And These People Want to Microchip my Chickens?

Have you read this AP story on Chinese seafood imports? You really need to read the unbelievable audacity of these governmental agencies who purport to safeguard our food supply. The shipments were clearly marked and tagged for further testing for carcinogens and unapproved antibiotics. The cargo was held on very large ships at major ports on the west coast. Everyone knew where the product was and what needed to be done to it.

And yet.......being that it's the government, something broke down and at least one shipment out of four was released for consumption without the required testing taking place.

The more the government tries to do, the more they do poorly. Which brings me to the point of the title of this post: the USDA has tried repeatedly to make mandatory the National Animal Identification System for every livestock animal in the USA.

Under NAIS, as the owner of a backyard flock of chickens, I would be mandated by law to implant a microchip in every one of my chickens. I would have to pay for the chips and the radio frequency device the local USDA office would use to "track" my chickens. USDA claims that having a nationwide database (which they promise they'll keep secret and secure) would allow them to "respond" to an outbreak of some killer animal disease (bird flu, hoof-and-mouth, etc.) threatening to sweep the nation's food supply.

Let me ask you to apply just a little bit of logic here: how am I supposed to believe that the same government that cannot manage or be trusted to test seafood shipped from China when they know where the seafood is (on the boat, in the port) and they know what's potentially wrong with it (contaminated with bad stuff that could kill Americans) can effectively manage my personal farm data on the backyard chickens?

Go to the NoNAIS.org website if you are unfamiliar with the program and read up on the punitive damages this same ineffective government would impose on me if I either mess up my paperwork or if they mess up my paperwork.

And then, do a little bit of reading about the hoof-and-mouth outbreak in Great Britain. Either the lab-originated virus was released on purpose as a sabotage weapon or it was released due to error by someone on staff at the government lab testing for antidotes for such a breakout. The Government that is supposed to protect will wind up being the party responsible for the death, carnage and economic loss suffered by the farmers.

I beg you to reconsider putting the federal or state government in charge of managing anything more than they are already doing (poorly) and in fact, I would welcome a serious discussion about scaling back their current responsibilities significantly.

Where I'm spending my blog time

Our friend, Mark Read, has revamped the Burns Best Farm website by moving us onto Moveable Type and incorporating my blog into the website proper. I love the new look and having the blog right there makes keeping up to date handy.

Which means that I'm blogging pretty exclusively right there on the farm website. I'll try to check back in here, as having the Blogger account allows me to comment as a member of "the club" at Testosterhome, The Common Room, Entdraughts and other Blogger blogs I like to read.

And you know how I like to comment!

Between the garden and the blog, the summer is flying by. I hope yours is full of fun and relaxation, too. Check our farm website to see our latest adventure.

Redneck Swimming Pool

Hot day + dirty boys= Fun in the tractor bucket

Photo Copyright D.P.Burns, 2007

Farm Newsletter

Our family farm website homepage, Burns Best Farm, is now featuring the Spring/Summer Berry Bucket Newsletter. Several article are featured, including a great piece by Mike on buying food within your geographic "foodshed".

And there are pictures! Go check it out.

The Very Latest

We have had a little liquid heaven in the last 10 days or so, and while I am thankful for it, the total accumulation is not even an inch. A couple of times the dirt has actually changed to a darker color, but there is nothing that could remotely resemble mud going on here.

Our first crop to arrive in any quantity is summer squash. Mike started transplants of yellow crookneck and a lovely scalloped pattypan squash; he also direct seeded both of those plus an Italian zucchini. The tranplants have been bearing now for a couple of weeks. (Those plants direct seeded look good but are still a few weeks away from production.) The squash tastes great and I have roasted and stuffed the pattypan a couple of times. It has a nice sweetness that comes out when it's roasted.

The lettuce, which we can't eat quickly enough to keep up with, has begun to bolt, or so have the largest heads. The tomato plants look good and we completed the trellis this week for all nine rows. Yes, we have close to 300 tomato plants in the ground. The cherry tomato plants have begun to set fruit and I am anxiously awaiting the first hint of color. How else do you know it's summer?

In the tomato bed we have 7 or 8 volunteer watermelon and/or canteloupe plants that have situated themselves close to a drip irrigation source. This same field last year was given over to the johnson grass weeds that popped up instead of the corn we actually planted (this was the second corn planting that we lost to last summer's drought....are you catching a theme here?) The summer before that, in '05, for those still hanging with me, we planted watermelon and canteloupe in that field.

We knew there were a few volunteer melon plants of unknown varieties that grew in with the johnson grass, but the weeds got so high and thick we gave up on trying to find any actual melons. These little volunteers that are showing themselves now are second generation to the last melon seeds we bought in '05. Don't you love heirloom, open-pollinated plants? I am fairly certain I have at least two different varieties this summer by looking at the leaves. And since we have drip irrigation around the tomatoes and we keep that area weeded well (ok, weeded), we should be able to harvest something. I'll keep you posted on what they turn out to be.

I have harvested a few potatoes from my potato bed and while I'll do things differently this fall when I plant more, I am generally pleased with the outcome.

There's more going on and I'll just have to check back in by early next week to post those details. The chickens are growing and the roosters are crowing and the beans are blooming, and life is good. I hope yours is.

Will It Ever Rain Again?

We are now approaching the end of our third week with no measurable rainfall. The last measurable amount we had was a quarter inch, and that was after two weeks of no precipitation. In that it's been six weeks since I last posted a blog entry, I would explain most of that time away being outside watering the garden trying to keep everything alive, and the rest either educating my children or goofing off.

The beets germinated nicely and are coming along fine after stalling in the first two weeks of April due to the cold weather. My potato plants took about a month to send up replacement green shoots to repair the freezing damage. I lost three or four, but all three varieties came back in some form.

The chard looks to be a little slow and thin. Disappointing. The Isar yellow wax beans have germinated nicely but seem to have stalled in this protracted dry period. Thus the daily watering. My okra (three varieties) has hardly germinated at all, with maybe ten plants popping up out of five 40 foot rows. Even okra needs some moisture to germinate!

We are three-quarters done with putting tomatoes into the ground and the Matt's Wild Cherry are already starting to bloom, so we should not be too far into June before we see some fruit. That will make me very happy.

On a bit of a whim, I ordered 100 organic strawberry crowns from Seeds of Change and they are beginning to sprout green leaves. I have water going on them now, which reminds me I need to move the sprinkler.

On a poultry note, the chickens are doing very well and growing like weeds (or weeds when we get rain....even the weeds are not growing much!) They are fiesty and fast and funny. The one remaining Pearl Leghorn Rooster found his voice the last week and he gives a very Peter Bradyish "cockadoodledoo!!!" almost on command. He's not loud enough yet to hear from the house, but when I check on them in the morning, he's more than willing to show off. The rest of the roosters have been slower to mature than this fella, so I'm sure he's feeling pretty superior.

Must make more of an effort in the next few days to journal. I'm off to move the water around and harvest a head of lettuce for supper.

Read This and Weep

I did. Peaches. Blueberries. Apples. HAY, for crying out loud. All of it, frozen and worthless because of this cold weather. With more on the way for this weekend.

Blackberries are the only fruit we've got left for the year. That's a dent in the ol' wallet.

Effects of the Weekend Freeze

All of the blueberry plants were in full bloom last week after two weeks of glorious warm weather. And all of those plants now have withered, brittle blooms after the deep freeze that hit last weekend.

I will be very surprised if we get enough fruit from 260 bushes to make a couple of pies, some smoothies, and if we're really blessed, I might be able to freeze a couple of quarts for the off-season. There won't be enough to sell at market.

My potato plants are looking like goners, too. The leaves are mostly dark brown and the stems seem soft, which I can't think is a good sign. Never having grown potatoes before, I'm not exactly sure what a dead plant looks like, but I'll be shocked if any of them survived. The wheat straw mulch, although applied thickly, does not seem to have worked. I should've gone with plastic. Rookie mistake. I don't know....it was so cold for four days, it might not have made a difference.

To say that I'm crushed is a bit of an understatement right now. I'm pretty heavily crushed.

Where's My Global Warming?

I read this piece in Slate today (hat tip: Drudge) on how there is no perfect temperature anywhere in the world and all this climate change hysteria is out of control. Here are the money quotes as far as this little dirt farmer from NGA is concerned:

The earth is always warming or cooling by as much as a few tenths of a degree a year; periods of constant average temperatures are rare. Looking back on the earth's climate history, it's apparent that there's no such thing as an optimal temperature—a climate at which everything is just right. The current alarm rests on the false assumption not only that we live in a perfect world, temperaturewise, but also that our warming forecasts for the year 2040 are somehow more reliable than the weatherman's forecast for next week.

[snip]

Ten years ago climate modelers also couldn't account for the warming that occurred from about 1050 to 1300. They tried to expunge the medieval warm period from the observational record—an effort that is now generally discredited. The models have also severely underestimated short-term variability El Niño and the Intraseasonal Oscillation. Such phenomena illustrate the ability of the complex and turbulent climate system to vary significantly with no external cause whatever, and to do so over many years, even centuries.

[snip]

Moreover, actions taken thus far to reduce emissions have already had negative consequences without improving our ability to adapt to climate change. An emphasis on ethanol, for instance, has led to angry protests against corn-price increases in Mexico, and forest clearing and habitat destruction in Southeast Asia. Carbon caps are likely to lead to increased prices, as well as corruption associated with permit trading. (Enron was a leading lobbyist for Kyoto because it had hoped to capitalize on emissions trading.) The alleged solutions have more potential for catastrophe than the putative problem. The conclusion of the late climate scientist Roger Revelle—Al Gore's supposed mentor—is worth pondering: the evidence for global warming thus far doesn't warrant any action unless it is justifiable on grounds that have nothing to do with climate. (emphasis mine)

The bio at the end of piece states the MIT professor who wrote the article has never taken funding from corporate energy sources and has only been funded by the US government. I wonder how fast that revenue stream will dry up with a Democrat-controlled White House in place. I hope the guy has a fall back plan.

My personal complaint on global warming/climate change is this: these same people (meteorologists and Al Gore) trying to scare me and my legislators into changing my lifestyle cannot even provide me an accurate weather forecast for this upcoming weekend. Not one of these experts could warn me two weeks ago that the last four days of severely cold weather was coming. Not one of them did, anyway, and two weeks ago, I might have been able to do something to protect my blueberry crop. A water spraying apparatus or something. But when I get the heads-up two days in advance, my options are much more limited: prayer and bed sheets.

And yet, because their computer models show a precipitous rise in overall planet temps in the next 100 years, I need to stop buying refined petroleum for my car and install solar panels, no matter the cost to me.

I'm not buying it. The actions recommended have nothing to do with controlling climate change and everything to do with power grabbing.

I am a Chicken Hypnotist

After refilling water jars and feeders at night, I like to talk to my chickens. It seems they listen to what I have to say (which doesn't happen often around here) and several of them have become quite brave, coming up and investigating my hand or looking me over at length as I sit and talk.

I made a little noise tonight with my mouth, the kind of tongue/roof of mouth/lip thing I'm always telling the boys to stop making. The two or three hens right in front of me froze, tilted their heads and looked at me. I made the noise a little faster and louder, and a hush fell over the brooder pen as every single chicken stopped still, stretched it's neck out and turned it's head sideways to listen.

I've never seen so many necks stretched out so tall! Each was trying to out-stretch the next one, but they were silent and still otherwise as they listened to my noise. I switched to another mouth sound, a little faster, and their necks dropped back into regular position. When I started to talk to them again, they all loosened up and started slowly back to whatever it was they were doing before I entranced them.

I felt very powerful, just for a minute. Then I went back upstairs to wash the dinner dishes and reality came crashing back in.

Snowing

On April 6, tonight, we experienced a brief snow shower at 9pm. The temperature tonight is targeted to hit 28F, with Saturday night's low dropping to 24F. I can't remember it this cold this late. I'm sure it has been, but certainly not since we've been farming!

Every blueberry bush is already in full bloom. Mike and Mom and a couple of the offspring covered up the largest ones with sheets. Our only irrigation is a drip tube at the base of the plant; the other huge blueberry producer two counties over has overhead sprayers in place to intermittently shower water on the blooms to protect them right at 32F. We do not have that option.

And I didn't even think about the honeybees! We're six hives down already with the colony collapse going on, and if another one is lost to the bitter cold.......will there be enough bee action to pollinate the blooms, assuming there are any remaining after this deep freeze?

So I pray. I pray that God will protect our blossoms and the fruit they will yield, and that He will be glorified in our crop success or failure. He knows what we need, how much fruit we can handle and I trust Him to provide it.

Tomorrow, construction of the chicken pens. Pics to follow.

Cleopatra Chicken

Is it my imagination, or does this Araucana hen have an Elizabeth-Taylor-as-Queen-Cleopatra eye liner thing going on? This little beauty will be four weeks old on Sunday and her feathers are coming in unevenly, making her look not unlike an awkward preteen with a strange hairdo.

In fact, the whole flock reminds me of pre-teenagers. They all look funny, they sleep late, they are eating me out of house and home, and there are quite a few "disagreements" over territory that usually involve belly bumping and loud squawking. Sounds like middle school to me.

We're one month closer to farm fresh pastured eggs than we've ever been before. And I'm excited.

A Little Rain from Heaven

Sunday brought us a wonderfully wet day with slow soft showers from early morning until middle of the afternoon. The seeds we planted Saturday got watered in pretty well and we irrigated again on Monday evening just to keep them moist. Meanwhile, the beans in the raised beds have already sprouted. And those seeds were left overs from late last summer!

Last night brought more rain and some thunder/lightening, too, pretty late. Got the Jim Cantore phone call from the Weather Channel at 12:00 midnight saying there was a thunderstorm warning for our area for the next hour. I really like that feature they offer and the fee is not much. Living with no TV for a month and keeping the radio off, too, makes for an uninformed housewife. On most things lately, that's good. On severe weather, not so much. And doubly so in the middle of the night!

Anyway, I strawed the potatoes again and I need to transplant the lettuce, if it's not already past the point at which that will work. I'm not much of a salad gardener; I'm much better with beans and tomatoes, but I love the greens (from a consumption perspective) and therefore I need to acquire some experience. Will document the success (or failure) of that project upon it's completion.

Beets/Chard/Carrots/Haricot Vert

All of the above got planted today on two very nice raised beds out in the ground garden, made by Mike's new tractor implement. Except the beans. They went into a freshly de-weeded raised wooded beds. I did the bean planting the Square Foot Garden method (mostly) by dividing up the 4'x12' bed into 48 squares. In each square, I planted four Straight and Narrow haricot vert green beans from Pinetree Seeds. The SFG book indicated that I could plant nine seeds/plants per square foot, but I think that's a little tight so I spaced them out more.

The beets are Red Ace and Golden Specialty and the chard is Bright Lights, all from Johnny's Selected Seeds. The carrots are SugarSnax and Nelson, also from Johnny's. We planted the Nelson last year and had some seed leftover. They were ok, but I have high hopes for the Sugarsnax.

Last prayers before bed are for the rain that looks like will come tomorrow. It will be wildly applauded and much appreciated.

This post is really just to see whether or not I can add an image to my narratives. Looks like it was successful! This is our farm logo. We had it done last year and I really like it. You can click over to our farm website to see more pics of last year's garden efforts. The link is in my sidebar. I'm working on some new content for the farm newsletter set to go out in three weeks. If you'd like to subscribe to the newsletter (3x/year) go to the website and click on subscribe.

Thanks for stopping by!

T-Minus 21 Days.....

...and counting, until April 21 and the Frost Free Day arrives here in Zone 7A. We had ten straight days last week and this of high 70's/low 80's temps and nice sunshine. (A cold front moved through on Friday, but it's warming up again today.) We moved all the seedlings outside to take advantage of ideal growing conditions and they have rewarded us with some stunning growth.

Just Monday morning, I counted 23 squash plants that had germinated; the end of that same day, the count was up to 40! I wish I'd had a video camera on them. I don't think I would have had to speed up the film much at all to see the plant pushing through the top of the starting mix. National Gerographic slow-motion action. By the end of the week, the count was closer to 60. That's a lot of squash!

Perhaps we're delusional, but we've convinced ourselves there won't be another cold snap harsh enough that we can't cover our seedlings and save them. So later today we're planting carrots, beets, lettuce and chard and we will transplant a large number of the squash if we have time. The weather report shows rain tomorrow, which we need desperately, so we're working ahead of wet soil for the next couple of days. Chop chop.

On tap for when it's too wet to work outside: start the herbs. Basil, rosemary, chives and a couple others.

Potato Success

After 10 weeks of waiting, not so patiently, I discovered on Wednesday that my potato plants had finally topped the wheat straw! I seriously thought those potatoes had rotted long ago and that I was stuck with an expensive experiment. Looks like I was wrong, thankfully.

I got the seed potatoes from Wood Praire Farms in Maine. They shipped them to me in November, at my request, back when I thought we were going to have access to a garden spot at church for the homeschool co-op kids. When that idea fell through, I sat them on my clothes dryer for a couple of weeks until most all of the potatoes had a little sprouting going on, and then I spread them out in the raised beds and covered them with wheat straw.

Nothing, nothing and more nothing. They did not sprout, they did not send up shoots. They laid there and whispered failure into my ear.

And now, a week after spring officially began, I have a sweet story to tell, about my impatience and the need to back off the performance-based farming approach I have been using. ADD farming is what I call it. And it doesn't promote a wait-and -see mentality, if you know what I mean.

Oh, potato varieties: Yukon Gold, Caribe, and Onaway. All three are up. The Yukons are the slowest but I am not complaining any more. Really.

Chicks

Got the phone call from the post office at 5:56am. The baby chicks are here, can you please come get them. Yes, sure, will be right over. On a Monday.

The first order, two weeks ago, arrived on a Tuesday morning, making me think that maybe the first flock spent an extra day in transit. Which might explain the high mortality rate we experienced (at least I thought it was high.....the CS rep at McMurrray didn't seem fazed by it.) There were two other shipments of day-old chicks today, too, and both of the other families were there to pick up their boxes. We had a nice little chat session in the lobby of the post office, comparing notes on what we'd ordered and what we already had at home.

These little babies look great and hopped right out of the box to drink and eat. So far, everyone's still alive and scratching. It's very interesting to see how much the chickens from two weeks ago have grown. I knew they were a good bit bigger, but they seem grown-up now by comparison to the fuzz balls that arrived this morning. So cute.

On a botanical note, the tomato plants are coming right along and the spinach in the raised bed has germinated. I love global warming.

Chicken Feathering

We have chickens in our basement. I've lost count on exactly how many. I think it's 59 total. They came in the mail as day old chicks and we've had them now for ten days.

I cannot adequately express in words how much I love watching these little chickens. They are completely instinctual at this point in their young lives and if the urge hits them to scratch or peck or stretch or fly, they follow the urge. Immediately. Sometimes they try to do two or more of these urges simultaneously, and that makes me laugh out loud. Which sets off another round of silliness in the brooder box.

When they came in the mail and I lifted off the box top, they were so cute and downy and small. Ten days later, they've lost the down on their wings and tails and their feathers have replaced the cute fuzz. When they stretch, they will move their wings to the side and back of their bodies and you can get an idea of how big the wings already are, even though their bodies are still small by comparison. The chicks have doubled in size, at the very least. But their wings look like they are four times as big.

And the feathers! Marvelous, beautiful colors and markings. The breeds are easy to spot but the markings on same-breed birds are ever so slightly different from chick to chick. Darker, lighter, more blond here or more brown there. It's just so amazing to watch their bodies grow and change day to day.

I think that's what I'm liking about farm life right off the bat. Being able to take the time each day to observe exactly what's happening at the moment, and pointing those things out to the kids so they can stop and appreciate the moment, too.

Did I mention I love those chickens?

Names

I originally named this blog "Long Distance Farming" because at the time, we were living in the suburbs of Atlanta during the week and driving to the farm on the weekends. Not even every weekend, at least during the colder months. But most weekends of the year, we made a 90 mile trip here and then a 90 mile trip back to the city.

Now that we have made the move to the farm permanent, I think I'll keep the blog named as it is, even though there is no geographical distance separating us from the land that we love. There remains a "long distance" between what I know right now to farm successfully and what I need to know to make a successful farm a reality. That distance shrinks a little bit each month that goes by, but it's still a sizeable gulf to bridge.

Thankfully, we're here to see it all every day and learn to watch and listen. For me, that's where the learning begins, observing. Then reading. Lots and lots of reading. And then, the doing helps, too.

Serious Blogging Up Ahead

I just celebrated my one year anniversary of blogging at Homestead Blogger. I've met some very nice people there and learned quite a bit about raising chickens, baking bread, and preserving fresh garden bounty.

I think, though, that Blogger might offer me the opportunity to expand a bit on what it is that I'm learning now. We've just moved onto our property in the last four weeks and spring is here in a big way, with warm, dry weather. There is much to do to get this little piece of earth ready to farm, to grow fruit and vegetables, to have livestock and begin to move not just to self-sufficiency, but to provide for others who don't have access to land but are willing to pay for home-grown food.

Sometimes I want to just pontificate on agriculture issues. I want to write about how raising sons in a more rural setting affects our family. How God is working on my contentment, the attitude of my heart, the direction our family is headed. I need to put it down in a place that appreciates it all, and I think that's going to be here.

So, I guess this is a second start for this diary and I'll post both places for a while to see how it works. Time will be short since we have so much to do outside. But I hope to see you here on a regular basis, to share what I'm learning. Thanks for stopping by.

Random Thoughts

Our Johnny's Seeds order came today. Five big boxes of organic potting soil, plus another large box of seeds and supplies. The UPS truck backed up into the driveway and the driver was nice enough to haul it all into the garage and leave it where we can get it into the van and drive it north.

This is the third seed order that has arrived so far. Seeds of Change hasn't been delivered, but it's a small order and we can get started with the inside work with what we have.
I just remembered that I need to place a broccoli seed order with Fedco. Forgot to call them earlier this week.

So this is mostly a stream-of-consciousness post on all the gardening supplies we've planned for. Hopefully as I familiarize myself with Blogger and gain some confidence that I can actually work this system, I'll get a little more poetic. Or not.

The Beginning of Something New

Welcome to my new posting spot on the World Wide Web. I have another home at Homestead Blogger where I enjoy trading secrets and techniques on gardening, raising small livestock and making home a pleasant place to live. You can check out my archives here.

In an effort to raise visibility and correspond with other like-minded agrarians, I have opened this blog. I hope to see you here occasionally as I recount the adventures and encounters of a citified family going country.

If you are living the farm life, brushing up on your homemaking skills, preserving a harvest of food, or raising chickens or pigs, leave me a comment and a link to your blog. I'd love to visit with you.

Labels: random thoughts, new beginnings