Mountain climbing and weed whacking

Back in 1997, I had the great fortune to be able to hike to the top of Mt. Elbert, the highest point in Colorado at 14,443 feet. This was my first trip of two that I have taken above 14,000 feet. I was part of a rather large group that included newbies like myself and experienced mountain climbers. It was a very rewarding and emotional day and something I will never forget. That evening after the hike, we all met for dinner back in Leadville. Among the dinner guests was a 7 year old girl that had also summited the peak that day. A number of adults failed in their attempt either because of altitude sickness or because they got a late start and were chased off the mountain by the Rockies' typical afternoon thunderstorms. But this 7 year old girl did the hike without complaint. One of the adults at the dinner asked her "So exactly how do you climb a mountain?". She replied in that simple innocent childlike fashion, "It's not hard. You put one foot in front of the other until you can't go any higher.". I've hiked to a few more summits since and hiked the hills of many different trails. Each time that I have encountered a steep trail climb, I think back to this little girl. There is no need to look up and ahead at how much is left to climb. All that one needs to do is just keep going forward until the summit is reached. Simple. This philosophy has freed my mind of much of the difficulty. It takes time out of the equation and allows me to just live in the moment instead of fretting about how and when I will make it to the top. The physical difficulty is still there, but the mental difficulty is a docile beast.

The funny thing about a job like weed whacking is that it is a tedious chore and as such, allows the mind to wander aimlessly. Our farm has over 1000 feet of road frontage. Fortunately I do not have to weed whack all of that, but today I decided to tackle a couple hundred feet of roadside ditch at the west end. It was hot and I am not as young as I once was. For a bit, I would stop and rest and look ahead. It was defeating. Then my mind wandered to that day back in 1997 and the words of that little girl. I picked the weed whacker back up and concentrated on not looking ahead. My job was only the 6 or so feet I could see right in front of me. Suddenly the heat and pain in my muscles lessened. I would rest as needed never looking ahead, but I found I really didn't need to rest as much. The ditch would end and I would know it when I reached it. And so that 7 year old who taught me more about climbing a mountain that anyone ever could saw me to the end of that ditch today. Out of the mouths of babes, eh?

What was I thinking

As I have written before, I do attempt to stay out of the vegetable farming part of the business as best I can. Between my full time job and taking care of the poultry, I am time challenged enough as it is. Mike asked me if sometime this week, I would ride the transplanter alongside Ed and get the last of the late broccoli planted. The other two high school boys that work for us are at a sports camp this week and the planting job needed to get done so I said ok. It had rained so much over the weekend, that the plan was to wait until later this week after the field dried out a bit. But the weather forecast for later this week is for more rain, so when I got home from work tonight at 7:15pm, Mike greeted me with the news that tonight was the night for planting. We only had an hour of work to do, but I had forgotten just how muddy one can get while riding the transplanter. I think 3 of the last 4 days I have taken two showers in a day.

I have more pictures from the field that I took on Sunday after the rain. While I was in the field tonight, just two days later, I can't believe how much everything has changed. I'll throw up a few pictures, but truly, I cannot keep up with how fast things are growing.

The early sweet corn is looking REALLY good. The plants are now taller than me. That does not always happen with early varieties of corn. Mike found a little coon damage today and one ear with a huge bite out of it. Deer? Usually they are not a big nuisance to the sweet corn. At least not as bad as the raccoons and blackbirds are. We will have to keep tabs on this.

The cucumbers are growing like weeds. This picture was from Sunday afternoon after it had rained all morning. Tonight I found little one inch cucumbers all over the place. Jumping up and down for joy!

A few cherry tomatoes are starting to turn. Not quite ripe enough to eat, but ......... Mike doesn't often ask me to pick tomatoes because when I pick cherry tomatoes, it goes something like this. One of the bucket , one for my mouth. Two for the bucket, one for my mouth. It can take awhile to pick this way. Oh, but they are so good right off the plant!

That's the Tuesday update. Don't blink because things are changing quickly here on the farm.

There's got to be a morning after

Most of the chickens on our farm work for a living, but there are 4 that have been elevated to "pet" status. I caught this picture of three of them taking a dust bath in the flower garden in front of the front porch. They seem content to leave the flowers alone so I don't care too much that they leave deep holes in their dusting area. Oh, I might tell them they are "bad chickens" as I walk on by, but that's about the extent of my trying to get them to cease and desist. It's really quite pointless to try anyway. They seem very content in their "petdom" and were quite happy the morning after 50 of their farm mates met up with the ax.

The first of our two butchering parties for the year is in the books. Someone was surprised that we call this a party and asked me if it was really all that fun? I cannot say the work is "fun" per se, but it is a gathering of friends and that is what is fun about the event. This was the first one we ever had where it rained almost the entire morning. While it was quite miserable in the rain and everyone was truly a mess, we all agreed that the rain was much nicer than the 90 degree temperatures we have been having. I will include a few pictures of the event so I guess I should put some kind of warning about graphic content. I won't put up any that are too graphic, but this not the ballet. It is chicken butchering.

I did not end up getting my chicken crates built for this event so we did it our old old way which was to use an old wire dog kennel to load up groups of 6-8 chickens and bring them from the pasture to our butchering area. Normally I would move all the older chickens from the pasture into the barn the night before, but I am overlapping batch one and batch two this year so the pen in the barn is filled with 50 5-day-old chicks. Thanks so much to Eric for making the 8 trips out and back to the pasture to get the chickens while the rest of us butchered. It was his first time helping us and remember it rained almost all morning. What a trooper!

Bill and Mike did the killing, scalding and plucking as usual. I don't know why Mike looks so much wetter than Bill does in this picture. I built this plucker with Bill's help several years back. It will pluck two chickens clean in about 30 seconds. An amazing piece of equipment. Thanks so much for Chris's daughter Zoe who did a great job overseeing the temperature and timing of the scalding. She was another first timer who jumped right in and helped without complaint.

I get to spend most of time at the evisceration table. I guess I got "chosen" for this job years ago because I am a veterinarian. Perhaps someone felt my skills as a surgeon could be used to remove internal organs from chickens. I suppose they were correct. I definitely have no problem with this job. We had our usual crew of me, Charlie and Paul. Chris who joined us for the first time last year was back as well and she brought along a friend, Christina, who helped us for her first time. Thank you so much Christina. You did a great job. That plucker does a great job too don't you think? And thanks Mike for bringing the pop-up tarp home for us to work under. It kept most of the table crew mostly dry.

Christine and Sue did their usual awesome job in the kitchen doing the final work making sure the chickens look real "purdy", bag them and get them into the refrigerator.

And that is our butchering morning in a nutshell. We were done and cleaned up by around 11:30am. Usually there is a little socializing afterwards, but everyone was so soaking wet and dirty that getting home and dry became a happy thought. So everyone took the number of chickens they wanted and headed home.

Today, my job was to take the 21 chickens that were left in my fridge and do something with them. 6 went to the local smokehouse to get marinated and smoked (mouth watering as I type). Not all of these are mine. The rest I either cut up or packaged whole and started the re-stocking of the freezer. It will be awhile before our freezer stock starts looking normal again.

As I was finishing my job under the glow of the mercury vapor light outside the barn, I could hear Mike still working the tractor out in the field. The near full moon was rising above the field across the road. A picture perfect end to a blessed day on the farm.

I have lost the battle, but will win the war

11:30pm and I think I am about to call it quits for the day. It's been a long one for sure. Had to work at the clinic until noon. Then home to prepare everything for chicken butchering tomorrow. Mostly this means cleaning house. Hopefully this coming week, I'll put up a series of photos to show just how quickly these meat chickens grow. They are 66 days old today and probably weigh anywhere from 7 to 10 pounds live weight. The pullets (females) should dress out at around 5 pounds and the cockerels (males) at 6 pounds with a few closer to 7 pounds. I'll just be glad to start replacing the meat that we lost in last week's great freezer fiasco.

I always take time to look back at my records of each batch of meat birds to see how well (or poorly) they did compared to previous years' birds. This a great way to learn how to do things better. Compared to laying chickens, these meat chickens can be a little tricky to raise at times. They grow so fast that they are subject to heart and leg problems. This year's batch #1 did pretty well. After a somewhat disastrous start due to what I can only imagine was some kind of stress that occurred during shipping, they have done well. I actually have only had one bird die out on pasture and that was the first week they were moved out there. This is REALLY good as we have had a lot of hot weather that can be very stressful on birds that are this heavily muscled.

Each batch of birds that I raise has something unique about them. This will be known as the year of the vicious cockerel. When I walk inside the pen to feed, the chickens get quite excited and there is always some scrambling around my feet. In the summertime, I am usually wearing sandals and these birds have mighty sharp toenails so my feet usually have quite a few scratches on them. But this year, I have pecking wounds on my feet and hands too. Oh, every once in while I will have chickens that like to gently peck at my feet and toes, but this year, I have one bird that bites. Hard. Hands, feet whatever. And he draws blood. I've a few mature roosters do this in the past (past as in if a rooster attacks me he becomes supper), but I've never had a young meat cockerel do this to this degree. The skin on top of my big toe has taken quite a beating.

Ok, I can hear the questions. Why am I walking into a pen of meat chickens while wearing sandals and sporting red painted nails? It goes like this. I need to wear footwear that I can easily hose off when I am done with chores. Can you say chicken poop? My choices are my knee high rubber boots that I wear in the winter. I have to wear these boots with a couple pairs of wool socks because I bought them nice and roomy so I could wear a couple pairs of wool socks in the winter. My only other choice are my sandals. I have old barn tennis shoes too, but if I hose them every day, twice a day, they start to get really, well, stinky from being wet in the summer heat and humidity. Oh, I could go to the store and buy some rubber boat type shoes that would protect my feet better, but then that would just be wasteful when I have these perfectly good sandals I can wear. One thing you learn when you live on a farm is how to be thrifty. I was going to say that I am cheap, but I think thrifty sounds so much better. Really though, wearing the sandals has never been an issue before this year. Now this cockerel may think he is winning the battle, and by how sore my big toe is, I think he is correct. What he doesn't know is that tomorrow will be the end of the war and he will lose. This is one chicken I will not be sorry to see go.