A Facebook friend brought up an article recently that sparked some thoughts.  “Is Free-Range Meat Making Us Sick?” is the title.  The gist of the article is that free-range animals can have higher parasite counts than containment animals and therefore be less healthy for consumers than believed.  If you read the article, check out the comments at the end–they’re as good as the article and make bring up points about the studies cited in the article, about holistic values, and so on.  One commenter said, “there is no utopia.”  That was a good summary of my own thoughts.  Most everything in life is a trade-off.  I question some of the author’s citations, but I know that parasitism and disease is an issue for graziers as well as confinement farmers.  We know that we, personally, have far fewer disease problems in properly pastured animals than when we have to contain our animals (no matter the species).  We also know there are trade-offs in feed and time efficiencies.  Sometimes we have to medicate and chemically worm our animals–even organic producers are required to treat sick animals but must follow guidelines to keep them out of the “organic” labelled system.  “That’s farming,” as we say around here.  But we don’t have a locked chemical room or have to worry about pesticide poisoning.  We have a few drugs on hand to treat animals as neccessary, but only as neccessary.  We are careful about “biosecurity,” but we will give tours, something a Tyson or Purdue farm can’t do.  You can get sick from free-range meat.  You can get run over by a truck when you cross the road.   Minimize your risks: know your farmer, know the processor, handle the meat properly at home, and look both ways twice before stepping off the curb. 

While I’m on the topic….My sister and I were talking about the 3 R’s last time she was here: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.  Recycle is very popular.  Reuse is not too hard (though the guys hate bringing back Ziplock bags for washing).  Reduce, though, is a tough one.  Reduce requires more lifestyle change and is uncomfortable.  Since we make a living selling meat, I probably should not tell you that food is a major area we can reduce in as a culture.  I should probably tell you protein is an important food group.   We like biscuits and sausage gravy and omlettes for breakfast as much as anyone.  However, I would propose that food is an area we need to consider reducing to impact our world.  CAFOs exist to supply large quantities of dollar-cheap meat to our super-sized citizenry.  We like dollar-a-pound bacon, $0.60/lb chicken, and Thanksgiving sale turkey.  Our eating habits and expectations have changed considerably since FDR promised a chicken for every pot.  We eat a lot of up-front cheap protein.  But it’s costing us at the back side.  Just in our small corner of the world there are manure dispersal issues, soil that requires petroleum fertilizers to produce corn year after year after year, and diseases in the crops and animals that are resistant to the antibiotic on the shelf at the feed store.   Again, we echo a call we’ve heard: eat less, but eat better.  Support a farmer you know, support a local processor, and make a good impact on our world.

Jill

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As I’ve said before, we’re not afraid to share what we know.  Education is a part of what we do.  Case in point is the Stuart Kunkle family.  They’ve had gardens and animals before, but are starting over.  They purchased a few Russian Boer weaner pigs (just weaned from the sow) and a couple of goats.  The piglets needed some doctoring before they left, so Stuart got a lesson on pig castration.  Makes a fella glad he’s not a farm animal.   He’s also consulted Mark and I on housing and fencing for the animals.  Part of the reward of doing what we do is seeing other folks on the road to self-sufficiency.

Jill

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Farm humor: we have a rambunctious calf named Sammy.  We also have a chicken named Joe.  Can you see the resemblance?

Jill

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Joe uses the “diving board” to jump in, while Dorothy opts for the “water slide.” The kids demonstrate the mud pit.

“It’s nothing but a mud puddle!” says Dad.

“Yeah, but it’s a FUN mud puddle!” exclaims Sam.

Last week we sent many loads of fill dirt over to a neighbor to fill in a small pond.  In the process, the excavator conveniently expanded the irrigation pond.  Since it’s spring and all the surface streams are running, and since he stirred up a lot of mud and clay, the new irrigation pond is wet and brown and feels so refreshing (so I’m told) on these hot days.  It’s almost like a spa, too, with the mud pit created by the springs. 

Eventually, the mud will settle, the pond will fill, and Mark will irrigate produce in the adjacent field out of the pond.  In the meantime, he’ll use the water to help break down the manure from the chicken tractors when it’s drier this summer.  A little water really makes a difference in how quickly the field can “eat” the leavings.  Since we have “hand lines” (meaning the system moves by hand rather than wheels) we can move things to water the hay/pasture areas if needed.  From experience, this capability will make a difference in raising rotationally grazed beef. Coming from Montana, where irrigation was life and death in farming, we didn’t think we’d ever be irrigating here.  Water is life blood, though, and sometimes lacks in July and August in Michigan, too. 

Plus, it’s fun to swim in your own backyard!

Jill

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THEY’RE OUT!!  We have a clearspan full of baby birds, but the tractors are filling up.  The rainy, windy weather was a challenge, but Mark shifted wind blocks around as the wind changed and the birds did OK.   We’ve actually been able to harvest some from the pasture already, so we officially have pastured poultry again.  The flavor of a pastured bird is so much better than a barn bird, even though we feed alfalfa meal with the grain, the green grass is 100% better.  I also noticed as I cut them up that the tractor birds have a firmer meat.  Our barn birds have lots of room to roam, and they use it, but the sunshine and grass make a difference. 

The result is that we’re back in the tractor building mode.  The boys are learning a lot of carpentry (education translation: measuring, adding/subtracting/dividing, wood working, logic & planning/forcasting, social cooperation) along the way and are getting very good at building the kits.  In fact, we’ll be building some for another grower.  The kits the guys put together are easy to assemble and make pasturing however many chickens one wants to grow an easier arrangement.  Plus, the boys aren’t doodling in their school books and getting in trouble for daydreaming–but they still learn!

The other thing going on is catching up with the lawn.  The fields are getting wonderfully green, but the lawn is sprouting well, too!  Keith is the main lawnmower.  That bugs some of the older ones, but Keith loves it and works hard to keep his position. 

He has competition, though, besides the other boys.  The milking goats have been helping to mow the edges of the lawn and around the equipment out back.  They do a pretty fair job, and it sure saves running them back and forth to the pasture where the others are. 

Hope you, too, are enjoying this great spring weather!

Jill

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“Many hand make light work.”  So said my wise and very experienced Grandmother.  We’ve found that not only do many hand make light work–it’s a lot more fun, too.  Here’s some of our projects:

This weekend we trekked north of Traverse City to 9 Bean Rows farm, home of Nick &  Jen Welty.  They do a CSA and farm market vegetables with eggs and heritage chickens on the side.  We helped them move a half a pile of compost by wheelbarrow (the boys kept thinking of the John Deere at home) and plant a few beds of seedlings.  It’s always fun to see how other folks do things.  It was a pretty picture to see the white chickens scratching in the woods among the white flowers.  Not so when the hens discovered the tender lettuce, cabbage, and broccoli shoots in the garden in the evening!They paid well, too.  They fed us all with a great chicken BBQ and salad potluck.   Joe and Sam recognized the chickens as roosters they’d processed a few weeks ago.  Would that be double dipping, to get paid and then get to eat the product?  They earned it both times, trully.

  We have a special group of chicks brooding right now.  They are a heritage breed called white wyandottes.  Chef Eric Patterson is working with some producers this summer to acquire vegetables and meats that were once common in Michigan but are now very rare.  White wyanndottes date back to the 1800’s and are a uniquely American stock breed of chicken.  The other chicken breed we’ll be raising for this project is the Java chicken.  This breed is also uniquely American and contributed to many other breeds as they were developed.  Both breeds are known for hardiness, egg production,  and nice heavy, tasty roosters for meat.  They should be good foragers, so they will be out on pasture to take advantage of the forage.   Both breeds are fairly rare, though the Java chickens are very difficult to find and stocks run out quickly.  I’d made an order and when I tried to increase the order a couple weeks later found they were sold out.  We’ll keep you posted as this project with Cook’s House develops.

We continue to work with prospective chicken farmers who lack processing facilities.  River View Farm, owned by Mark Schaub, continues to use our facilities for his chicken processing.  Mark Sisson and his daughter Diane have recently become licensed through our shop so that they can raise and process chickens for sale at farmer’s market this summer.  Mark will also be building chicken tractors for the Sissons as they pursue raising pastured poultry. 

Cherry Capital’s Dave Hovest continues to work with us, as mentioned before, to produce exceptional quality sausage products from chicken.  He’s put together a tasty dried cherry and chicken sausage, a maple sausage featuring Still Point Farms maple syrup, and a spicy chorrizo sausage.  Jim voted the Cherry Royale as his favorite.  

Many hands, many heads, many ideas, lots of possibilities.  Collaboration and community are what make this fun.

Jill

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I was wandering in the garden and made some interesting finds.  Did you know that many garden plants will self-seed back if you don’t go to the work of rototilling in the fall?  For instance:

Jill

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What a sight.  The first batch of chickens out on pasture.  These guys are almost grown, but they’ll spend the last week or two weeks on the fresh, green grass.  Jim loved standing outside to watch them, though he wasn’t too sure about the grass on his bare feet. 

Mark and the boys have been working hard to increase the chicken tractor fleet this spring.  Mark built a “jig” that the boys can set the lumber in, measure and cut a few pieces, then glue and screw panels together.  They actually make kits, which they later put together into  a full tractor.  It’s been a good carpentry project for Joe, Sam, and their buddy Josiah.  If someone wanted a kit, the boys could actually put one together in the dimensions desired all by themselves.

There are a total of 14 tractors nearly ready to go.  Mark made some improvements to make them more user friendly and better for the chickens (more shade, feed under cover, and so on).  He plans to have them all plumbed so that they will have continuous clean, fresh water by the summer’s end, as opposed to the 5 gallons twice a day method.  By the end of the day today the clearspan should be cleaned out and we’ll have two tractors full of chickens, with plenty in the brooder ready to go out in the next couple of weeks.

Chicks are a family project, from start to finish.  Even the cousins, Ella and Camden, got roped into helping load chicks into temporary brooders we had to set up in the house.  They enjoyed getting to hold the fuzzy little guys and to watch them run around on the floor.  Jim is fascinated with the little cheepers.  He enjoyed feeding them one handful of food at a time one morning.  The brooders in the house were a guaranteed way to distract him, too.

Ah, spring is really here–the birds are out.

Jill

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Meet the new additions: We now have Mangalitsa breeding stock.  These are blond Mangalitsas.  The feeder pigs are swallow-bellied Mangalitsas.  The little pigs are about 4 months old, so they have some growing to do.  The front one is so classically wooly that he’s a neat fella.

The other big project here lately is gearing up to grow chickens this summer.  Mark has been building chicken tractors, changing the design to be a bit more user friendly.  He’s also designing new waterers to provide more worry-free and consistent supply to the growing birds.  He and Joe and Sam developed a production line assembly method so that they can build kits and put together tractors as they become needed.  With this nice weather, Mark has the first set of pens out in the field awaiting finishing touches and chicks.  Hopefully this next week will see the group that is currently in the Clearspan out on pasture.  There is a little green out there–a bit of rain and the grass will really pop up.

Jill

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We’ve been offered a great opportunity.  “We can use xxx birds a week.”  The number is three times as many as we’ve really finished per week before.  Wow.  “Can we get a better price?”  Again, wow.  That’s set off quite a lot of conversation, head scratching, and numbers researching and compiling around here.  My computer skills now include being able to use Excel to make spreadsheets, neither of which (Excel or spreadsheets) I’ve ever used before.  It’s caused us to ask ourselves several questions:

1. Can we raise that many birds per week?

2. Can we do it on pasture and maintain quality?

3. Is it worth it to us, as a family,  physically, mentally, financially?

4. What exactly are our numbers and would the volume enable us to lower our prices? (This is where my crash course in business math comes in.  How many years does a student normally get to learn this?…..)

5.  Are we competing based on quality or price?  And who are we competing with, anyway?

6.  Can small growers (compared to the agri-busines type folks) stay sustainable with distributors stepping into a historically relationship based marketplace and needing a commodities type pricing system?  How would our decision affect other growers?  Can we get “fair trade” for local farmers in the grey area between “direct market” and “mega agri business”?

As the small farms industry grows, I’m sure these questions will need to be asked by more and more folks.  Quality vs. quantity, commodity vs. relationship, diversifed vs. one or two crop systems.  When we watched Food, Inc.  one thing that struck me was the chicken agri-business company’s relationship with their growers.  It reminded me of the old sharecropper/coal town/”I owe my soul to the company store” system.  We don’t want to be there.  How can the small farm system grow and meet the increasing demands for local, healthful food and not become “big business?”  It’s a question that begs discussion….

Jill

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