Our Homestead Update

It's almost Spring!! Dare I say it? The rain may come back in full force if I actually said it aloud! The kids are begging to go outside each and every day and I've been weeding one of the gardens and pulling up raspberry starts to giveaway. I don't know where all the weeks go. They slip by way too fast. Fast enough for me to have a hard time keeping up with it all!

So here's what we've been up to.... We recently made a family trip down to Calaveras County to visit my grandparents. Or as all of you Mark Twain fans would call it, Jumping Frog Country. It was my grandfather's 85th birthday and we had somewhat of a family reunion for it. Creeks, baseball, shooting, family, food and great fun! Hubby and I have still been debating on when we should get our next hogs. Getting them in April is better, weather wise, but it probably means that we'd have to take them to a butcher in the end since fall is too busy with tree work and hunting season. Taking meat to a butcher and having it actually leave my sight always worries me slightly. Am I really getting all of MY meat back? Is it someone elses? Mixed with someone elses? *shudder*

Getting them in July would mean worse weather for butchering but we can do it ourselves. We'd then end up butchering 1 hog in November (along with the turkeys) and one in December.

Turkey's you say? Yep, they're back. Well, one is. We got one of our turkey chicks this week and the other will be coming early next week. We have them set up in the garage. We've been using this little brooder system for years and it works great. Plus, it's easy and inexpensive to make.

Requirements:

1 Rubbermaid tote

1 heat lamp

Feeder and waterer

bedding

a couple pieces of scrap wood

some type of small fencing (we used 1/4" fencing)

small U nails or smaller straight nails that can be bent

With the wood, make 1 box, sized to fit over the top of the Rubbermaid container, similar to if you were making a raised bed box. Cut a piece of fencing to fit over the top. Nail it down securely on all 4 sides using U nails or straight nails that you can pound 3/4 of the way down and then bend over to secure the fencing. Attach another piece of wood, anywhere on the box, to use as a "post" for attaching your heat lamp.

There you have it! We store the top when it's not in use and then wash out the tote and use it as well for other things.

This little brooder works well for maybe 6 chicks or 2 turkeys, since turkeys are larger, until they really feather out. The nice part about using the wood for the top frame is that it's heavy. Not too heavy for a person to lift but much too heavy for any little critter, wanting to make your poultry dinner, to budge.

I'm excited about doing turkeys again this year. It will be nice to compare last year to this one. I've also started a file to keep track of all of our livestock expenses so I'll be able to share just what our animals and the food they produce are costing us!

Wyatt is off to the Portland Swap Meet with his grandpa this morning. They'll be in their element- surrounded by car stuff until Sunday!

I've really been trying to carefully examine our gardens this year and what we are going to grow. With the economy like it is, I want to make our garden as productive as possible. Of things we actually eat. While it's nice to have a beautiful garden full of all kinds of different produce, if we're not eating all of one type of produce then it's a waste of space. I don't need two 10' rows of carrots...we just don't eat them all! If all my garden ends up being this year is full of green beans, then so be it! Trust me, we eat green beans. (That may be a slight exaggeration.) But I do need to realistically think of what are we going to actually consume besides what it is going to be the most aesthetically pleasing.

Guess what I didn't do yesterday? Build a fire. That really hints of spring! It was warm enough not to have any heat going in the house. This morning though I did break down and build one. Even if I let it die off later, it still was nice to have.

I guess that's about it here. Beyond the normal day to day that is.

What have you been up to?

Raising and Butchering the Thanksgiving Turkey

This was our first year raising turkeys and let me tell you, it was an experience! I guess raising a new animal always is but I found with turkeys that there was a lot I didn't know. I was not aware of how much they ate. Granted, they can be 4x the size of a chicken but I guess when I purchased them as little baby chicks, that reality hadn't set in. These gals were hungry 24/7. Even watching them eat grass was amazing. I think if you had a small lawn then you could just own a turkey instead of a lawn mower. They work fast.One of our turkeys back in June.

We raised Bronze turkeys and they were about 1 month apart in age. Even though they were the same breed of turkey they both grew very differently and had very different personalities. Our larger turkey was much like a chicken while our smaller one was more like a overweight pig. She'd just lay around, eat and when she felt like it, she'd roam the grass. She also laid eggs for us while the larger one did not.
We raised them for about 7 months and butchered them yesterday. Before I go any further, let me warn the squeamish that there are some graphic turkey photos below. If you're a homesteader and butcher your own animals then it'll be nothing. If you don't even like to look at live animals and blood makes you faint then just go ahead and skip to another post. I've spared you the beheading shots!

The place where the magic happens. This is our friends home. He and his wife own the local feed store in town and are turkey butchering experts! They raise goats, sheep, pigs and have chickens, a horse and a huge green house. Normally, they raise turkeys as well but this year their turkey dinner became raccoon dinner.

The killing tree. Hanging the turkey up.

Time to take a dip in the 160 degree water (turkey has been beheaded already.) Gary had a nice large barrel that he had cut in half to use- certainly big enough for a turkey. Out of the pot and onto the table.

Plucking feathers. It was actually very easy to remove the feathers once the bird had been dipped. Gavin and Gary did the big turkey and Wyatt and I did the smaller one.

Gavin doing the dirty work.....cleaning up the smaller turkey.

Cleaning the gizzard to be fried in coconut oil and added into the stuffing.

One finished bird.

Our larger turkey ended up being fairly lean. She weighed 25lbs finished and had very little fat on her. Our smaller one had quite a bit of fat (remember I said she was like an overweight pig?) and weighed out at 17lbs.

Cost wise these turkeys were expensive. The chicks were about $8.50 each and then feeding them organic, soy free food for the last 7 months has been pricy as well. While they were free range and did get to eat grass and bugs and other squirmy things, they still ate a lot of purchased food. My guess is that each turkey ended up costing about $60 when all was said and done. Pricey? Yep. But in reality I'd much rather spend the time and the money and know what my food has been eating and the conditions it's been in rather than getting a free turkey from the store if I spend over X amount of dollars. There is something very satisfying about raising and eating your own meat.

turkey friend

Layton's got a buddy.
This banana is good.
Would you like to try some?