Of chickens and chicken coops

We have been raising laying hens for a quite a few years. Their eggs go quickly at our Saturday farmers market; you have to get there early if you want to get some eggs! The accommodations at the old farm were far from luxurious. We heard that the chicken house there had been moved from a neighbor's property by previous owners. The chickens had a large fenced area to scratch in the dirt and hunt for bugs and were fed all the garden weeds and rotten tomatoes they could want in the summer; they seemed quite content.

Here's a picture of the chicken house at the old farm, taken last winter.

We started out this spring with 29 hens. As part of our sales contract, we agreed to leave 6 hens for the new owners. The settlement agent certainly got a chuckle out of that! So we moved 23 hens (and one nasty rooster) with us. At the new farm, there was a building up near the sheep barn at the top of the hill that appeared to have housed poultry in the past, so we pressed it into use.

Here is the "chicken shack" at the new farm.

Things were going fine for a few weeks, but then Greg started finding dead chickens when he fed the flock in the mornings, usually one or two a day. After the sixth dead hen, he counted the live ones that were left and found there were only eight. So nine chickens had disappeared all together! At that point we knew we had a predator problem, probably raccoons or weasels. It also became evident that we needed a more secure chicken house, maybe a little closer to the farmhouse this time.

In the meantime, we needed to stop the killing. There were a couple of rabbit hutches left behind on the farm, so the new routine became for Greg to catch the eight remaining hens (and the rooster) each night and hand carry them to the rabbit hutches to be put to bed. Each morning he would reverse the process, and put them back in the fenced enclosure by the old chicken shack for the day. As you can imagine, this grew old fast!

Neither Greg or I are at all handy, so building a new chicken house is beyond our skills. Thank goodness for friends and family! My brother drew up some plans and his friend Donnie brought all his tools. After a supply run to Home Depot with Greg (and his credit card), construction started on the new chicken house.

In the meantime, we needed to build the flock back up. Our local feed store sells Sex-Sal-Link started pullets one day each fall, so we placed our order for 30 new hens. Sex-Sal-Link are a hybrid breed that lays brown eggs. I think of started pullets as the teenagers of the chicken world, no longer baby chicks but not quite ready to start laying eggs.

Now we had a timing issue. Chicken pick-up day was October 2nd, but the new chicken house wasn't finished. How could we keep the new girls safe? We looked around the farm, and decided to use a tool shed as temporary chicken housing.

The temporary chicken house, with it's former contents piled outside.

The new chicken house is almost done.

Interior view. The nesting box will be hung on the wall.

Front view, chicken door on the left, people door on the right.

Separate feed storage area.

The chickens certainly have a nice view.

At last, on the Columbus day holiday, the chicken house was ready for habitation. We added some electric mesh fencing and turned everyone loose.

The (almost) finished product and some happy hens.

Everyone checks out the new digs.

The nasty rooster gives me the evil eye through the fence.

We still need to build some roosts and hang the nesting box, and my brother is in the process right now of adding some corner trim, but I deem the new chicken house a huge success. In another month or two the new hens should start laying, and egg production will be back in full swing!

Garlic Time

For us, part of Labor Day weekend this year was spent cleaning and sorting this year's crop of white garlic. We had taken care of the smaller Spicy Red Korean garlic crop a while back (and sold most of it too!), now was time to turn our attention to the main crop. We bought this garlic at a sustainable living festival close to twenty years ago, and the variety name (if we ever knew it) is lost in the mists of time. It's a hardneck variety which we have taken to calling "Westminster White", since one of our customers said he always called it "Westminster garlic".

The process starts in July when we did the garlic plants out of the ground. The plant consists of the bulb of garlic cloves and a three foot stem. The garlic plants are bundled and hung in the barn to dry. Somewhere around the end of August, it's time to clean and sort the garlic, so we bring it out of the barn and set up under a shady tree.

Next, we cut each bulb off of the stem. Pruning shears seem to work the best for this.
Now each bulb needs to be cleaned. This consists of trimming off the muddy roots and slipping off the outer layers of papery skin .

Before:
After:
The final step is to sort the bulbs. The biggest and best get saved for replanting; garlic is one crop you only need to buy once. The remaining bulbs get sorted by size. The large ones will get taken to the farmers market and the small ones get set aside as backup in case we run out. Any busted bulbs or ones with bad spots go into our own private stash.

I didn't keep track of the hours this year, but we probably spent 6-8 hours on this task. As you can imagine it can be quite tedious; it helps to have more than one person involved. The end result this year was fifty pounds of wonderful, flavorful garlic.

This recipe is one of our favorite ways of using garlic. It uses a crock-pot so it's super easy.

Chicken with 40 Cloves of Garlic
1 chicken (I use organic chicken from the farmers market)
2 stalks celery
40 cloves garlic, unpeeled (or as much as you like)
Fresh or dried herbs of choice
1/2 tsp freshly ground black pepper

Place sprigs of fresh herbs (optional) in chicken cavity. Place celery in stoneware. Put chicken on top of celery. Add garlic, unpeeled, around chicken. Chop remaining herbs; sprinkle herbs and pepper over chicken. If using dried herbs, I often combine them and rub them on the chicken. Cover and cook on low 8-10 hours or high 3 1/2-5 hours.

To serve, place chicken, garlic and celery on serving platter. Squeeze roasted garlic out of skins onto French bread (yummy!)

Our Year So Far

Well, it’s been a long time since my last posting, and a whole lot has happened! Here is a recap:


April

• After having our farmette on the market on and off for about a year and half, we found a buyer!
• Discovered that the farm we were hoping to buy was no longer on the market.
• Found a new farm to buy (bigger and better). 25 acres! 2 Barns! Farmhouse! Garage!
  
• In order to qualify for special incentives, had to settle on the new place by April 30.
• Managed to squeak through two settlements on April 29, selling in the a.m. and buying in the p.m.

Now, some of you may be looking at the calendar and saying, “Isn’t that a little close to the Maryland Sheep & Wool Festival?”, and you would be right! So here’s how it played out:

• Wednesday, April 28 – Moved tents, tables, etc. for our booth to the Howard County Fairgrounds.
• Thursday, April 29 – Two settlements in one day, am in Rockville (selling) and pm in Columbia (buying).
• Friday, April 30 – Moved plants and wool to the fairgrounds. Our box truck broke down (catalytic converter trouble), the friend’s truck we borrowed to replace it broke down (blew a spark plug), and for good measure Greg clipped Dalis Davidson’s pickup in the parking lot and broke her parking light. (Dalis, you still need to tell us what we owe you!)
• Saturday, May 1 and Sunday May 2 – Festival!!! Need I say more?
• Monday, May 3 – Festival over, we can finally start packing. Have to be out of the house by May 12, although the new owners say we can take our time moving the rest of the farm (bless them!)
• May 4–9 – Pack, pack, pack. No time to sort and discard. Move everything! Thanks to my sister Katrina, our friend Melinda Byrd, and Judi Stull, our realtor, for lending a hand.
• May 10 – Moving day! Hired movers to move the furniture and did the rest ourselves. Thanks to Don Alberg’s flat bed trailer, we were able to get all of the tractors, tillers, etc. moved.
• May 12 – Old house is empty and ready for new owners Daniel and Abby to take possession. We are unpacking at the new house and wondering how a bigger house can possibly hold less. Plans take shape for a big garage sale in the future. Need to get the gardens planted RIGHT AWAY for this year’s farmer’s market!

May

• Started planting gardens.
  
• Repaired old chicken house (shack?) and moved chickens from old farm.
• Started putting up fences for sheep. Although previously a sheep farm (Hampshires), in recent years it was used for horses. There is a new pole barn and two pastures fenced with board fences. Unfortunately, these fences do not connect to the barn, so the first order of business is to fence the area immediately surrounding the barn. Thanks go out to my brother, Irenaeus and his friend Don for spending so many of their weekends working on our fences, and to Ridgely Thompson for teaching them how to build braced corners.
• Farmers Market opened 5/29 (too soon!)

June

• Planting continues, and weeding starts.
• Fencing continues. By the end of the month, we finally have enough area fenced that we can move the sheep over from the old farm.
  
• Moved more farm stuff, including 100 tomato cages (5 foot tall cages, made of concrete reinforcing wire).

July

• By the end of the month, the new gardens are starting to produce. Weeding continues.
• Fencing also continues. Now we are wrapping woven wire around the outside of the board fence on the two pastures. Sheep are happy each time we expand their area.
• Harvested garlic at the old farm. All that’s left to move from the old farm now is the greenhouse.

August

• August finds us planting, weeding, harvesting, and going to market. Getting great yields despite lack of rain.
• Discovered the chicken house (shack?) is not predator proof. Found some dead hens and realized that a bunch more had disappeared altogether - started with 23, now down to 8! Started planning a new chicken house. In the meantime, Greg moves the chickens into rabbit hutches each night and puts them back again in the morning. Labor intensive, but we haven’t lost any more.
• Fencing in pasture #1 is within 30 feet of being done. Start thinking about pasture #2. We are going to build the flock by saving our ewe lambs this year, and they need some place to go during breeding season. (Not to mention it would be a good idea to get the ram lambs out of the flock before they breed their mothers and sisters.)
  

So what’s on tap for September? Planting, watering, weeding, harvesting, and going to market of course. Building a new chicken house; we've ordered some new chickens and they are arriving October 2. Moving the greenhouse. Fencing more pasture. Converting part of the lower level of the bank barn to a fiber workshop. Still need to have that garage sale. And the list goes on and on…

2010 Plant Varieties

Here is the list of plants we will be selling at the Maryland Sheep & Wool Festival this year. The greenhouse is also open by appointment, call Greg at 443-386-0244.

Hot Peppers
The hot peppers are coming along nicely this year, a relief after last year's pepper disaster!
Jalapeno
Thai
Habanero
Caribbean Red
Purira*
Cherry Bomb*
Serrano*
Bulgarian Carrot Chile*
Hybrid Paprika*
Anaheim (Numex)*
Ancho (Tiburon)*
Fish*
Chiltepin*
Pasilla*
Cayenne*
Hungarian Hot Wax*
Hot Paper Lantern*

Sweet Peppers
King Arthur
Big Bertha*
Gourmet*
Islander*
Antohi Romanian*
Biscayne Cubanelle*
Sunray*
Sweet Chocolate*
Bianca*
Blushing Beauty*
Round of Hungary*
Piquillo*

Tomatoes
Brandywine
Celebrity
Striped German
Giant Belgium
Yellow Brandywine
Green Zebra
Marglobe
Rutgers
Cherokee Purple
Patio*
Black Krim
Zapotec Pleated
Giant Oxheart
New Girl

Plum Tomatoes
Roma
San Marzano
Amish Paste
Juliet
Principe Borghese
Debarao
Window Box Roma*

Cherry Tomato
Sun Cherry*
Sungold
Red Grape*
Yellow Pear*
Red Pear*
Peacevine*
Super Sweet 100*
Red Robin*
Sweet Million*

Basil
Italian Large Leaf
Red Rubin
Spicy Bush
Mrs. Burns Lemon
Thai Magic
Purple Ruffles
Cinnamon
Fino Verde

Eggplant
Beatrice*
Fairy Tale*
Nadia*
Lousiana Long Green*
Orient Charm*
Zebra*
Orient Express*
Dancer*

Miscellaneous
Flat Leaf Parsley*
Toma Verde Tomatillo*
Purple Tomatillo*
Catnip*
Nasturtium - Jewel**
Nasturtium - Alaska Mix**
Nasturtium - Night and Day**

*4" pots only
**Market pack only
Everything else is available in both 4" pots and market packs of 4 plants.

Yes, we have tomatoes…finally!

Seems like it started raining for the Maryland Sheep & Wool Festival the first week in May, and kept raining for another month. As a result, we were even later than usual getting the garden planted. We got through the first few farmers markets of the year with plants from the greenhouse; after that things were a little sparse for a while (garlic scapes and radishes, anyone)? Slowly, the crops have been coming in. Summer squash and cucumbers are winding down, but where, oh where, were the tomatoes? The week of the Howard County Fair at the beginning of August, we had five – count em, five – ripe tomatoes. Not enough of any one variety to enter in the fair!

Finally, in the last couple of weeks, our booth has really started looking like a farmers market should. This week, we had five varieties of heirloom slicing tomatoes (Brandywine, Yellow Brandywine, Striped German, Black Krim, Green Zebra) and one non-heirloom variety (Celebrity). One heirloom plum tomato (Debarao), the classic Italian San Marzano paste tomato, plus the ever popular bite-sized Juliet (nearly a bushel)! Although classed as a plum tomato, Juliet is also good for salads, salsas, and fresh pasta sauce, not to mention eating out of hand. Let’s not forget the cherry tomatoes: super, super sweet Sungold and the small, pear shaped Red Pear and Yellow Pear.

Hmmm, what else? A smattering of squash, cucumbers, and onions. Four kinds of potatoes (Russian Fingerling, All Blue, Yukon Gold, and Norland red potatoes). Swiss Chard. Lots of extra large green peppers, some colored bells, and two varieties of frying peppers. Ten varieties of hot peppers. Tomatillos. Several varieties of eggplant, including the miniature "Fairy Tale". Three kinds of basil (Italian Large Leaf, Red Rubin and Fino Verde "baby" basil). Spicy Red Korean garlic. Zinnias. Did I forget anything?

If we can find some time this week to clean it, we will have our "Westminster White" garlic next week. (So called because we originally bought it at a festival over ten years ago and have no clue what the real variety is!) Right now, Greg has the chainsaw out cutting up a tree that fell on the fence in the sheep pasture, so it looks like we’re not cleaning garlic today!

Stop by and see us one Saturday morning at the farmers market!

Kris

Of Radishes and Garlic Scapes

Being a market gardener surely inspires some unusual meals. We have access to all that lovely home-grown organic produce, but what we really end up eating is damaged crops (think split tomatoes or the potato the shovel went through), or whatever’s left over at the end of the market. A few weeks ago, the only thing the garden was producing was radishes and garlic scapes. Some a.m. thunderstorms kept customers away from the market, so we had a LOT of radishes and garlic scapes leftover.

Radishes weren’t too hard to deal with. We ate them:

• Out of hand, with sea salt
• Shredded with cabbage and carrots in a "Health Salad" (we had bought a lovely organic cabbage at the market)
• Oven roasted (OK, I admit, this recipe still needs some work)

The traditional French way of eating them, by the way (especially the long breakfast radishes), is with butter and salt. I have yet to try them this way, but I did find an article about it on the Internet.

On to the scapes. If you are not familiar with garlic scapes, the scape is the flower stalk of the garlic plant. They are only available for a limited time in the spring. Since we grow a lot of garlic, we have a lot of scapes. I don’t mind, because they are yummy!

All of the following got two thumbs up from Greg:

• Roasted in the oven with olive oil and salt. (Customers tell us they are also great on the grill.)
• As garlic scape pesto (using the recipe from MaryJanesFarm).

The real winner was when I substituted scapes for asparagus in the "Sausage and Asparagus Skillet" recipe from one of my favorite cookbooks, Simply in Season. I also added some chopped fennel. Made with Evermore Farms pork sausage from the market, this was so good we’ve had it several times!

A Tale of Two Breakfasts

Many years ago, when I first heard about the concept of food miles (how far your food travels from farm to dinner plate), I realized that there was something very wrong with the food system in this country. As a market gardener, I was intimately familiar with the concept of local produce, but I hadn’t thought much beyond that. At the same time, I had just about given up eating pork products because most of the commercial pork in this country is raised in Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) a.k.a. factory farms, which are generally super bad news for the environment.

My real awakening came from reading a column in Edible Chesapeake magazine called "A Tale of Two Breakfasts". Author Tom Harbold (who happens to be a regular customer at our farmers market) compared two breakfasts—his usual morning routine, versus one featuring ingredients he had purchased from local farmers. Wow, he had even been able to buy his breakfast bacon locally! Plus he had met and talked to the people that had produced his food! It made me realize that local applied to more than just produce, and gave me something to aspire to.

Fast forward to 2009. We are very fortunate to have some new meat vendors at our farmers market this year, so I finally have a source for bacon! Here was my Sunday morning breakfast today:

• Pasture raised heritage breed bacon from the farmers market (hooray!)


• Eggs from our backyard


• Two slices of sunflower/oat mini-loaf from the farmers market, spread with fresh farm butter from Trickling Springs Creamery in Chambersburg, PA (which I buy at Roots Market in Clarksville) and strawberry/rhubarb jam from the farmers market (although I will have homemade strawberry jam soon, strawberries are in season!)

Yummy (and local)!

Kris