The turkeys have had free range over the property for the last few weeks, since they are now big enough that we’re not worried about hawks attacking them!
Where ever you go, they follow you. Kind of like an annoying little sibling!!!
They follow you here…
… And they follow you there…
They follow you everywhere!
Don’t forget that we still have some of our free range, GMO free, heritage turkeys for sale for your Thanksgiving celebration! Check out this page for more information!
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We’ve gotten a little tired of the same old venison dishes, so we decided to make some venison meatballs!
We pulled out the old meat grinder, and after cutting the venison into smaller chunks, we started grinding away.
We added some duck fat that we saved from our last roast duck, since venison is not very fatty and we didn’t want to meatballs to be too dry!
This is what our ground venison looked like after we were done:
Then we added some of our sage:
And our garlic:
And a couple of our eggs and some bread crumbs for texture.
Then we cooked them up in a little olive oil:
We cooked up a rue (after the removing the meatballs from the pan) using the oils and fats from the pan, coconut milk, flour, and olive oil. We added some more garlic, salt, and pepper and once the rue was almost finished we added the meatballs back in to let the flavors meld.
We served it over rice and then promptly inhaled it:
Yummy!
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We didn’t get him.
We came close, oh so close, but we didn’t get him. The pig that is.
His number has come up, and our plan was to isolate him for a few days before the deed was done, but after an exciting evening complete with blood, sweat , and tears, we didn’t get him.
“Yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed, if so celestial an article as Bacon should not be highly rated.” ~Thomas Paine
We recently have set our chickens free!
And I mean REALLY free!
They are free to go anywhere on our land that they want to, except the garden (which is why we’ve electric fenced the garden out) and the carport (just because it gets on my nerves)!
Electric fencing around the garden.
The reason we made this choice is because we were tired of having to move their house and pen every week or so, and our flock is growing and we don’t want to expand the size of their space.
So, we decided to set them free and move their house way across our front yard to the edge of the woods.
You can see the chicken house in the distance behind the duck fence!
They still get locked up in their house at night, since ground predators are a threat, but so far the aerial predators have not taken any standard sized chickens. A bantam has gone missing, but we expected that we might loose more chickens when we gave them free range of the whole property. We think it’s a risk that chickens would like to take, considering how much happier they are! We’ve kept 3 of our hybrid roosters, in addition to Rex, so that they can help protect the flock in the case of an attack. We’ve started calling these roosters the Musketeers, since they often stick together.
We are really happy with our choice to allow them to be completely free range, except for one thing… The eggs! Only a few of them are still laying their eggs in their house, and we have had a really hard time finding their other rouge nests. Even when we find one and replace some of the eggs with golf balls (so they don’t know that we found it) they still abandon that location and look for new places to lay eggs.
An old nest spot was in the monkey grass under this oak tree.
At this point, we’re only finding about 5 eggs a day, and even though this isn’t enough to sell any, we still feel like it’s all worth it. Because they are free ranging we feed them so much less food, so they are almost free to keep around!
The funniest thing about having them free ranging everywhere, is seeing the places they choose to go. One hen always sleeps in a tree in the backyard, and many of the younger hens like to hang out with the pigs all day! The Musketeers high-tail it over to the backyard in the morning to get some of the leftover turkey food that the cleanup ducks missed! I just have to watch out for Rex when I’m outside, since he’s started attacking me again lately!
Two of the Musketeers are hanging out in the backyard with the turkeys!
Three cheers for free chickens!
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Harvest season is upon us! In addition to the wild blackberries we put up, we harvested apples the other day from our somewhat deformed backyard Apple tree. This tree was planted by the previous owners of our homestead and forgotten to the point that it was almost completely engulfed by a massive honeysuckle vine.
Our first year here, it produced only a few small and tart apples that were eventually all eaten by deer, but after removing the honeysuckle and some heavy pruning, we were rewarded with a 32 pound harvest last summer.
This winter, I pruned it even more, and actually grafted some Roxbury russet scion onto a few potential leaders. Serious pruning of any fruit tree should be carried out over several seasons, so as not to shock the tree too badly.
our 2015 apple harvest, sorted and ready for processing
This year, we harvested a little over 40 pounds of apples. Now that’s not the 4-7 bushels that I talk about in my post on the value of a fruit tree investment, but it is a lot of apples for, other than a little pruning in winter, and 20 minutes of picking in Summer, essentially no input. No fertilizer, insecticide, fungicide, herbicide, or irrigation.
Now of these 40 pounds of apples, I’d say that only 15% are “grocery store” apples. That is nice and plump, with no blemishes, bruises, funny shapes or insect bites. We’ll eat these fresh and savor every bite.
the grocery store apples: blemish free and plump.
The rest of the apples will be processed and preserved. We are plan on drying/dehydrating them. Of these apples, the non grocery store apples, most of them contain either a few minor defects, or 1 large defect. They also tend to be a bit smaller, and more oddly shaped. This doesn’t effect the flavor though and they should dehydrate fine. 70% of our apples fall into this category.
processing apples with minor defects, nothing major to see here
The next batch of apples have more serious defects, often a major soft spot that will effect its shelf life, or many medium sized defects. These apples are often small, and we are going to have to cut around the bad parts when we dehydrate them. They are still usable, but the yield of fruit on them is low. I’d say about 10% of the apples fit this category.
these guys are still usable, but the yield is low and they don’t store well
The last category are the culls. They’re pig food. These apples are either too small to mess with, or almost completely covered in defects and soft spots. Drops and rotten apples fall into this category and they will be fed to the pigs who will enjoy them thoroughly. The remaining 5% fall into this category.
culls. not worth messing with, a.k.a. pig food.
All in all not too bad, and we will definitely update you when we start dehydrating apples!
It seems now, as I write this, that blackberry season is over on the homestead. We were hoping to harvest 50 quarts but we fell short this year, landing somewhere around 15. Not nearly as much as we wanted, but it definitely is a great start since last year we harvested 0 quarts!
The picking process is simple, really. You just have to be a little thicker skinned than usual and get used to getting scratched and hurt (not such a new concept around here, really!).
We both got suited up with long pants, a long-sleeved shirt, a hat (the brim really helps by keeping briers from smacking you in the face), and a glove.
Jason after a round of picking.
We tied the baskets to our front, as though we were carrying basket-baby-bellies which allowed us to keep both hands free. We could fit about 4 or 5 pounds in the basket before it got too full and heavy, which meant that we could pick for at least an hour without having to go back to the house to drop off our fruits.
Emma wearing a basket.
Jason had a different tactic than I did. I chose to wear a glove on my left hand so that I could grab briers and pull them closer to me to pick the berries with my right hand. I would pick up to 10 berries, letting them collect in the palm of my hand before dropping them off in the basket. Jason chose to pick with both hands, without gloves.
We decided to have a competition to see who could pick the most, with points lost every time you yelled out in pain from a brier sticking you (which was often). We imagine that the game is one we can use to get our kids to pick blackberries with us (and one that we imagine will make them tough!).
Once we were done for the day we weighed our fruit (I won!) and we rinsed them outside with the hose.
Then we brought them in to dry. We spread them out on a towel and turned on a fan.
And once we decided they were dry enough, we filled up quart Ziplocs with them and labeled them.
Now we have at least 15 blackberry pies for the fall and winter. Yay!
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Our flock of Golden Layer and Cayuga ducks are a hungry bunch. They spend their days hunting bugs and nibbling on weeds in between twice daily feedings of our non-gmo feed.
Some of our ducks, lining up to be fed
We keep them on a pretty tight diet, otherwise they would get a little too big and their egg laying would suffer down the road. As such, they are always on the lookout for a snack, usually a grasshopper or a bite of clover, but their ravenous appetite can be put to other use on the homestead.
hungry ducks following and cleaning up after the turkeys
You see, our heritage turkeys are currently in a move-able tractor that we paddock across the pasture daily. They also get a ration of non-gmo feed, but they tend to waste a good bit of it, especially the smaller pieces. This is where the ducks come in handy. Because they are so keen on finding food, we can easily herd our flock to the recently vacated space left by the turkey tractor where they furiously search for and cleanup any leftover and wasted grain. They glean a fair amount of food value form the turkey leavings, which otherwise would go to waste.
A win-win for all!
KW Homestead’s first Farm to Your School experience was a great one, with another school visit coming up on July 9th!
I just wrapped up the 2014-2015 school year as a Teacher’s Assistant at a school in High Point, and Jason and I decided to offer a free Farm to Your School adventure to the kindergarten, first, and second grade kids that I worked with everyday. A few days before the last day of school, we packed up our chickens, ducks, and a really friendly piglet named Half Nose and carted them over to Johnson Street Global Studies K-8 Magnet School.
Each of the 6 classes had 30 minutes to enjoy the animals… A perfect amount of time for the kids to get quality time with each set of animals. I ran the Pig Station, where students got to pet and scratch our piglet. They were lucky enough to get to her some of her piggy noises, and some of our favorite questions were:
“Is she wagging her tail because she is happy?”
“Why her her hair so scratchy but her skin so soft?”
Jason ran the Duck Station and the kids were able to feed the ducks and watch Jason employ some of his ninja skills while catching a duck for them to pet. Some of our favorite questions from the Duck Station were:
“Why do they sit in the water and then drink it?”
“Why do they always walk together?”
Each classroom teacher supervised the kids while they looked at the rooster and hen, and they loved hearing the rooster crow and (their favorite) watching both chickens poop!
We had a fantastic day, and the time we spent sharing our animals with the kids really flew by… I think we found one of our passions!
If you are interested in booking Farm to Your School at your school, church or family get-together, send us an email at ourochreway@gmail.com and check out our Farm to Your School pricing page!
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The other day, in broad daylight, Jason and I saw a black snake scaling the large oak tree in our front yard. He was about 3 feet long, and the way he moved up the tree was amazing!
Snake in a tree!
As we got closer, he started to hesitate about climbing higher, and decided to turn around and slither down into the wood pile.
Even though one of our chicks went missing a few days before, I just can’t be mad at such an amazing creature. We’ve often seen him hunting frogs in Heidi’s Hole (the little pond in the garden), and perhaps he ate our chick, but you never know. Maybe it was a hawk…
What a beautiful creature!
A vertical climb!
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It has been a while since we have updated the website, but we’re finally back in the swing of things here!
So much has happened in the last few months (so much that we just couldn’t find the time to post!). We thought that one of our more important updates is to share with you the status of the heritage turkeys...
About a month ago they took over the residence of our crazy, nervous Khaki Campbell ducks! This means that they now have a tractor to live in, which protects them from the elements and keeps them safe. The great thing about raising animals in a tractor is that they get new forage and grass every few days. This makes them much healthier animals because there is always fresh greenery and bugs to eat and because their mobility cuts down on disease. Talk about Thanksgiving deliciousness!
They have been in their grassy place for a day, and later will be moved to the green place to the right.
The brown spaces are places they were in the past. See how much they like grass?
The tractor provides shade (a tarp) although they usually like to bunch together in the sun!
We moved them to the outside tractor because they matured enough that they didn’t need their heat lamps any more and because we slaughtered the Khaki Campbell males that were living in the tractor. We’ve kept the females for laying eggs and integrated them into the larger, newer duck flock, but we decided it was time to finally taste some duck! Details about the slaughter and butchery to come…
You can see in the video below that the different breeds of turkey are becoming apparent. The white turkeys with the black striped feathers are Royal Palms and the pure white ones are Midget White, Giant White, or White Hollands (I guess we’ll find out as they mature). The majority of the turkeys are Bourbon Red Turkeys, with brown and reddish checker designs on their feathers. When this breed matures they will have solid brown and white patches.
Be sure to check out our Heritage Turkey page for information about ordering your Heritage Thanksgiving Turkey today!
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