Factory Farming by Jo Robinson

As I was surfing the net about pastured or grass fed animals, I came across this website called eatwild.  It is a good resource for information we could use to help market our products.  Here is part of an article that I found interesting about Factory Farming.

Virtually all the meat, eggs, and dairy products that you find in the supermarket come from animals raised in confinement in large facilities called CAFOs or “Confined Animal Feeding Operations.” These highly mechanized operations provide a year-round supply of food at a reasonable price. Although the food is cheap and convenient, there is growing recognition that factory farming creates a host of problems, including

• Animal stress and abuse
• Air, land, and water pollution
• The unnecessary use of hormones, antibiotics, and other drugs
• Low-paid, stressful farm work
• The loss of small family farms
• Food with less nutritional value

Unnatural Diets. Animals raised in factory farms are given diets designed to boost their productivity and lower costs. The main ingredients are genetically modified grain and soy that are kept at artificially low prices by government subsidies. To further cut costs, the feed may also contain “by-product feedstuff” such as municipal garbage, stale pastry, chicken feathers, and candy. Until 1997, U.S. cattle were also being fed meat that had been trimmed from other cattle, in effect turning herbivores into carnivores. This unnatural practice is believed to be the underlying cause of BSE or “mad cow disease.”

Animal Stress. A high-grain diet can cause physical problems for ruminants—cud-chewing animals such as cattle, dairy cows, goats, bison, and sheep. Ruminants are designed to eat fibrous grasses, plants, and shrubs—not starchy, low-fiber grain. When they are switched from pasture to grain, they can become afflicted with a number of disorders, including a common but painful condition called “subacute acidosis.” Cattle with subacute acidosis kick at their bellies, go off their feed, and eat dirt. To prevent more serious and sometimes fatal reactions, the animals are given chemical additives along with a constant, low-level dose of antibiotics. Some of these antibiotics are the same ones used in human medicine. When medications are overused in the feedlots, bacteria become resistant to them. When people become infected with these new, disease-resistant bacteria, there are fewer medications available to treat them.

Caged Pigs, Chickens, Ducks and Geese. Most of the nation’s chickens, turkeys, and pigs are also being raised in confinement. Typically, they suffer an even worse fate than the grazing animals. Tightly packed into cages, sheds, or pens, they cannot practice their normal behaviors, such as rooting, grazing, and roosting. Laying hens are crowded into cages that are so small that there is not enough room for all of the birds to sit down at one time. An added insult is that they cannot escape the stench of their own manure. Meat and eggs from these animals are lower in a number of key vitamins and omega-3 fatty acids.

Environmental Degradation. When animals are raised in feedlots or cages, they deposit large amounts of manure in a small amount of space. The manure must be collected and transported away from the area, an expensive proposition. To cut costs, it is dumped as close to the feedlot as possible. As a result, the surrounding soil is overloaded with nutrients, which can cause ground and water pollution. When animals are raised outdoors on pasture, their manure is spread over a wide area of land, making it a welcome source of organic fertilizer, not a “waste management problem.”

Summer is almost here!

Hopefully everyone put their gardens in last week when the ground was dry.  Now it seems we are having a late Spring Storm with lots of rain.  It will help the garden grow so, no complaints here. Our son Colton is growing like a weed. He is 8 months old but he is the size of a 2 year old, at least that is what it feels like carrying him around.

Well, May is almost over and summer is just around the corner. That means we have a lot of work to do around our homes. Gardens are in, and lawns are being mowed.   Here at the Pleasant Valley Farm we are busy  raising meat as well. Fortunately we have room to raise enough meat for our friends and family. This year we are offering chicken, turkey, pork and beef.

Our animals are rotated  through pastures and woods to keep the soil (incredibly) healthy and to keep the animals on fresh forage. This is an ethical way to raise livestock and minimizes our need to medicate them, which helps assure healthy animals. Healthy animals lead to healthy food for our Friends and Family, food which happens to have incredible flavor.

Lots of Berries This Year!

When we purchased our house in 2008 we were excited to find a decent amount of fruit producing plants around the place. There were two great blueberry bushes and three apple trees. The blueberries were in pretty bad shape (not pruned or fertilized for what looked like a very long time) and the apple trees hadn't been touched the last two years because the house was in foreclosure. I gave the blueberries a heavy pruning and a good fertilizing and our first year we ate and ate off the bushes and froze 10 quart ziplock bags of berries. This year's crop is looking even better as the bushes look amazing after another good pruning.

Our two semi-dwarf apple trees did a great job producing wonderful eating and baking apples, but the huge old Gravenstein tree only produced about 10 apples. The year prior (according to the neighbor) had been even worse for the poor tree. We gave it another heavy pruning this year and we hope to get a better crop of apples off of it. They are delicious apples!!

This year we are trying our hand at raspberries. I loved eating raspberries straight from the vine when I was growing up. We installed a small row of vines we received from a friend that will hopefully produce berries this first year. Yum!!

Mid-spring 2009 we planted four more semi-dwarf fruit trees just beyond the garden. We have a pear, frost peach, italian prune and plum tree. I'm not sure how great the peach will do, but the others are designed for this region and so far this year are covered in blossoms. We had a very warm February (the warmes on record) and a lot of our plants were coaxed out of their dormant state. We are getting some wild weather now (rain, frost, hail, etc.) and hopefully it won't damage the tender blossoms too much.

Hopefully our mason bees weren't too put off by the cold weather and are getting out there to pollinate! We'll have to wait and see.

...And Our Latest Addition...

Meet Mike.

Mike it the latest addition to our ever-expanding farm family. Because, really, who doesn't need a miniature donkey?

Now, before you go saying, "What in God's name does a person need a miniature donkey for?" let me tell you the story of Mike and then you'll see how you could end up with one too.
So, I always thought miniature donkeys were the stinking cutest things ever. And those who know me well know that I love all things small: animals, imitation fruit (you know, the kind you put in a dish on your coffee table), cars, toys....people. Anyway, I digress....
When I was living in Wyoming there was a couple that advertised "guard donkeys" for sale. I was thinking something that looks over your house, like a guard dog kinda. Todd informed me they probably meant guarding livestock. Whatev. I'm thinking "how cute would that be?" So, I go around saying how I want a miniature guard donkey....and Todd arranges for us to go look at one last week. I keep saying, "I really don't want one. Really. What are we going to do with a donkey? Really?"
However, when we get there I can obviously see he needs a new home. He's in a muddy pen, dirty and wet, with about 10 other miniature animals (now, she's probably a real nutcase, right? Not like me with more of a, um, fascination with all thing miniature). And Mike is being bullied around my these tiny horses. He's so passive, unassuming and patient. Obviously lowest on the food chain.
And then she tells us how she came across Mike. And it was over from there. Mike came to her from her friend, who's neighbor had lost their house. They moved out and left Mike behind without food or water. The neighbor couldn't care for him, so she called her friend with other small animals and he was rescued. The woman we got him from was unable to keep him long-term and needed to re-home him. So, that's the story of Mike. That, and he scares the crap out of my horse and the neighbor's horses. And he likes to bray (that's donkey for winnie) at 5:00am. Oh well.

Vermin Control

We have for several months now been fighting a battle with two of our friendly neighborhood raccoons. They sneak into the garage at night and help themselves to the cat food and water. Cute, yes. But a little irritating. It became really irritating when they, apparantly wanting more than what I was feeding the cats, tipped over the tupperware container holding the cat food and helped themselves to 5 lbs of cat food, buffet style. Three times.
And, to no one's surprise, I have had a difficult time with the mechanics of the trap door on the live trap. Sometimes simple workings elude me. In fact, I have set up and caught, then released said raccoons approximately three times. I never seem to get the trap door right. Until yesterday. Oh yes, read on....

Scene: Our bedroom, 3am this morning.

Todd is preparing to leave for work and heads out to his truck parked outside our bedroom window. Tromp, tromp, tromp, then tap, tap, tap on the window.

Todd (through the glass): "Did you move the trap? It's way down by the blackberries."

Me: "No. Check it. It probably has a cat in it."

Tromp, tromp, tromp.

Todd: "Nope. We got a 'coon! I'll get it after work."

Me: "You can't leave it there all day."

Todd: "They live outside. He'll be fine."

Me: "It's inhumane to leave him there all day. Can't you take him to work and let him go?"

Todd: "Fine."

Tromp, tromp, tromp. Back to the trap. "Ouch! Dammitt! #$%$%^ man."

Tromp, tromp, tromp. Back to the window.

Todd: "He's crazy. He went after me when I tried to pick the trap up."

Me (half asleep): "Maybe some gloves....?"

I hear a gun cock, then tromp, tromp, tromp. *pause*

BLAM. Silence.

Truck tailgate goes down. Trap in bed of truck. Tailgate goes up. Truck drives off. Hmm.

So, then I start thinking "I wonder if the neighbors called the cops?" Because that kind of behavior is normal: yelling through the windows in the middle of the night, yelling back from inside the house, tromping around, gunfire, vehicle traffic after shots are fired. Our neighbors love us. Perhaps I should call and tell them I'm OK....

A little history...

Last year we bought our first home together.  We think we scored a great deal.  Three bedroom, one bath home on just shy of 5 acres.  It came with a shop with a covered area on the back for our sailboat and a detached garage.  The house and property needed alot of work.  We worked on our house all summer long.  Now it is a four bedroom, two bath home.  We bought this property to have animals and a garden, maybe even make it a small farm.

This blog will record how we progress into becoming a Small Farm

In with One and Out with Another

Animals...animals...animals....

Just when you think we should start charging admission to the "Smeltzerville Petting Zoo" we have added to our brood! We recently acquired (short term anyway) another horse!! I know what you're thinking: I have 5 more weeks until I can even think about getting on the one I already have, so why another? Well, Shadow is the retired 4-H project of a friend of mine who needed a place to crash for a little while. Jazzy had a difficult time accepting the gift of instant friend, but after a couple of days seems to be doing just fine with it.

And, as one comes in one goes out! Tux, the black and white cat (get it? Tux?) that we acquired a couple of years ago has gone back to his real home with his dad Burch. Before Todd and I bought our house we were living at the beach at Semiahmoo. Our friend Burch went sailing for nearly a year and we took over watching Tux. Well, after a voyage full of wild tails that spanned from here to Mexico, Hawaii and back he has landed safely in Blaine and was excited to see his old friend Tux. He moved out yesterday and was headed to a much quieter house with Burch and his 12 year old Chihuahua, Pancha. I'm sure he's glad to be out of our mad house!

Canning-Therapy for Pregnant People

I don't know what it is about canning that just seems so theraputic at this point. It started out pretty innocently with 8 jars of pickles and 6 jars of pickled green beans and went out of control from there. Applesauce last weekend (12 or so jars of the regular and 12 or so with blueberries mixed in) and more pickles night before last. There's something about having a kid that put me into overdrive with the canning thing. Because normal people don't drag their husbands out of bed at 7am on a Sunday morning to pick pillowcases full of apples to convert to sauce, right?

Our pickles didn't turn out very good at all - WAY too much spice, so after the "version" fiasco the other day, thinking I totally deserved a watermelon from the fruit stand, we ended up with 20 lbs of pickling cucumbers too! We spent ALL night boiling jars of cucumbers and I'm proud to report we have a new addition of roughly 30 jars of pickles to add to our collection of canned, frozen, or otherwise stored food!

Because babies eat applesauce, plum butter and pickles, right? And as Todd pointed out: we have never once bought a jar of applesauce. Looks like everyone is getting pickles for Christmas!!

And the Barn has Lights!

Yes, its true: We accomplished our very first wiring project on our own - together. We didn't mean too, and certainly wouldn't have attempted it by ourselves, but my dad was on vacation the weekend we planned the big event and its just getting to be too dark in the morning to really go much longer without lights inside the barn.
Now, for those of you who don't know Todd is a little shaky with the ladders (remember when I was screwing together roof joists and putting on the metal roofing while he handed up tools and screws?...) so I ran the wires down the center beam to all the necessary outlets and installed and wired in the overhead lights while Todd was the brains behind the operation, figuring things out from the ground.
One would think that with only two wires (one black, one white) and a copper ground it wouldn't be that hard to get it right.

Right.

First we had power to the outlets, but not the lights. Then we had power to the lights but not the outlets. Then the outlets had constant power and no lights, but both the black and the white were hot to the lights, but they wouldn't come on. Then, the outlets worked but the light switch wouldn't turn the lights on or off. I was up and down that ladder making adjustments and nothing was working!! This was like some torturous mind game that was about to send me over the edge!

AND every new adjustment to the wiring plan (or lack thereof...) meant a jog to the house (which seemed to get further and further away) to shut off the breaker (not falling for THAT one again...) and then a jog back to turn it on to test the new arrangement.

We had nothing and my legs felt like they were going to seize up after my ten millionth trip up and down that ladder with the drill, wire strippers and power tester. Todd, admittedly being the more logical of the two of us, went to the shop and traced a line there that actually worked: as in it had lights, outlets and a switch that turned them on and off. By this point my brain could not take the stress of the power issues and in the time it took Todd to go to the shop and back I was able to dismantle most of the work we'd completed thus far! My logic said "start over" while his was more like "we're almost there....just a few adjustments and we'll have it." He shoulda moved faster. I was ripping wires apart faster than a power shopper goes through a sale rack.

I mean, how can both legs of the switch be hot at the same time and the switch NOT shut it off at all? This exercise in futility was frying my brain and in the last possible wire formation and one last half-hearted jog to the breaker box and back we had lights!! We had lights AND the switch worked! We had light, the switch worked AND the outlets had power!!

Ten hours later, one near-meltdown and a fried brain and we had it!! We have one entire side with lights and now we need to put them up on the other side. Perhaps next weekend - not like we have a whole lot going on, right?

Dad Goes Down the Well

I know, I know.... not like "What's that Lassie? Timmy fell down the well?"
Let me first preface this post with saying: Dropping someone down the well casing to clean it out is NOT normal behavior. However, my parent's well is only ~18 feet deep and this has been done before.

One of the joys of living in the country is the opportunity to have one's own well water and septic system. Public utilities (like water and sewer) are so convenient, but when you must tend to your own well and septic systems and your water starts turning a little murky and smelling a little musty you start looking around mentally measuring waist sizes of your family and friends in an attempt to assess just who will fit down the well casing.



Now, when I was a little kid I always had the job of retrieving things from tight places and doing weird things where no one else could fit. (Except for the time my younger brother got his hand stuck in the wall trying to find an electrical wire...but that's another story...) For instance, once while adjusting the timing on a car my dad dropped a bolt down into the engine and although you could see it no one had small enough hands to grab it. "Hey, run in the house and grab Rikki." Or, the time just last summer when I got to wire the thermostats in the attic crawl space because, "Honey, I just don't fit up there."

So, naturally, I figured I'd be going down my parent's well to spray it down and pump it out. And, had I not been 8 months pregnant I think I would have gone down there. My mom insisted, "You're not taking my grandson down there." But really, in my current state, inch for inch my dad's waist is smaller than mine. That, and there's nothing like calling Medivac for help extracting the pregnant lady stuck in the tight spot of the well casing. That's a one way ticket to a Darwin Award.

When I arrived things were mostly staged and ready to go. The above ground portion of the casing was removed, the sump pump was in place and the tractor was ready with a chain hanging from the bucket to lower and then raise my dad in and out of the well. Perfect! I brought the camera and a cell phone (because really, what could possibly go wrong?!) and Todd arrived wondering if we'd already signed off our confined space entry permit. Right. We'll get right on that.

And... things went off without a hitch! We lowered him via the chain suspended from a diving-board like thing strapped to the bucket of the tractor, then handed down the hose to spray it down and then we pumped out the mucky stuff at the bottom and hauled him back up. The well is doing great and it'll probably be another 25 years before we have to do it again.

We lowered things up and down via a bucket on a rope and all I could think of was that creepy scene from Silence of the Lambs where he has that girl down the hole and keeps saying, "It puts the lotion on the skin or it gets the hose..."

Looking through the pictures now I likely think we would have been fined by OSHA, the county, the state and whoever else would have witnessed this event. Todd hoisting him up (very gently..) using the bucket of the tractor was priceless and all my dad had to say when he got up was, "I think that's the last time I'm going down the well." Good thing Todd and I were there to witness just how to do this so next time we can be more helpful!

Finally Jazzy Comes Home!

Finally after what seems like an eternity my horse Jazzy made her way to the farm! I've known we were buying her for quite some time (nearly 4 months), but there were just so many things that needed to be completed before she came. There was fencing the property (obviously she can't live on a stake line the whole time..), installing the gates, running the wire, building the barn, running the water lines, etc. We had quite the project cut out for us. Well, most everything was complete (minus the barn, which still needed the stalls framed in), so she was ready for her debut!!

She's settling in just fine and it is so nice to have her home and, thanks to wonderful neighbors that have an arena accesible from our yard, I've been able to keep up on the (very light!) riding.

Barn Raising 101

And, yes, boys and girls: the quickest way to get yourself nominated for this year's Darwin Award is, in fact, to put the pregnant lady on the peak of the barn securing the trusses!!

So, we're building this barn (we being my dad, myself, Todd and an occasional brother conned into it whilst stopping for some totally unrelated subject). The barn will be magnificent when we're finished - it just seems like the never ending project. And, to tell you the truth, most days we'll get home from work and my dad's already been working on it most of the day.

The funniest part I think came while sitting atop the rafter peak. My dad and I were running 2x4s across the trusses in order to screw the metal to the roof and had sent Todd to the hardware store for more screws. So, as I was sitting there I was thinking to myself, "ya know when you read the stories about stupid people doing stupid things? And then you think to yourself 'what were they thinking? Like, what were they even doing there?'" Right. Stupid people.....

So, as I was perched with hands and legs spread between trusses, no safety gear to speak of (lanyard, harness, fall protection, etc.), holding myself up and looking directly down at the ground 20 feet in the air, all while wrangling the skill saw and cordless drill I couldn't help but think to myself what the rescue workers would be talking about at break time...

1. "Who put the pregnant lady on the roof?"

2. "What was she doing up there anyway?"

3. "Where was her husband?"

Then, jostling me from my daydream, was Todd looking up at me, "Honey, do you need more screws?"

Welcome to Farming!

After a long and laborious fence building session that involved a tank-like hole drilling apparatus, the help of my entire family and long, long days...we finished fencing in the back 5 acres of our property. In an attempt to raise our own hormone/antibiotic free beef cattle Todd searched and searched for just the right set of cows to come check out the new digs. I didn't have the heart to tell them they won't be staying too long (they're slated for slaughter this fall), but that's another story....

Todd found an amazing set of 2 steers and 2 bull yearlings. They were delivered early last month. Our first order of business was to turn one bull into a steer. How does one do this you ask? Well, it started with us hitting the "elasterator" aisle of the local farm store. After our repeated questioning of, "Don't they come any bigger? I mean, these are almost full grown cows.. they're junk is, well, a lot bigger than that." we called the vet out. I missed the show, but apparently it went something like this:

Step 1: Place halter on bull in question

Step 2: Lead unsuspecting bull into temporary holding cell

Step 3: Distract long enough for vet to put not one, but TWO, surgical bands around a very sensitive area and then administer a tetanus shot.

Step 4: Release newly formed steer to the field, never to come close to humans again.

Right. I must say that night of practicing putting the halter really paid off, because when the vet arrived Todd already had #84 (we refuse to name them and only call them by their ear tag numbers) haltered and tied up waiting. He walked right in and with a little squirming did alright. He was hard to approach for a while (especially from behind - go figure) but I think has made a full recovery! My dad came to watch the festivities but was seriously let down by the lack of entertainment.

Note to self and others: buy them already made into steers. They cost the same and you don't end up with and elasterator you're too ashamed to return to the store because it "just wasn't big enough."