April Fools

Chickens are out, lambs are everywhere, compost is getting turned, and the mud, in spots, is drying.

Chickens in the Compost

Apparently all in time for some snow to come on Friday. How do you spell “uugg”, like Charlie Brown uugg? Please help us weather the storm by letting us know what you will be ordering this year. It is a huge help!

Longer posts and a Spring Newsletter in the coming days, promise.

2011 Order Form Final

Share Packages 2011

If you are “from away”…. we are happy to examine options to get your food to you… maybe even delivery, just saying don’t count it out. The food is worth it.

So a quick joke about “from away” which is the term in Maine for folks who are not from Maine. Full disclosure, I am from away… born in Michigan. So the big question is always… well, how long before a family can be considered native? I mean my kids are born in Maine so they are all good right? Can’t say they are from away… right?  Well, one old Mainer I spoke to about this said:

“Son, just cause a cat craws into the stove to have her kittens… don’t make ‘em biscuits”

Economies of Scale

This is not a phrase that I have ever really had a relationship with. I am not sure I ever even gave its real meaning any thought. I now understand it to mean that the realities of economics are intricately tied in to the scale of your endeavor. Efficiency is a measure of how far your efforts go, how far your money goes, the bang you get for your buck if you will. That is the single greatest challenge for the small farmer. Price reflects this efficiency relationship, it is the essence of cheap food. Get big or get out. Thanks Earl Butz.

So lets talk about Walgreens. I have watched the erection of a Walgreens happen over the past 18 months on a corner I happen to commute by every day on my way to work (“other work”). It has been an interesting little “note to self” each day… got the foundation laid, ooh look the windows are in, putting up the sign today, paving the parking lot, Opening Day! It was almost like I cared after a while… it was my Walgreens.

That game lost its possibility once the doors opened to customers. I have still not been in my Walgreens… looks nice though.. wonder how they are holding up against the Rite Aid across the street?

ANYWAY… they have a really nice message sign out front, you know those ones that have the numbers and letters formed by the little red dots, each day a new message of promise and appeal..

The message today was: “A Dozen Eggs  -   99 cents” . That is a little over 8 cents an egg.  I was trying to think about what else I can buy for 8 cents. Even my favorite little sniblets (my word, not sure where I got it)  of junk food candy run me a dime.

Economies of scale, cheap food… what’s the cost?

ps.

We are up to 15 lambs now… more on the way… Spring Newsletter coming out this weekend! Stay Tuned!

Updates

I wanted to send out a quick post on this amazingly beautiful day to report that we appear to have finally stopped the chicken craziness. I reported in my last post that we have had some real problems with our new layers. We finally took the rather drastic step of completely removing the one breed that seemed to be the brunt of the attacks. We chose three different breeds to continue our practice of producing eggs with a variety of color.

Three Breeds / Three Colors

There has been little hostility since moving the one breed apart, the whole atmosphere seems to have settled down too. May be a little hard to believe but there is a palpable difference in the space now. Phew! We will keep our fingers crossed… up to about 35 eggs a day now, more birds coming on-line every day.

Lambs too continue to show up. We now have 8 lambs out of 4 ewes…. two twins, a triple, and a single. All are happy and healthy although we do have a ewe with one side of her udder not functioning. Of course it is the one with triplets.

We noticed the day after they were born that they were all competing for only one teat. Once in a while there is a plug that lambs are not able to remove during the first sucklings. We thought it was plugged… alas it is not. Nothing is coming out at all. We do not know what happened, she may have sustained an injury last year we were not aware of that resulted in tissue damage inside the udder. Pretty sure she will not produce again out of that side.

Not ready to think yet about what this means down the road. For now we simply lament the situation and beging the process of supplemental feeding (bottle) of the triplets. They will continue to battle for the one real milk spout but it will in no way cover their needs. A new chore is born!

So far the ewe does not seem to be in too much discomfort and she is not running a temperature. We’ll see where this leads, hopefully the udder decreases in size and her body adjusts. We’ll see.

The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

Awoke this morning to another batch of lambs. Triplets this time. While it is an amazing sight and really helps your lambing “percentage” (we are currently at 250% (5 lambs out of 2 ewes) ) the general attitude of triplets among farmers is not positive.

Nature provides two “feeding stations” at the milk tap, as we all know. Three mouths makes for quite a bit of competition, that bit of stress translates into slower growth overall. Generally you are also going to have slightly lower birth weights with triplets. Overall it is more efficient to have a healthy, robust set of twins. In the long run your returns are greater.

However, I only spend some of my time looking at things through that critical business oriented eye. The other side of me simply looks in awe at the three lives that just emerged out of this sheep. Her attention to all three, her concern about each one’s location, and her natural ability to keep them close is quite a sight.

Speaking of animal behavior…. our joy at the start of lambing season has been tempered by the continued problems we are having with our new layers. We are up to about 20 small eggs a day, which is good, but the aggressive tendencies of some of the birds continue to be a problem. More docile birds are getting pecked (some even to the point of death, its ugly and quick) and it is a problem not easy to solve at this point.

We took two actions yesterday that we hope help the situation. Our favorite breed, as many of you know, is the breed that lays the blue and green eggs (Araucana). They also happen to be less production oriented and (as far as we can tell) less aggressive. They have been chased and pecked all winter, many of them continue to have no feathers in their back. We took all of them out and put them in another coop hoping to calm the rest down a bit. We also added rescue remedy to the water hoping to, again, calm everybody down.

The hardest part about the recurring problems with these birds is that there is nobody to deflect blame or share it. When you raise animals and understand that nature really has it perfect, you become clear pretty quick that problems that develop in your flock or herd are almost always management issues. I have been amazed, over and over again, at the ability of animals to care for themselves and their young given the proper conditions.  When you have a problem manifest itself you have, generally, to only look in the mirror and try to learn form your mistakes. In the mean time…. find ways to relieve the stress that your management has caused so far. Either that or get out the beak clippers, the antibiotics,  and the individual cages like the big boys.

I’ll keep you posted (is that a blog pun yet?).

They Have Arrived

I awoke yesterday morning to find two sleeping, dry, and content lambs. Of course it was a night when nobody felt the need to get up and check the ewes for signs of labor or stress. However, as these things go the process takes it course and the vast majority of the time no assistance is necessary. This particular ewe (324 in our records…. “Tulip” in our hearts) is going through it for the second time, she has been a great mother both years so far.

Generally we look to see how they respond to the lambs, their level of attention and concern. It is worth noting as well how they do in labor and their condition after delivery. All these factors should be considered when thinking about the long term and the future of each ewe. When you have only a small flock and children that name the sheep (and sometimes take them for “walks”) it is hard to face tough decisions regarding culling and / or getting rid of an animal. There are many places that the business and family side of this venture rub a little.

Anyway, here re some pics. It should also be noted that this is the ewe that Muriel and I chose in this year’s “Which Ewe Will Go First?” first pool . Our own little version of March Madness. We have not decided yet what we will do with the $4 windfall but Muriel has some ideas…

The Girl... 6.9lbs

The Boy.... 6lbs

Life's Breakfast

And then there were twelve…

We decided when we came here to start with 6 cows a year. We love raising cows, they are fun to watch and move and they add a tremendous bit of manure and “animal impact” to the farm. Our first two years we got cows in the spring when the grass greened up. This year we got the cows in February, we wanted them earlier so that they would cost less and we could put more of their weight on ourselves.

We have the cows for about 2 years, a little less. So by getting them early we are ensuring that the majority of their lifetime they are eating simply grass and hay. This brings me to my point… hay. Because we got them in February we assed them to the number of mouths we are feeding as winter winds up. It is one of the never ending assessments I make around here all the time. How many bales a day? How many more days? How much will I need to buy? etc. I get these big round bales from a farmer in Brunswick when I need to supplement… they are fine and give me a nice break from the daily haul of hay out to the cows…. most often to the tune of 4 bales Am and PM… but our goal is to make enough hay to cover our needs each year. Chalk this year up to the learning curve as I will be buying round bales once a week from now till green grass. Lots of mouths out there.

Lots of mouths out there.... about 20 lbs a day each!

ps…. no lambs yet!

Any Day Now

We are in the “check every night” phase of our lambing season.  No lambs to report yet, but somebody gets up nightly at 1 or 2  and heads out to see if anyone is in labor or needing attention. Most of our ewes will need nothing but a little space to do their thing. There is something magical for the kids in these days leading up to our first lamb. Everyone wants to be the one to “find the first lamb”. That honor comes with bragging AND naming rights.

When we were at The Meeting School we had quite a walk to get from our residence to the barn. We also lived on a campus with close to 50 other students and staff. I remember the walks being amazing moments of peace and quiet in an otherwise busy and often hectic space. Even the short walk to the barn here in the middle of the night has a magical quality. So rare these days that our senses take in that hour, the stillness. Our location here is elevated, the farm slopes down to the water on both sides and can have a “mountain top” quality to it on a starry night. It is awe inspiring.

Tonight Yvette has a friend over to sleep. They are going to be the ones going out to check on the sheep. They have already secured their clothing and flashlights for the mission. It is hard not to think back to the night my sister and I decided to brave the night in a tent out back of the house in Kennebunk. I don’t remember how old I was, just the trail I blazed back to the house when I woke up in the middle of the night much less certain of my ability to sleep in a tent with those woods so close.  We’ll see how the kids holdup to all that dark and quiet.

I asked the sheep to cooperate and produce something for them to discover tonight. The ewes are certainly close, we’ll see …. any day now.

This is my choice for the "first to go". Looks like twins.

 

Winter Recap and Chicken Catharsis

We took on 150 new chicks in October. As summer ended we were taking a look at where we would like to grow and one “no brainer” was eggs. Eggs have been our ambassadors here in our opening years, spreading the word about quality and local flavor. We have two stores interested in the product so we feel good about being able to move all those eggs.

You would think that keeping chickens would be fairly straight forward. I guess it is, for the most part. It has been startling, however, to find how things with these birds have not gone according to plan, at all. We basically have had about three trouble free weeks with these birds since they arrived. Ahhh, those wonderful days when they were only little three week old peepers.

So this is October, remember that. I am in school full time, it is getting colder, and we have about 6 months until green grass and bugs to chase and eat. But, getting the little chicks in October means that in the spring, as the days get longer, they will hit the 5 -6 month range and start to lay their eggs. Should work out great!

New Hens A Couple Days Old

Just about the time that November is cranking up it dawns on me that these little birds do not yet have a winter home. *&@#!! Better get on that, time to build the Pasture Palace. The superbly built, versatile, cozy home on the range for these birds and the eggs they will lay for you and yours. Materials… check. Design…. check. Time set aside to build….. sort of. Proper skills and tools…… anyway the design was great and I found a trailer to mount it on so we would be ready to rotate through the pastures.

Pasture Palace Frame

So you know those cartoons where a snow ball starts at the top of a hill and by the time it gets to the bottom it has collected all kinds of things inside. Not the best metafore to use here but the one that keeps popping up when I think of our winter with these birds. One problem after another as winter rolled on.

First they started piling on each other at night resulting in some getting smothered to death underneath. Next came the AMAZING wind storm that BLEW THE PALACE OFF THE TRAILER! WE woke up to find it propped on one corner at a rather steep angle (sorry no photo documentation on that one) . That resulted in a huge pile of birds in the lowest corner of the off kilter palace…. 17 dead. Then came the “it is winter and we are board out of our mind so we will peck each other’s tail feathers off as they emerge” phase. Each bloody tail feather stump would lead to more pecking which, if you know anything about chickens, can get out of control and turn cannibalistic. The answer: pine tar applied to the tail feather area…. one bloody bird at a time. Remember the snowball?

At this point we have lost about 30 birds. We are doing normal chores everyday, shoveling their “yard” so they can go out and get space and air, tarring feathers daily, and trying to find things for them to peck (suet, dirt, compost) so they will peck each other less. Then we start to realize that we are missing some birds…. the reason we know is that the birds we are missing are some of the roosters we got with the hens. Where did they go? We have not found dead birds. They can not fly away.Huh???

It is now late January, the snow is deep but now hard on top. Easy for certain critters to travel over the top. Critters like…. fox. We figure he got about 10 birds in all before we caught on to his routine. (About 3:30 travel around behind the house, down around the cows, up through the woods, and then over to the coop.) I have never shot at a wild animal before this fox. I shot at him twice with the wrong weapon and from too far away. Needless to say I did not hit him, I did seem to scare him away though and he knows we are on to him. That plus another layer of fence and we seems to have solved that problem. Now we are down to a little over 100 birds. Remember we started with 150…. you ever seen money burn?

So catharsis. This weekend I was able to finally “muck out” the palace. It had accumulated about a foot of bedding as we had not been able to deal with it until the recent “warm up”. The bedding was so deep (necessary to keep the birds dry and clean) that getting in and out of the structure to do chores was becoming difficult. Got a nice little reminder twice a day for weeks about how overdue that chore was.

The Clean Palace

The Carnage

Compost Food

The palace is now clean, “mucked out” clean that is, the fox has not made an appearance in over a week, we seem to be holding the tail feather eating at bay, and we got our first eggs yesterday. Come on spring!

A smattering of comments…

A sampling of feedback from the past year. We love to hear this stuff, it is extremely satisfying!

“wanted to let you know we thought your lamb was the best we have ever had……without question….. We just simply grilled some shoulder chops and ate them hardly speaking because we couldn’t believe how good it was”

“The turkey was great (as it was last year) and the chickens are just unbelievable. We have really enjoyed the product.”

“The turkey was even better than we anticipated; it was FANTASTIC!  My in-laws want another one for next year as well.”

“We had some of the ground beef with lasagna already and I’m cooking a stew today. The ground beef had great flavor and seemed very lean. The stew meat looks amazing. Friends and family were very impressed with the look of the meat and professional packaging.”

“…your eggs are the best in the area…”

“I discovered your eggs at Morning Glory a few months ago and have been buying them ever since. For the extra cost they are worth every dime. They are beautiful to look at, fabulous for baking, exceptional to eat.”

“Thank you for taking the time and energy to produce exceptional food.”

“Just had our first steaks from “the cow”. Great stuff Joe! Keep it coming!”

“We had rib steak last night and it was so tender and delicious! We shared with our friends who will now be your next customers!”

“Grilled one of our porterhouse steaks last night with a spicy dry rub. Freakin’ delicious. Thank you Two Coves Farm!”

Will Winter Ever End?

We are beginning to see the signs of spring here on the farm. Not talking of course about green grass or bulbs pushing their way through the snow, I talking about lambs. For me, when the lambs start to arrive we are on the cusp of another season. This will be our third here and we feel like it will be the best yet. As anyone who bothers to check the last date of a posting from me will see, I have had a bit of trouble keeping active on the blog and facebook front. It is a very clear symptom, to me, of a larger problem we have struggled with since arriving here in Harpswell (more on that later). However, another part of the struggle has been sorting through all the things I have considered writing about.

I need help to focus, I could go on for days in any direction. While I don’t necessarily like to hear myself talk, I can definitely rattle on about a number of things, soapbox style. However, a quick moment to think about that problem leads me to consider why I farm in the first place. It grounds me, no pun intended there but enjoy that if you want. So, it occurs to my ever dazed and overwhelmed self, just stay focused on the farm and have that be your “anchor” for all things “social media”.

So back to lambs. None have arrived yet, however the signs are everywhere. The sheep get in the barn in December or so and make a pretty quick home of it. They are as happy as ever to nest up and get into a routine of eating and drinking, making noise at me for more food and water, and lying around chewing cud. Little by little they become perceptively larger, seem to bulge a little more in certain spots, and then finally they begin to “bag up”. This last bit is what we are seeing lots o f now and what really communicates the approach of new life.

After lambs are weaned the ewe’s udders gradually dry up and pretty much disappear under them for late summer and into fall. Now, as they are coming into the last few weeks of pregnancy the udder is the most obvious sign of the approaching birth. What comes with this is this subtle shift in the structure and general body condition of the ewes. Their torso seems to drop while their hip bones adjust to make way for the lambs. We have grown over the years in our ability to notice these changes and to predict proximity to labor. It becomes part of the routine after feeding to look and observe their condition, behavior, and how “bagged up” they are.

So, I would like to use the arrival of the lambs to begin blogging and documenting our farm season here at Two Coves in Harpswell. The struggle I was referring to earlier in the post was that I have not been able to find the time to communicate about happenings here. This in addition to that “What do I write about??” bit. I will endeavor to put that little complaint / story aside and put up some posts regularly on the progress here as the season unfolds. So stay tuned, I will do a “winter recap” full of cold, dark humor in the coming days. Thanks.