That's a bummer Dude.

Experience, the Old One, shared another lesson with me today: don't chase a friend's chicken around a structure covered with sharp pointy 1/4" pieces of steel. You will inevitably slip and fall onto one of those spikes, as I did.

Here are some pics before and after my visit to the emergency room (actually a quite enjoyable and entertaining one given the circumstances). Don't fret- despite the presence of some genuine stitches deep under that bandage, I think it may be a bit overkill. The ER doctor and nurse on duty let the EMT-in-training nervously complete the final cleanup. Apparently she had never worked on a "real hurt person" before. Glad I could help.



Anyway, this obviously doesn't help my chicken destitching operation very much. I made a call of quiet desperation on the way home from the hospital and Cody and Andrea at Falling Sky Farm followed through like a champ by locating a working automatic plucker for me to use and offereing to provide more processing lessons in the morning. Very cool indeed. The idea of being able to increase my current processing rate of two birds an hour is enticing. Based on recent events, however, I am fully expecting something completely unexpected to happen and bring the whole idea crashing down. Hopefully I'll be pleasantly surprised. I'll keep you posted.

Oh, and I did catch that chicken...and the two others gallivantin' around in the yard. Hah!

Work

With the help of some blunt cutting tools I fought my way through two chickens yesterday afternoon. Mary Ellen's lessons from earlier in the week didn't take too well, but at least I remembered the big ideas. Details? Umm...let's just say those birds are for personal consumption.

I sharpened some knives and assembled a top-notch plucking and cleaning team (Mom and Dad) last night for strategic planning and we worked together all morning today and a little after lunch to blaze through 10 birds. We're not professsional grade yet, but we're getting there. One major unplanned hold-up has been our lack of automatic plucker. I'm in the process of building a Whizbang model but realized yesterday morning that there was a dramatic discrepency between the number of rubber plucking feathers called for in the plans and the number I had present. I called the supplier to order more, but they can't ship until Monday and won't arrive until Thursday. Oops. That information coupled with nothing but dull knives and no sharpener in sight yesterday while I processsed those two birds made for a very frustrating afternoon.

Today was a new day though. It began with that great old teacher Experience sharing two important lesson with me right out of the gate: (1) wear gloves when catching sharp-clawed chickens, and (2) when catching chickens blessed with efficient digestive tracts move their pen to fresh ground before traipsing about inside. Our knowledge only deepened as the morning progressed. We quickly determined that 180 degrees fahrenheit seems to be a passable scalder temperature. 140 is way too low. Plucking by hand takes a while. You can cut downstream from the craw and pull it out the front end or you can just dislodge it and pull it out from the back with the rest of the internals. I haven't decided which way I like better yet. It's easy to puncture the gizzard when trying to clean it.

There are 24 cornish cross broilers left that I'd like to process tomorrow and Monday. Then the 45 K22s should be more than big enough to go too. However, Dad'll be gone all day Sunday and Monday and Mom's going to be gone Monday and Tuesday but will be pretty busy all day tomorrow. Ragan's in Boston and won't be back until later in the week. This is shaping up to be one of those memorable moments that will go down in Sandtown lore. "Remember that first batch of bird back in '07? They's gettin' real dang big but the plucker wernt finished yet." ... and so on.

Mom baked the two birds I cleaned yesterday, one cornish cross and one k22. They're real good.

Good and bads; highs and lows; frustrations and celebrations; tired. Altogether though, things are good.

Maybe I'll order some egg layers?

First official customer!

A local Morriltonian came out to the farm on Wednesday, picked out three birds, wrote me a check, and proceded to give me an extended experiential lesson on all the steps required to take the chickens from field to freezer. This farm-girl-turned-city-dweller was very excited about getting back to her roots. Three cheers for understanding (at least a little) by doing!

So, October 24 marks the first day of income for Sandtown Farm. It makes the whole venture seem somehow more legitimate.

Here's my mother with Mary Ellen after picking out her three birds.


Unofficial weigh-in.


Mary Ellen putting a scald on the chickens. This releases the feathers making it "easier" to pluck them.


Three plucked birds. Next she showed me how to externalize the internals.


Ready for the freezer!


And in other news on Wednesday...

Some recent photos

These guys were flying around near my parents' house the other day.


The K22's love standing on top of the feeder.


Chillin'


Which one of these is not like the others?


Cornish crosses


Relaxing

Salvage Operation

I spent a few afternoons this week working on my open space downtown, mainly pulling nails out of old boards. Based on current prices at the local lumber yard I've salvaged over $900 worth of wood. Some of it will be used in constructing some brooders this winter before new chicks arrive in the spring. The rest? We'll see.





Chickens market update:
Hardin's River Mercantile: 50
Louis W: 4
Ralph S: 2 (tentative)
Dad: 6?
Me: 10 (for marketing purposes in preparation for next year)
Nikki: the feet
Mary Ellen: 2
Mary Ann: 2
Dean and Pat: 2
Vanessa: 1
Wendel: 1

Remaining: 5
If you're interested let me know and I'll put you on the list. I'm going to sell them by the whole bird at somewhere between $10-$15 apiece, depending on the average processed weight.

Farming

Things are going well. The K22s seem to be doing better than the Cornish Cross birds in many ways, but the true test will come in a couple of weeks when the tasting occurs.

As expected there were several losses throughout my initial learning phase so I only have roughly 85 birds now. I haven't even begun marketing them yet but already have a few commitments to buy:

Hardin's River Mercantile: 50
Louis W: 4
Ralph S: 2 (tentative)
Dad: 6?
Me: 10 (for marketing purposes in preparation for next year)
Nikki: the feet

By my reckoning that only leaves about 13! If you're interested let me know and I'll put you on the list. I'm going to sell them by the whole bird at somewhere between $10-$15 apiece, depending on the average processed weight.

Mountain Biking in this Place

Not to sound too cheesy, but I've spent the last two days being reminded of how beautiful Arkansas is and learning about ways access to that beauty is improving. On Saturday I took my mountain bike out to the Lake Sylvia area of the Ouachitas mainly just to make sure it was mechanically sound enough to do a pretty intense ride today. It was. Today's ride consisted of 10 of us doing an out-and-back on the brand spanking new 11 mile long Lake Ouachita Vista Trail. Plans call for extending this ribbon of near-perfect single track another 25 or 30 miles over the next few years to make what could potentially be a world class mountain biking trail. We Arkansawyers already get to enjoy two of the 40 trails worldwide on IMBA's Epic Rides list: the Womble near Mt. Ida and the Syllamo trail system near Blanchard Springs, so the LOViT would just be more cream on top. Add to the great trails already here a State Park system, two National Forests, the US Army Corp of Engineers and others all actively creating new trails in the state and Arkansas begins to look more and more like a top-notch mountain biking destination. Plus, since it's not Oregon or Utah the crowds tend to be non-existent, at least for now.

Wedding

My cousin Jeff and his fiance were just married in a Vietnamese-flavored weekend in Houston. Much fun was had by all.



(the collage is a link to the photos)

High Tech Heavy Metal

In addition to cobbling together some videos, I've been engineering some machinery to provide mobile water and food storage in the field near the chickens. The base is a 1940s era Dodge pickup truck bed (just slightly used) purchased for a fair price and the 250 gallon tank was given by Steve Trafford, another local farmer. To give you a little context, 50 chickens tend to drink up to 5 gallons of water and eat 3-4 gallons of food each day. Next year I plan to have significantly more birds at any given time and hope the Media Dispersion Unit will streamline things.






Here's the grand local food empire as it stands today.

Sandtown Movie

Thanks to the wonders of modern technology I've created and shared a video. Click the play button below to watch it.