The Inventory of the Cellar

As the harvest/preserving season wraps up for the 2013 season, I organized the cellar and freezer and took stock of how much food we’ve produced and put by for the year. I was a little more detailed in my record keeping this year than I have been in the past, as I work to figure out how much food we actually need, how much it costs and how much I save, etc. 

These records are purely for my own information, but I’m posting them in case anyone is interested (and also, because if they are on the blog, I won’t lose them.)

In the cellar:

246 jars of food (fruit, vegetables, jams, sauces/salsas/condiments, syrups, soups.)

16 delicata squash (each will provide one meal)

6 large pie pumpkins (will equal approx 20 cans of pumpkin)

22 lbs fresh-stored carrots (with more to harvest)

12 lbs fresh-stored beets (I canned half the beet harvest as pickled beets)

17 lbs potatoes (with more to harvest)

? dried beans (haven’t shelled them yet. Maybe 5 lbs? Not much.)

62 heads of garlic (enough for planting this fall, too.)

75 onions

several bunches of dried herbs (dill, parsley, basil, thyme, oregano, lavender)

8 quarts of dried fruit and tomatoes

24 sheets of fruit leather (equals about 96 “fruit roll-ups”)

 

In the freezer:

5 lbs carrots

2 lbs broccoli

5 gallons of soups

4 quarts of chopped green onions

2 lbs chopped bell peppers

7 cups of spaghetti sauce

14 cups of pesto

I chose to can most of our food this year when it was possible, since freezer space is limited.

These totals don’t include the fresh veggies we’ve eaten through the summer, beginning in May and lasting about 5 months. Most meals were planned around what was coming out of the garden.

Meat:

16 chickens

3 turkeys (yet to be butchered)

1 goat (yet to be butchered.)

(hoping this will total about 40 meals’ worth of food, plus broth for soups.)

(There is also hope still for one -or two- elk this year, which would provide a full year's worth of meat, and enough to share.)

Dairy (year totals)

About 50 gallons of milk (I don’t keep daily records. This is a close estimate.)

About 45 dozen eggs (again, this is an estimate. They slow down in the winter, but produce 3-4 dozen per week during the summer.)

I wish I had the numbers to put a value to all of the food in this house right now, but I’m not that organized yet.

But the total cost of all of it?

$175 in locally, farm-purchased fruits and vegetables that I didn’t/couldn’t raise myself.

$60 in garden seeds

$60 in meat birds

Approx $120 in meat chicken feed

Another $120 in egg hen feed (not including the feed cost of the show birds.)

$240 in grain for goats

Not sure of the cost of jar lids, bought about $24 of canning jars this year, plus spices, sugar, etc. that I didn’t keep records of. Estimating about $75 in those supplies.

So total cost for the above listed foods? $824

Also, figure at least 250 hours of work. At least. Honestly, it’s probably a whole lot more, but sometimes it’s hard to decipher work from play around here.

The amount seems enormous, but when it's spread over 6 months or so, it's not terrible... and if I make the effort, I could cut our monthly grocery bill down to about $100 for 5 or 6 months.  That puts us at roughly $233 per month, eating healthy, organically grown vegetables, pastured meat, raw milk and fresh eggs. I realize some folks live on plenty less than this each month, but seriously y'all, we eat really good food!

 

So is it worth it? Absolutely.

 Raising meat chickens is utterly uneconomical, between the cost of the birds and feed, the amount of work required in the raising and butchering of them… if we could find a way to hatch our own meat chicks and raise our own feed, it would make more sense. (I’ve heard you can raise chickens almost entirely on clabbered cow’s milk. I’m not opposed to trying this when our cow is in milk) Turkeys are a much bigger bang for your buck, even when raised from poults. Goats can be expensive, since grain is a requirement, but the milk they provide for drinking, cooking, plus yogurt, cheese, etc. is so worth it… and goats provide a lot of fun, too. (Most people pay more for a monthly cable bill than we do for our goats, and goats are far more entertaining!) We also raise all the hay our animals will use, and they graze pasture during the spring, summer, and fall. This cuts down significantly on the cost of meat and milk production. It’s hard for me to estimate the value of the egg chickens vs. the cost of their feed, since most of our chickens are show-breed bantams that The Oldest raises for fun (and are therefore worthless when it comes to laying.)

The garden is amazing, though. The sheer number of pounds of food produced with just $60 worth of seeds in incredible. Fresh vegetables all through the summer months and well into the fall and winter. The fertilizer is provided by the menagerie in the barns, the water comes from our irrigation, and the man-power is provided by Two Little Girls and myself. (Bonus: gardening and other farm chores also provide a great daily workout, omitting what some folks pay in gym memberships.)What doesn’t get eaten provides extra feed for the animals. 

Are we anywhere close to self-sufficient? Not at all. Until I can grown my own wheat and oats, we'll still be making monthly trips to the grocery store. Though I have started looking into the details of raising sugar beets, just as an experiment...

When I sent Littlest One down-cellar the other day for a jar of pears, she came up with them and said, “Do you know what I thought when I went into the cellar? I thought, ‘I’m so proud of my mom for putting all this food in here for us to eat.’”

So is it worth it? Yep, you betcha. And it's even kinda fun, too. :-)

Chicken Love

Do ya ever sit in wonder of the things you find yourself saying out loud to your children, things you never thought you'd have to say? It seems as though now that we have chickens, these phrases pop up more and more frequently. Nearly a year since we acquired our hens, and Two Little Girls haven't come close to losing interest. They are constantly trying out new ways of playing with their chickens.

"Girls, chickens don't belong on slides. Or swings."
"For heaven's sake, stop tormenting those chickens!"
"Those are chickens, not puppies! You can not train them to sit!"

But we reached a new level tonight:

"Chloe, please go take the bib off the chicken before she goes to bed for the night."

Watching my children spoon-feed soaked, mashed chicken food to a hen wearing a baby doll bib? Priceless.

This farmy life is a good one, I tell ya.

The Oddly Shaped Egg

Remember Goldi, the chicken with the egg laying issues earlier this summer? Amazingly, she's alive and well, even as the temperatures drop and it's practically frigid out there. I'm still not holding out hope that she'll survive the winter, but so far, so good.

But look at this:

Do you see the long, skinny egg? Her eggs are never "egg shaped." They're always flat on two sides, and long and skinny or lumpy in strange places. They taste fine, are perfectly edible... just funny looking. Chickens sure are interesting creatures!

How to Prepare Chickens for Snow

Bangbangbang BANG!

My oldest raps a bamboo garden stick against the now-empty metal bird bath.

"Chickens!" she calls. "There will be a meeting for all backyard chickens held in the Sunflower Corner. You are all required to attend!"

Bangbangbang BANG!

Four chickens promptly scatter in opposite directions across the yard at the terrifying sound.

"Chickens! I mean it! This is IMPORTANT!"

"Mo-om, the chickens aren't listening to me."

"They are chickens, honey. They aren't little sisters. You can't boss them around, they won't listen."

Hmph. She will make those chickens listen to her, just you wait and see!

Following is the sight so frequently seen in our backyard: a hen, wings pinned to her side, neck outstretched, racing across the yard, an eight year old monster clomping along behind her in pink rubber chore boots, arms reached out to grasp when the opportunity strikes. This chase always ends the same, with the chicken in the arms of the girl, but those poor hens never stop trying to get away.

One by one, she catches the hens, carries them to Sunflower Corner, and sets them down. Then she turns to find the next victim hen. This could easily keep her busy for the better part of an hour: have you ever tried to put four free-ranging hens in one place, and just tell them, "Stay?"

"Chickens! This meeting is important! You all need to hear this! Your SAFETY is involved!" she cries, as she attempts to keep the chickens herded into the back corner. Chickens, when scared out of their wits, usually attempt to run. She was trying hard not to let them.

"Well, fine then. Never mind! I was just going to explain to you what you should do when the SNOW comes, but you can just figure it out for yourselves." Off stomp the pink chore boots with a very miffed little girl inside them.

===

Snow is on it's way here at our little homestead-in-the-city. The fruits and veggies are packed neatly into the freezer and onto the shelves, the garden is empty and awaiting a fresh tilling before the snow covers it completely. The heater is on, the rice heating packs are ready to warm little toes at bedtime. The sidewalk chalk is replaced by crayons and colored pencils, fresh coloring books await dark, cold evenings. And the the chickens? Well, they'll figure it out.

Notes on Preserving: Frozen Eggs

Wanna see something gross?

Yum... egg cubes!

I realize how nasty this looks (and sounds) but chickens don't lay nearly as many eggs in the winter, and that's not too far off. So I'm trying to be proactive. I looked at many different articles about freezing eggs and settled on this one from Chickens In The Road. The technique is simple - crack the eggs into a colander, smash the yolks, and let the eggs drain through into a bowl. The resulting mixture is then poured into ice cube trays and frozen. Two cubes is about equal to one egg.

Note: eight year old little girls love cracking eggs. Two dozen eggs kept mine happily busy for half an hour.

I don't plan on cooking up a batch of scrambled eggs with these, but I figure they'll be useful in all the winter baking that we usually do.

I've also heard that you can just stick whole eggs in the freezer and then thaw and use them successfully. Has anyone tried that? What other methods for preserving eggs are there - I'm open to suggestions!

The Silence is Deafening.

We said goodbye to Mr. Tweets the other night.

Please pardon the blurry photo. It was taken through a window
screen because I was afraid to actually go outside with him.

He turned really, really mean. If we walked by the chicken's yard, he'd rush the fence and try to attack our feet. We couldn't let the hens out, because if he got out he'd race around trying to attack us. He finally escaped a couple of days ago, flew over the fence, and was out all day. I tried to catch him (wearing rubber boots, long sleeves, and gloves) but I couldn't. He kept flying up toward my face, and I wasn't fond of the idea of having a chicken claw at my eyes. Even the dog was afraid to go out - if she did, he chased her around.

He used to be such a sweet rooster. He'd hang out with me while I weeded the garden, cooing and cawing occasionally, crowing if I said, "Who's my pretty rooster?" in the stupidest baby-talk voice you can imagine. He'd happily lay on his back in my arms as I stroked his chest, nearly falling asleep with his head in the crook of my elbow. He'd run up to us when we went outside and wait for the attention he knew we'd give him.

And then, the hens started laying. It started out mild, he'd only attack strangers. And then he went after Cora. It only got worse from there, until it got to the point where he'd attack anything that walked near him.

So I had Andrew do away with him the other night. The girls and I left the house so we didn't have to watch. Chloe was pretty upset for a short while, but she knew it had to be done. Cora did a little dance - she's glad to not be afraid to walk outside anymore, and to be able to play with the hens again.





I'm a little sad. I know I said we weren't getting attached to these chickens, that they're just livestock. But I couldn't help but get attached to the rooster. And I absolutely loved listening to him crow. He had an impressively loud, high-pitched crow. I'm sure the neighbors are relieved. But I really did love it. Happily though, my neighbor still has her rooster, and I can listen to him instead. Aside from that, I'm not too upset. We can let the hens out to wander in the evenings again now, and the girls are enjoying their chickens again. It was a sad choice to make, but the best one.



In other chicken news - Goldi is (miraculously) still alive after her ordeal. She's laying an egg every day now, and though they are a bit bloody still, they seem to be coming out just fine. Between the four hens we're getting a solid two dozen eggs each week, meaning we're effectively drowning in eggs already. It's a good problem to have... I'm pretty sure my neighbors think so, too.

Chicken Troubles

I'm about to get all kinds of TMI on you. I'm talking seriously gory. If you have a weak stomach, or very little interest in the care of terribly sick chickens, you should skip this post. I am happy to tell you though, that I didn't take any photographs of the experience I'm about to detail, so you won't be forced to look at them. You can use your imagination. It will be plenty.

Our sweet Goldilocks is our handicapped chicken. For a reason I never did determine, back around the time the girls were feathering out, Goldi developed a strange limp/wobble sort of problem. She walks a few steps, then wobbles and falls back. She carries her wings loosely at her sides instead of tucked up neatly like the other hens, and her tail is always down. It's like she has such weak muscle structure that she can't support herself. I know this is a common problem with meat chickens, but she's a laying breed, and isn't exceptionally large. She's never seemed unhappy though - she eats and drinks as well as the rest, and seems to manage alright despite her handicap. She's particularly well loved for being one of the more calm and gentle chickens... probably because she's too slow to run away when a Little Girl wants to hold her.

Anyway. So that's Goldi's back story. We've always known she wasn't well. I haven't expected her to live very long. But we've loved her just the same.

Well, Goldi laid her first egg yesterday, and I could tell by looking at the egg that it was a struggle for her. It was covered in blood, mucous, and feces. Most eggs come out quite clean, but this one was really gross. And I noticed she was starting to get poo matted to her back side, never a good sign. I went out today with a tub of water and a rag to try cleaning her up a bit, and what I found when I lifted her tail almost made me gag. Egg binding mixed with a prolapse. It was an egg, hanging from her vent, still completely surrounded by the vent tissue. Her insides were hanging out of her body, with an egg stuck in them. Cora said, "Mom! Goldi's laying a red egg!" I promptly sent both girls inside.

Then I geared up for playing chicken-doula. With rubber gloves on, I oiled my fingers and massaged the tissue surrounding the egg, trying to lubricate it enough that the egg could come out. I soaked her in a warm bath with lavender and olive oil, massaging the whole lower half of her abdomen. The awful part was that she didn't mind. No healthy chicken likes being put in a tub of water, but she just relaxed and let me rub her. When I let her up, she stumbled a bit and walked sideways, but then righted herself and walked away... egg still hanging from the vent, with bits of intestine squeezing out alongside it.

It was at the point that I called my husband and let him know he'd need to plan on putting a chicken down when he got home from work.

And then I went back out... and the egg was out! Another nasty, bloody, slimy mess laying on the ground, but it was out! I looked at her back side... and it was awful. Not as awful as the egg just hanging there wrapped in bloody vent tissue, but clearly a good bit of her insides were still hanging out of her body. Some research on the internet, and some advice from the ladies at the BackYardChickens forum led me to the next move: using a gloved finger, lubricated with Preparation H, to push the prolapse back into her body cavity.

I decided my husband's finger was the one we should use.

He was able to temporarily incapacitate the bird by tucking her head under her wing and swinging her slowly around in circles in front of him, a trick taught to him years ago by a family friend. (Thanks, Mr. Bonnell!) It didn't hurt her at all, only made her too dizzy and disoriented to fight for a minute. And any sane chicken - even a hurting one - would fight if you were shoving her organs back inside her rear end.

She laid amazingly still. Her vent was so swollen it was a trick to get the intestines back inside her body and to actually stay there. Poop was running out as we did it, which I tried to wipe away with a rag, but it was impossible to get it all off. I'm worried about it causing an infection. Oh my god, I wiped chicken poop off of chicken intestines hanging out of a chicken vent. There are a lot of things I never thought I'd do in my life. But I never even considered this one.

It was an awful, horrific process. It was bloody and poopy and gory. Amazingly, when it was all over and it appeared that the vent sphincter would actually hold the intestines inside her body, she got up and walked away. Ten minutes later she was happily pecking at some spinach and cucumber, and drinking a healthy amount of water.

So we didn't put her down. Yet. I'm worried that with whatever condition it is that she has, that makes her so weak and wobbly, this will be an ongoing problem. And I have to say, as much as I love our sweet, handicapped Goldi, I have no intention of pushing her intestines back inside her body every time she lays an egg. That is no life for a chicken to have to live, and no life for me to have to live either. If it happens again, we're going to have to put her out of her misery.

And so for now, Goldi is locked in a separate area in the coop, where the other hens can't peck at her rear end until it's had time to heal. And so the stupid rooster can't force her to mate, which is seriously the very last thing the poor girl needs right now, and the first thing he tried. She's miserable, locked away from the rest of the flock like that, and it's going to be a rough couple of nights until she gets used to it. But it's what is best for her.

So say a little prayer tonight for our sweet Goldi-girl. Two Little Girls are going to be broken hearted if she doesn't survive, though I've done my best to prepare them for it.

This chicken-raising is some seriously stressful stuff! Probably more trouble than it's worth. But we love all of our girls (and our rotten rooster) dearly, whether we ever intended to get attached or not.

A chicken update

Just in case you're dying to know how the chicken situation is coming along...



See those? Those are cute little itty-bitty chicken eggs! Our girls are laying. I'm so proud of them.

Two Little Girls absolutely love checking for chicken eggs. Actually, they love anything to do with the chickens. They run out several times a day to see if anyone has laid an egg, and hearing, "Mom! There's another egg!" is music to my ears. A little girl rushing to the back door with a still-warm egg in her hands and a big smile on her face makes this whole project completely worthwhile.

And because I had eggs, and because I've recently figured out this whole pie crust thing, I made a quiche:



Fresh eggs, homegrown spinach, homegrown onions. Store-bought cheese because I was lazy, and bacon. It's really a shame I don't eat eggs. That's a lot of work for a dinner I won't even touch. But it did showcase the first fresh eggs nicely.

I thought the chickens would lose their novelty. Most of my friends have chickens, and all of their children are basically over them. But not mine. Still, every single day when school and chores are done, the question is, "Can we go out and play with the chickens?" They haven't figured out yet that chickens don't actually play. They truly love these chickens. Whoever said chickens aren't cuddly just never forced them to be. Most of them are tame enough that they don't run away, especially from my oldest. A few come running up to her, waiting for the love and affection she will inevitably shower them with.

However. Chickens are a pain! So much of this project I'm irritated and frustrated with.

For instance, you know that sweet picture painted by the stories in magazines like Organic Gardening, where they talk about how your chickens will eat the bugs from your garden and scratch the soil up and walk around fertilizing it for you? All of this is true... and for a few days, I was thrilled to see my chickens doing such useful work in my garden.

Until they ate my Swiss Chard. Glorious, huge rainbow chard stalks reduced to... well, rainbow colored stalks. They've eaten every bit of leaf on every single stalk. They ate the kale down to stumps, and have started in on the beets. They tore the lettuce apart completely while looking for earwigs to munch, leaving limp, rotting lettuce leaves in their wake. They've torn down the climbing beans, they take naps on the fluffy beds of carrot tops, and there are holes pecked in some of my green tomatoes. Chickens have voracious appetites, and they're not going to limit themselves to pesky bugs. They want those greens! The up side: my chickens must be the healthiest chickens in town for all the fresh, dark green leafies they're eating.

So last night, we built them a pen in the corner of the yard. More space to run around than in their coop, plenty of green grass, sunflowers, and weeds to eat. (It's truly a shame we can't teach chickens to identify weeds and eat only those, isn't it?) And now the girls get the job of chasing the chickens across the yard to their pen from the coop every morning. And when I'm out working in the garden in the evenings, the chickens are welcome to join me... but only for a short time, not long enough to decimate any other crops.

And the rooster. Oh, my sweet, pretty rooster. I love him. He's gorgeous, and he has such a personality. Except that he attacked my mother when she was trying to care for them while we were away. And now he's been chasing my three year old across the yard, sending her screaming up on top of the picnic table. He loves me. He loves Chloe. He realizes Andrew is a very large man and could do significant damage. But Cora isn't all that intimidating to him. I gave her a big sunflower stalk to use as a weapon, and gave her permission to smack him every time he runs at her. He's not very far from the stew pot, that one. It'll make me sad to eat our little friend, and not to hear his crows every morning... and afternoon, and night... but I won't have my kids afraid to play outside for fear of being chased by a rooster.

So anyway, that's the chicken situation here on our little urban farmstead.

Rise and Shine!

A couple of weeks ago my husband and I were sitting outside, enjoying the spring air and watching the kids play with the dog. The chickens were in their coop for the evening, and I was enjoying listening to the sweet chicken noises emanating from their cozy little corner of the yard when suddenly...

"Honey, what was that noise?"

"I think it was a chicken."

"Chickens don't make that kind of noise."

"Roosters do."

"But I don't have a rooster. I got pullets. Maybe it's Miss Tweets. Maybe she makes different noises because she's a different variety of chicken?"

"Yeah... the rooster variety."



Sigh. Sadly, there's no denying it. Miss Tweets is undeniably crowing, odd though it may sound.

In looking at her him I can't believe we didn't figure it out before.



But he's always looked So Different from the other chickens anyway, we just assumed it was his breed.

But no... no. That's definitely the sound of a young rooster practicing his crow. He's tremendous fun. If we crow at him, he often crows back. I can't tell you the enjoyment I get out of listening to my children running around the yard crowing - in addition to the rooster. I'm sure the neighbors love it just as much.

We're going to try to keep him. There's something cozy about waking up to a rooster crowing in the morning, even though we live in the city. I'm not entirely sure all the neighbors feel the same way, but the ones we've talked to don't mind him. And the ones behind us? Well, if they're going to spray my garden with Roundup, they deserve to be woken up at five thirty every morning by the sound of a juvenile squawking rooster.

Chickens

I'm convinced that's it very healthy for little girls to have chickens.



I am, however, not so sure it's healthy for chickens to have little girls.



These chickens are loved. Tremendously.

Maybe a little too much.



How do you convince little girls that chickens are very different from puppies, and do not require constant play and attention? That chickens really aren't all that fond of being chased.





That chickens aren't meant to swing on swings and go down slides. :::sigh:::

Totally failed getting a picture of that one. I was too busy yelling at little girls and sending them indoors. :-P

Silly Chickens

Chickens are anxious creatures by nature. If you change even the slightest thing about their surroundings, they go into a nervous panic.

Sometimes it's just fun to screw with them.

I changed their waterer tonight. I got sick of the little jar-topped waterer constantly being filled with food, newspaper bits, poop, and whatever else they could manage to fill it with, therefore rendering the water undrinkable. I've been changing their water four times a day, and tonight I finally got sick of it. I ditched the silly half-inch-high chick waterer for a plastic tupperware container with higher sides.

This change, of course, invoked immediate panic.

What is this strange contraption The Woman has placed in our cage?


Will it hurt us?

They all scurried to the far side of the cage and huddled there, staring at the Mysterious Thing, tilting their heads and watching it ever so carefully.

Hmm. It's not moving.

Grammy, being the outgoing and brave one, came in for a closer look. She sat pecking the plastic on the side of the container for a surprisingly long time before it occurred to her to see what was in the container.


Ha! It's water! And clean water, at that!

She tweeted her excitement to the rest of the scaredy-cats. Err, chickens. Goldilocks ran over and promptly climbed into the water and stood there. And continued to stand there, until the water soaked through her feathers to her skin and she realized that she was, in fact, getting wet. Egads! More panic, a frantic fluttering of wings, and tremendous chicken-squawking.

Each of the silly chickens came over, pecked repeatedly at the plastic (why?) and finally each took a drink, proving to me that they were at least smart enough to recognize water. Kind of.

These chickens really are entertaining little things. Eh, well, not so little anymore. Poor things are going through their "awkward stage". There's absolutely nothing cute about a half-feathered-out chicken. But there's plenty that is humorous, so at least they're good for something!