Eggs-perience Chickens

For the most delicious chicken ever -- grow your own!

Debra Tyler led the Eggs-perience Chicken workshop at Local Farm in Cornwall CT. We learned how to feed, house, care for and slaughter chickens.

Feeding and Housing:

If you're starting from scratch, get metal containers. If you already have plastic bins be aware that they are not rat-proof. Choose your feed based on what you are raising. Broilers get a different ration than layers. Organic feed for all livestock can be purchased from Lightning Tree Farm, Millbrook, NY. They can be reached at 845-677-9507. Chickens are not, by nature, vegetarians. They'll eat grubs, insects, small rodents. The chickens will enjoy your food scraps - just don't give them any poultry or eggs. You'll need a dish for water and one for feed. They can be placed on the ground or hung from the "ceiling" of the coop. Feed twice a day, making sure your second feeding is well in advance of dark. Don't feed more than the chickens will eat or you'll just be attracting rats.

Debra has her chickens in chicken tractors. This portable shelter, from The Chicken Tractor book, is 10' long, 4' wide and 3' high. It will hold 10 hens. Made of 2x4's, plywood and chicken wire, it's lightweight and can be moved by one person. Cover 3 sides with a tarp to prevent raccoons from catching the chickens. Three nesting boxes fit across one end giving easy access to collect eggs and for cleaning. Put raccoon-proof latches on the top doors. Screw handles onto each end for ease of moving. Bed the nest boxes with hay or straw.

Electric mesh around your chicken tractor will protect it from raccoons, roaming dogs, etc. Premier http://www.premier1supplies.com is an excellent source for electric fence, chargers, and now sells chicken equipment as well. Also online is Gallagher Fencing. Local sources are Tractor Supply, Agway. Electric mesh fence is easy to install and easy to move. You will need to ground your charger -- you can use a coil of wire laying on the ground, or a metal rod driven into the ground. Debra uses a crowbar driven into the ground. Your mesh will work better if you mow/weed whack the area before you put up the mesh.
To electrify your chicken area you will need: electric mesh, a charger (solar or plug-in), wire to connect the mesh to the charger and the charger to the ground rod, and a ground rod or coil of wire if you're area is wet enough. A fence tester is recommended to ensure your fence is working and carries enough charge.

Chickens come in a wide variety of sizes and colors. They can be purchased as chicks from http://www.privetthatchery.com/ , Clearview Hatchery and http://www.mcmurrayhatchery.com/ to name a few.

You can move the chicken tractor every day - the chickens will have mown the grass and fertilized it. Moving it every day increases the fertility of your field. Or you can leave it in place for 3 months, adding straw or hay to the entire 'floor' of the coop so the chickens aren't standing in mud. The layers of straw and manure build up and create a wonderful garden bed. Add a bit of soil, put in seeds of a light crop - like lettuce, and you have a new bed!

Another option for housing was a cattle panel turned into a hoop house. It's not as easy to move and you have to create a door to get to the birds.

Broilers are short-term birds, layers you'll keep for years. The layers begin producing eggs around six months of age. You may want to build a more substantial coop for your layers as you'll be keeping them through the winter. "Chicken Coops" by Judy Pangman has many wonderful coop designs.

Slaughtering

The broilers ready for slaughter had not had food for hours so they'd have empty bellies. They were all Cornish Kings purchased as chicks from Murray McMurray. A good-sized meat bird, they're ready in 8 weeks for slaughter.

After catching the bird, carry it by the legs with the head down to quiet it. It might squawk at first but it will settle down. Tie its legs together - another handy use for baling twine!
Hang the bird with its back against a wall. Have someone hold the wings -- they'll need to hold quite tightly. Or use a cone to hold the bird. Place something absorbent underneath like hay, straw, shavings, a bucket, to catch the blood. The blood or blood-soaked straw can be used as fertilizer.

To pith the bird: Hold the bird's head, open the mouth, insert a sharp knife with a narrow blade through the roof of the mouth and twist.
Take the neck skin below the jaw (visually its above the jaw now since the bird is upside-down) and pull it toward you, insert the knife in the neck and cut towards yourself -- severing the arteries. Hold the head back so the blood drains quickly. Once the blood has stopped draining it's time for scalding.
You'll have a pot of hot water (apx 180 degrees) at hand. Holding the bird by the legs, dunk the bird into the water. Swish it around. This will both clean the bird and loosen the feathers. Check the bird every 20 to 30 seconds by pulling on the wing feathers. When they come out with a tug, you're done.

Hang the bird by the feet again and remove the feathers. Handle the skin gently -- it will tear easily. Compost the feathers.

Now to dress the bird. Cut off the feet. Set them aside for scalding and removing the skin and toenails -- the feet can be added to the stock pot.

Cut the head off behind the jaw. Remove the neck glands. Loosen the crop and remove the neck. Set it aside for the stock pot as well. Remove the oil gland at the top of the tail and toss it in the gut bucket.

Then cut under the tail, cut around the vent, preserving the tube and remove it along with the guts of the chicken. Toss into the gut bucket. Let liquid drain if necessary. Sweep the membranes out and into the gut bucket they go. Save the heart and liver.

Hose the bird well with cold water. An outdoor sink is nice if you have one.

Now bag the bird. Put the parts you're saving into the cavity and close the bag. Put the bird in the refrigerator and let it rest for a day before cooking.

We roasted our bird and it was delicious! Garlic bulbs under skin, olive oil and thyme on the skin. Tender, juicy, so good! Even old birds are good -- they have more flavor than 8 week old ones. It will be tougher, necessitating longer cooking. Crock pots and other slow cook methods are ideal.

Keeping chickens requires less space than I had thought and slaughtering is less messy and less difficult than I expected. Now to start on our chicken coop .... there are chickens in the future for us!

Making Milking Stools with Joe Brien

Planing the edges of the seat to make them round and smooth.

Drilling leg holes holes in the seat.

Shaving the leg-ends to fit the holes in the seat.

Driving them home.

Splitting the leg ends on the seat top.

Driving a wedge into the split leg end.

Sawing the legs off so they will rest evenly on the floor.

After sawing the wedged end off flush with the seat top, planing the top smooth one more time.

Our finished work! with thanks to individual donations and to our instuctor extraordinaire: Joe Brien of Lost Art Workshops!

Organic Gardening: Peas & Cues

At Organic Gardening: Peas & Cues, a workshop in Motherhouse's Old Style Life Skills Series (OSLSS), we learned a few simple ways to start a garden from scratch, discourage garden pests, feed the soil and extend the growing season. The Workshop was at Local Farm, in Cornwall Bridge, CT.

What exactly is organic gardening? Debra Tyler, who led the workshop, said that when you garden organically you think - not only are the plants alive, the soil is alive too; and you work in harmony with Nature. The key to organic gardening is creating and keeping a healthy balance in your garden.


The soil is the basis for everything that grows in our gardens, and it is indeed alive. Feeding the soil by adding organic matter such as compost, manure, chopped leaves, and mulches insures that your plants have a good foundation for healthy growth.

At the workshop, we constructed a compost bin out of wooden pallets. Position the bin near your garden and tie the sides together. For one year fill your bin with a balanced mixture of: green stuff (high in nitrogen) to activate the heat process in your compost, such as weeds, grass cuttings, chicken manure, and table scraps; and brown stuff (high in carbon) to serve as the fiber for your compost, such as fallen leaves, dead plants, cardboard, old straw and hay.

In the following year, make another bin and fill that with green stuff and brown stuff, leaving the first bin to decompose. In the third year, start yet another bin, fill that, and so on, year after year. In the third year you will have compost for your garden in the first bin. In fact, in three years, even the wooden pallets and twine will have deteriorated. If you follow this system, you will always have compost to feed your soil.





Using a cold frame extends the growing season. This cold frame was built with 2 by 12s and 2 by 8s. When designing a cold frame, use whatever old storm windows or storm doors you can come by, which will determine the size of your cold frame. This one uses four windows set side by side. A cold frame usually has a slope to the top of the frame, and it’s best to have the low side facing south to capture as much of the sun as possible. This slope also helps rain water run off the top.



To make an "instant" garden, without digging and tilling, lay down cardboard, as you see we did at the workshop. The cardboard keeps the sun from the sod. Put layers of hay, compost, ashes.... anything you would put in your compost bin on top of the cardboard. This no-dig, no-till organic gardening method results in rich, fluffy soil with very little work from the gardener! If you start such a garden in spring or summer, you will need to add layers of compost or topsoil, so that you can plant in the garden right away.



Here we are learning how a chicken tractor can help with organic gardening. A chicken tractor is a bottomless, portable pen. By setting this wherever you need help - or want a garden - the chickens peck and scratch the soil, eating the bugs, grass, and weeds. Without a cage bottom, the chicken manure goes directly onto the ground and becomes fertilizer. The chickens are happy and by putting them in the garden, they become your personal garden helpers, so you will be happy too!


Gardening in a bale of hay? Try it! Bales that have been sitting out in the weather will give you a head start because the bales need to rot before you plant in them. Debra thinks the bales need 4 to 6 weeks out, getting wet, before planting. (You may be able to accelerate this by keeping the bales watered.) Plant young seedlings by pulling apart the bale, using a trowel, and depending on the state of the straw, put a handful of compost soil in too, then let the straw go back into place. Seeds can be planted on top if you put a layer of compost soil there first. Debra is going to plant cucumbers in these bales.


Companion planting is an age old tradition and we discussed it at the workshop. It’s a gardening technique that involves planting two or more plants near each other to derive some type of benefit. That benefit could be more vigorous growth, higher yield, repelling pests or attracting predators of common pests.



Handy items and resources for organic gardening are available on Motherhouse Market.

Sourdough Starter Course

Sure enough, by Saturday evening my new starter was bubbling away and filling up the jar I had brought it home in, just as Angela had said it would at Motherhouse's OSLSS Sourdough Starter Course. When I say new, I only mean new to me, Angela told us the starters we were taking home were descendants of a starter that began over 250 years ago!


Dr. Angela Greco, a verternarian, led this workshop for Motherhouse and will be leading two more Old Style Life Skills Series workshops this year - Jam Session and The Whey of Cheesemaking. For descriptions of these workshops, visit the Motherhouse web site.


By the time you finish reading this post, you will see just how many ways you can use sourdough! This versatility is exactly what Angela set out to show us at the workshop. We made two different breads, pancakes and also pretzels at the workshop. In addition Angela brought a Sourdough Chocolate Cake she had made the day before to the workshop. This was the piece de resistance!




As families arrived for the workshop, equipped with bowls and jars and baking sheets, they settled in and then started grinding wheat berries, enough to yield the whole wheat flour needed for the two breads we were making at the workshop. Three different grain mills were set up for this purpose and everyone had a lot of fun doing this.



All the recipes we followed at the workshop were adapted from the Storey Country Wisdom Bulletin, "Baking with Sourdough". Everyone went home with a copy of this book which contains basic procedures for using sourdough as well as many recipes.



We mixed ingredients together to make a Sourdough Bread with Whole Wheat and a Molasses Rye Sourdough Bread.




We obtained the appropriate amount of sourdough sponge from Angela, started the night before. The sponge contained the starter, white flour, oil, honey, and warm water; making a sponge and allowing it to ferment is a necessary step if you are baking a kneaded bread. It is also an example of how using sourdough takes some planning ahead. For the workshop, Angela did all the planning i.e. giving the sourdough time to grow and work as a leavener. At home, using sourdough means planning and beginning the baking process further ahead of time than you would if you were using yeast or baking powder.


When we had the sourdough sponge mixed in, we stirred in enough white flour to make a dough we could handle. We formed the dough for each bread into a ball and covered with a damp cloth and let rest for about 15 minutes. Then, we kneaded until smooth and elastic.


And here are the two breads everyone took home for baking. There are few aromas more wonderful than the smell of home baked bread!


The Old Fashioned Pancakes were light, fluffy, and delicious! When I said so to Angela, she said "that's because they're alive..." and indeed using sourdough starter in the recipe makes a difference!




Here we are rolling and shaping pieces of the Sourdough Pretzel dough into long ropes, then twisting the ropes into pretzel shapes.


We brushed the pretzels with a mixture of beaten egg yolk and cream before covering with a damp cloth to let rise. After rising, we brushed the pretzels with the egg mixture again and sprinkled with salt. Notice all the different pretzel shapes!


The pretzels were baked for just 15 minutes in a preheated oven and allowed to cool before eating. They were absolutely delicious and although this is not the best photo, you can see what they were like.


Before leaving, Angela told us how to feed and keep a starter. A starter has to be fed with the same amounts of flour and water you take out on a weekly basis. You can use the starter to make bread, or give away to a friend, or discard. The idea is to maintain approximately the same amount of starter all the time, although it is also possible to expand your starter. Here's to the fun, challenge, and good taste of sourdough!