Old Otter Holler Farm

Culling and Rejuvenating the Chicken Flock

Saturday was a beautiful and productive day here at OOHF.  With the help of several of our brothers and sisters from the Summers County, West Virginia chapter of the Ghost Riders Motorcycle Club, we butchered eight three-year-old plus Buff Orpington hens that had stopped laying, at least reliably.  It was quite an experience for the group since most had never butchered a chicken before.  We began the day by setting up all the equipment and gathering all the supplies we needed for the task.  Once we were ready, I gave the group some quick instruction on each step in the process and turned everyone loose.  To my surprise, everyone did an excellent job and had a good time doing it.  Not only did this help us out here at OOHF since we were feeding and taking care of hens that were not producing, but it gave the group a chance to personally connect with our local food system while educating them on self-reliance.  Best of all, we donated the chicken to the club to make chicken barbecue at an upcoming fundraising event where we'll all get to enjoy the fruits of our labor.

Culling these eight birds reduced the size of the flock to 12 hens, which are still reliably laying eggs.  The next step in the flock rejuvination process will be to introduce new Rhode Island Red and Buff Orpinton crosses to the flock in about four weeks.  We are currently incubating 45 eggs, which are scheduled to begin hatching late next week.  This is the first time we've used an incubator and it has proven a challenge to keep the temperature at 99.5 degrees Fahreheit for nearly 21 days with the wide swings in temperature between night and day this time of  year.  The chicks will spend their first three weeks or so under a heat lamp in the brooder, then we will integrate them into the existing flock.  If all goes well, the new chickens will be laying eggs before Christmas!

Telling Time on the Farm

Having spent a great deal of time outdoors on the farm over the past eleven years,  I have become familiar with the sun's path in all seasons as it traverses across the sky, and if the sun is shining, can usually tell you the solar time within an hour or so just by looking at the sun's location and its relation to other geographical features around the farm.  Having hung up my wrist watch for good once I left the military nearly 20 years ago, it is a useful skill that I use everywhere I go...all I have to do is pay attention.  One step up in accuracy from this form of dead reckoning is the sundial.  Sundials have been around for thousands of years and come in a surprising number of shapes, sizes, and accuracies.  Here at OOHF, we have set up a decorative horizontal sundial that is fairly accurate, but could probably be fine tuned by tilting the gnomon to reflect the latitude of our location.  Still, it is close enough for us.  All you have to do to set it up is lay it on a flat surface, point the gnomon (the part that sticks up and casts the shadow) to true north, and let the sun do the rest.

There is a story about the sundial in the image below that I'd like to share.  Many years ago, the sundial rested on a large rock in our backyard, but was taken down and stored when we moved the rock.  The sundial was forgotten for many years until this past spring when I was cleaning out the well house and came upon it.  I decided I wanted to set it up again, but did not have a suitable pedestal to raise it up off the ground.  A few days later, we experienced moderate flooding on several small streams on the farm and a large chunk of well-aged wood that looked to be the butt of a timbered tree washed up on the edge of our driveway.  I noticed this interesting piece of wood right away and was drawn to its shape and aged look.  I thought to myself, what can I use this for?  After a day or two of contemplation, I realized it would make a great sundial pedestal so I scooped it up with the tractor and brought it to the house.  After moving it around for a few hours, we finally settled on this arrangement.  In our opinion, it works great, looks good, and is in a high-traffic area near our house entrance where it can be used daily.

    

Busy, Busy, Busy at the Farm

We have been extremely busy at the farm over the late winter doing tasks that we normally do later in the spring...all thanks to the unseasonably warm weather.  Over the last few weeks we have prepared all of our raised beds for the growing season and planted the first wave of green onions, spinach, lettuce, kale, radishes, and carrots.  In the greenhouse, we started cabbage, peppers, tomatoes, broccoli, an cauliflower in flats that we will transplant outside later in the spring.  Other completed tasks include setting up all the rain barrels, servicing equipment, pruning, spreading wood ashes in the garden plots, and general spring cleanup around the property.  Our plans this coming weekend and week include the following:

• Prepare the lawnmower and weedeater for action
• Paint the outside of the new passive solar greenhouse
• Set up our new worm composter
• Prune selected trees in the fruit orchard
• Spread composted manure around garden plots and selected fruit trees
• Begin landscaping around the new greenhouse in preparation for the new pavilion
• Build a new grape trellis and begin training our new Concord grape vines that we propagated from cuttings a few years ago.
• Build a new bee hive support structure for the apiary capable of holding eight hives
• Build new structures to block cattle from squeezing between the fence post and cattle guard
• Temporarily move three bee hives from a friends farm to the fruit orchard to help with pollination

This list should keep us busy for the next seven days or so.  Stop by for a visit in you're in the area and would like to see what we're doing, or to help out if you like. 

 

Too Much Stuff

Because the weather was unseasonably cold and the wind was whipping upwards of 30 MPH today, I decided to do a bit of spring cleaning in the basement.  I've had my eye on the growing mess down there for quite some time, but could never motivate myself to tackle the issue in any meaningful way.  Besides, where do you put things when you have too much "stuff" for your living space?  As I surveyed the clutter, I began to reminisce about the days when all I owned would fit into a military duffel bag, and most of that was government issued.  Oh, those were the days.  Things pretty much remained like that well into my 20s until I got married.  Then, quite suddenly, the amount of "stuff" I had increased tenfold and continued to grow for the next 10  years.  Just when I began to feel for the first time that I had too much "stuff" my wife and I decided to part ways and suddenly most of my "stuff" was gone, at least the good "stuff".  Some of this loss could also be attributed to a thief who broke into our locked storage area and emptied it.  It was a shock at first, but gradually I replaced most of the furniture and necessities (thanks to help from my new wife); however, this time we shopped mostly at thrift stores instead of big box stores.  In place of the knickknacks and whatnots my ex-wife would buy,  we bought useful things like tools and "how to" books.  Despite starting over, it did not take long to fill up my living space again, and just when it was filled, we moved to a farm in West Virginia that had three outside storage buildings.   Well, to make a long story short, we cleaned out the previous owner's "stuff", replaced it with our own, and began building more outbuildings to hold new "stuff" such as tractors, implements, mowers, garden and mechanic tools, chains, ropes, etc.  Now, it seems we have so much "stuff" that if we ever sell this place, we'll just give the new owner a key and leave on my motorcycle with all our "stuff" in two saddle bags and a bag on the luggage rack.  How did we accumulate so much "stuff"?  Well, part of the problem is that we live on a farm and are always fixing or building something and more often than not you need something to complete the project...something you can't buy or don't want to buy.  Consequently, when something breaks around the farm and becomes unserviceable, we'll keep it, or at least parts off of it, just in case we can use them for another project.  This also applies to scraps of wood, wire, pipe, fasteners, auto and tractor parts, and even tinfoil, twist ties, onion and potato sacks, and plastic/paper bags (I picked that up from my Granny).  Therein lies the problem.  This sounds good and oftentimes you can use those things again, but after awhile things begin to pile up and appear junky and cluttered.  This is why some farms around these parts look like junkyards, at least a section of the back forty.  Trouble is, I can't stand having a place that is junky or cluttered.  So, every so often I get the urge to purge and will gather up clothing that doesn't fit and things we haven't used in years and donate them to the local thrift store, gather up all the junk laying around and take it to the scrap yard to sell, or gather things up that are not useful to anyone or recyclable and burn them in a large fire that in the past has probably been visible from the moon.   Today is one of those days.  We'll be making a trip to the thrift store next week and plan to have a large fire in the firepit when the weather permits.  Nothing like restoring some order to your life, and best of all, I'm sure our "stuff" will brighten someone's day at the thrift store!

Chicken Butchering Day at OOHF

OOHF had another successful chicken butchering day on Saturday, October 22, 2011.  We started gathering equipment and supplies around 8:00 AM in the morning, sharpened all tools, built a fire to heat the water, and were ready to begin butchering chickens by 11:00 AM.  This year's participants included three people from OOHF and five people from Big Branch Farm located near Alderson, WV.  In total, the group butchered 30 chickens (24 Cornish-Rocks and 6 old laying hens) in a little less than three hours, which is a record here at OOHF.  In return for Big Branch Farm's help, OOHF will travel to their location in a couple of weeks to help butcher about 30 of their meat birds.