I'm in from my major work for the day, am sitting here with a cool glass of "hooch" (lacto-fermented lemonade), and thought it would be a good time to write a bit about what has been happening on the homestead these days.After I got back from teaching Women's Bible Study this morning I headed to Keith's sawmill with the tractor and wagon to load up a big load of wood shavings to use for chicken bedding this winter. There's a lot more to get but my wagon was so full the tractor hardly wanted to pull it!
When I got back from there I went out to the garden and planted the garlic. I picked up several new varieties (new to me) at the Mother Earth News Fair to try this year. I'm trying Porcelain, Siberian, and Kettle River Giant. I'll be interested to see how they all do.
A big project we took on this year was raising meat chickens for the first time. I can honestly say I hated every minute of it. They were smelly, obnoxiously demanding, and ate like there was no tomorrow, but at the price of an organic chicken out there, we decided to give it a try. Jamie and Kelly went in on it with us. We purchased 26 Freedom Rangers and raised them for about 11 weeks. This past week we took them for processing and I have to say, I am so glad we did this project! The birds are beautiful! And so delicious!
A word here for Bruce's Poultry Processing in Litchfield, PA. We dropped the birds off in the morning using cages that Bruce supplied ahead of time. After butchering he kept them on ice throughout the day and then we picked them up in the afternoon. They are beautifully processed, clean as a whistle, and Bruce even cut the skin and wrapped the legs to keep it in shape while roasting, just like you see with turkeys. I requested the organs, necks and feet for making soup stock. I thought I would probably have to clean the feet myself, but no, they were just as clean as they could be. I packaged up 6 large bags of stock makings.Last night I roasted our first one. I roasted it in a large cast iron pot. I stuffed it with a bundle of rosemary, thyme and sage, and some apple and onion slices, brushed it with butter, and seasoned with salt and pepper. I roasted it at around 275 for several hours. It was delectable! The meat tasted pure, was very tender, and there was a lot of it. Now I have the carcass simmering away with one of the packs of stock makings. There was plenty of meat left over for a big pot of chicken noodle soup for dinner tomorrow. So even though I hated them while they were here, I'm blessing them now. I will definitely do this again.
I had some wonderful little helpers to help harvest the last of the garden produce last week. Hunter harvested the pumpkins, Jordy the remainder of the carrots, and Isaiah the remainder of the beets. Then we all dug potatoes, gathered the beautiful Golden Hubbard squash, and pulled up all the tomato stakes and such. It was a good day. These kids are such good helpers and hard workers. They are true treasures in Gramma's life.
We've considered raising Freedom Rangers. Would you recommend this breed still?
ReplyDeleteBTW - thank you for your blog! I just found it today! Though I'm not a grandma yet, (I still have 3 teenage boys at home), you remind me to enjoy them and slow down :).
Oh, that's so nice of you to say. Thank you.
DeleteYes, after raising the Freedom Rangers before we are definitely doing them again. In fact we have a shipment coming in next week. We didn't lose a single bird last year. They were healthy and well balanced...not top heavy and unable to move around. And they tasted great.
We buy from http://www.freedomrangerhatchery.com right here in PA. The chickens arrived very healthy and hearty. We're raising 40 this year. A lot of people buy their meat birds way earlier than this, but we like raising them starting no earlier than August. Part of the problem with meat birds is they don't handle heat well. That's why so many die. In August there is enough warm weather to get them through the first few weeks when they need warmth, but then the temperature cools down and they do really well through September and October. We processed after 11 weeks last year but actually could have stopped at 10. We didn't weigh them but they were nice full bodied birds. Hope this info helps.