Chicken Tractor - newly revised

Ours being a small farm, many things are either small or do double duty. The horse trailers are used to haul horses, but also hay, house a hay maze and even used as a chick brooder. The hay barn gets used for parties, tack and feed storage and more. Multi purpose and small. We started off with the standard chicken tractors that the pros use of 10' x 12'. Hmmm. WAY too big for our little farm. So, once again, Scott went to town revising and modifying the industry standards to work for our farm.

What we now have is a modified 6' x 10' portable chicken house, complete with hanging feeders and waterers. Scott also found a use for some drain pipe that had been sitting around for a VERY long time...the date stamped on the pipe was 1999. The same year our oldest son was born. I wonder what in the world we were planning on using it for back then. Nevertheless, it has found a new use as a skid of sorts for the portable house and makes moving it around a breeze!
Thank you AGAIN, Scott.

Love those Volunteers.

And you thought I was talking about people...I do love those wonderful people who come out and spend time on the farm just to brush a horse or clean some stalls for the fun of it. But, what I was talking about was volunteer plants!
Every year we also have something that seems to pop up. Well, this has been a bumper crop year for volunteers! We have lettuce that is going to town in nice, tidy little row. Lavender that grew so fast (thank you wonderful compost) that Scott actually dug it out and transplanted them and of course I couldn't forget the tomato plants. Every year - the tomatoes. Funny, because I can't seem to start them from seeds to save my life - REALLY! Those hearty little volunteers though are amazing, growing so fast and strong. But here's the new, fun one: Potatoes.
I'd heard that if you didn't get every one of the potatoes that they would re-sprout and you'd have more, but I really thought I got them all. I dug and dug and couldn't find another potato anywhere. Yeah, right. That's OK, I love new potatoes and mix them with some celery, our own farm fresh eggs and a little mayo and mustard and we have some amazing potato salad. Seriously. Yum!
Hopefully in the next few months our little farm stand will be done. We're in the paper planning stages at the moment, trying to plan exactly what we want where in the store so we can set it up right, from the beginning. Who knows ... maybe you'll see some of our tomatoes, lettuces or even potatoes in there this summer. Definitely some eggs.

Heritage Breeds

It seems like the chickens have been the topic of many of our conversations here at the farm recently. More particularly, the Freedom Rangers chickens that we have added for our meat production. In comparison to our other meat breed, the Cornish Cross, these Rangers are up and active - they have actually been seen on many occasion actually chasing the larger Cornish chickens around. They are lively and peppy and we are so much happier with this fantastic breed.
The Freedom Rangers are a more traditional breed in that they take longer to grow naturally and are France's only breed accepted for their Label Rouge free range program. They don't have the Cornish's famous "double breasts", but they are also have less leg problems as well as heart attacks (not one so far!). We all know the expression, "It tastes like chicken", but really what most people are saying is it's simple and will do well with various sauces, herbs, etc. The older, more traditional breeds really do taste like chicken though. And it's not just the meat, but the fat and the bones that make truly amazing chicken broth. One of those mouth watering, drool coming out of your mouth, broths.
Now don't get me wrong, the Cornish birds still have a place here on our farm. The produce a larger quantity of white breast meat and are fast growers making them more "affordable" for most. They also have the taste and texture that we are more familiar with - although ours still have more taste and texture, it looks the part.
If you have an interest in farm fresh raised chicken, locally produced, drop us a note. Or you can find our order form on our website at: http://www.willowsedgefarm.com/chickens-and-eggs.html
Up and coming: Pastured Pigs ... pigs raised naturally, here on our farm in Bothell.

Poultry Processing Day

Well, it finally came - our first, on farm poultry processing day! We had been excited and dreaded the day for weeks. Excited to know that we would have meat that we ourselves raised, know exactly what was fed to them, how they lived and exactly how they were finished. Dreaded, well, you can imagine ... we raised them, loved them and now, we have to process them.
All in all though, it went well. We had not one inspector, but 3 - yes THREE - inspectors from the Washington State Department of Agriculture come to inspect and watch. Actually, it was one inspector and he brought along 2 others so they could see how it all works. We started off with big entertainment for all, except Scott, who got pooped on as he was prepping one of the birds. Nothing like a little bird poop to lighten the mood :-) We ended up getting a 99% on our inspection - we lost 1 point because our riser on our table was not a finish wood, but "raw" wood. It get's painted next week. I was also happy to hear, once again, that "this was not what a normal farm looks like" (comment from our inspector to the other two) "this is almost like a park". Yeah Farmer Scott!!!
We ended up with smaller birds than what we had originally had planned for, but we know they were smaller from the brooder failure we had happen in their first few days of life. It compromised them from the start. Next batch though, are already looking great and the new Freedom Rangers - well, they are just AMAZING! More on them later. We have some chickens available for our later processing dates and you can find more about them on our website at: http://www.willowsedgefarm.com/chickens-and-eggs.html