved the blades of our knives. The day went without a hitch, anytime there was a lull in the downpour, we’d fetch a load of chickens from the pasture. Our volunteers had to depart and in the end we finished the last eight birds simply as a family and we got done right as our first customers arrived. Everyone was super gracious and as always we received some tremendous words of support and encouragement. The worst thing that happened was that as one was slowing down to turn in our driveway, she was rear ended by someone. Fortunately no one was hurt.
Now for the icing on the cake; several days prior, I had been in tentative talks with some folks who were looking for a second vehicle as a trade for a young Jersey cow. I had (somewhat jokingly) offered to trade our Tahoe since we have three fuel hogs. I was rather surprised that they decided to go with the barter. I was looking at selling it anyway and with my bottom price being about $1200 more than their asking price on their cow, they offered to include her heifer calf en lieu of cash. So after the final customer had left (barring a couple of stragglers), the Barnett Family arrived from Elberton with Rachel and her calf whom we’ve named Rosemary. Now we just need to see how Rachel is going to take to being a milk cow.
~Daniel
Post Script: Katie called me at the fire station today to tell me that seven more broiler chickens have died. Seems we’ve got some serious figuring to do.
29 Apr
Rain Rain Go Away, come back next month.
Over the last seven years, we’ve had several bouts of hot dry summers and a number of sever droughts. Through it all I swore that never again would I complain about being inconvenienced by rain. Never say never. I should have been more specific and said I wouldn’t complain about SUMMER rain. This winter and spring has been absolutely intolerably wet and has severly restricted our veggie planting. The red Georgia clay Simply does not drain and breaking it up and amending it can only happen if it is good and dry. Part of the problem is that I have this other job that pays the bills (for the most part) and so it never fails that on a day that I’m at the fire station, it will be bright and sunny and then the next day we get just enough rain to saturate the soil again. So as with all things, Murphy’s Law prevails and all we can do is to just take it one day at a time.
21 Apr
Stop the Abuse! Feed your kids real FOOD.
This month is National Child Abuse Prevention month and so with that, I wonder at the number of people who love their children but don’t show it through nutrition. I mean, they do whatever they can to deliver temporary happiness to their kids with toys, video games, gadgets and junk food but, in the long run, they are setting their children up for a greater likelihood of poor health and unhappiness, all because they unwittingly ignore their children’s nutrition. They think nothing of feeding them out of a box, a can, or a drive through so they can afford their cable bill, a vacation to Disney World, or box seats at the stadium.
The sad fact is that if you aren’t making strides to ensure that your children are receiving the very best nutrition, they are suffering. It’s an abuse of their long term health that is easily overlooked because they have a home, clothing, are obviously loved and appear to be well fed, but in reality they are starving. Though their bellies are full, it with Genetically Engineered corn & soy products, white refined sugar & flour, the meat of animals that were fed much of the same along with a daily dose of antibiotics, and then not to mention all the artificial preservatives, flavorings and “nutrients”. Too many parents accept what is labeled on a food package as truth and never consider what they are feeding their children. We as a people have subsisted just fine and quite nicely with what God blessed us with. He gave women breasts to provide her babies with the very best food there is to start life eating. He gave us plants that bear seeds of their own kind and grow in soil enriched with natural humus from the decomposed matter of other organisms, moistened with water from the heavens and fed by the sun. He gave us animals that harvest their food from the plains, prairies and pastures of grasses, herbs and forbs.
Now parents see breast feeding as inconvenient and uncomfortable and think nothing of feeding formula to their baby. Because fewer than 10% of Americans garden, nearly all children never experience full flavored vegetables and will not eat a vegetable unless it’s a pesticide laden potato, fried in GM vegetable oil, and coated in sugar/HFCS in the form of ketchup.
Now that animals raised for meat have been shuttered away in massive barns on factory farms where they never see the light of day, never breathe fresh air or eat a blade of grass; kids today gorge themselves on nitrite filled hot dogs and bacon, chicken nuggets, hamburgers and other meat products which convey more harm than nutrition; and to top it off, these kids are never taught the moral or ethical implications of the fact that animal lost it’s entire life so they could satiate their hunger with a minute portion of that animal’s flesh. So let’s make an extra effort to express our love for our kids. Let’s stop focusing on the price tag or convenience when we make choices about what we feed them. Let’s take them by the hand and show them how we can bring forth nutritious and delicious food from the earth with a little hard work in our yard, or even in a container on the back deck. Let’s teach them the a lesson in the value of life by taking them to a family farm that raises meat animals so they can understand that there is a greater price that is paid in blood in order for them to eat their flesh.
