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Hi Everyone,
Nine weeks ago we were blessed with a free batch of 50 broiler chickens—but they also arrived with a batch of 70 that we had ordered. That gave us 120 chickens at one time, and we do not process more than 70 chickens in one day. So we split the chickens in half and processed half on Friday, December 3 and the other half last Monday. Talk about being totally confused as to which day of the week it was! We usually process on Friday—so we thought that it was Friday all day. Then since the Tavernari’s had a special birthday to celebrate on Tuesday (our typical egg party day) they decided to package eggs after we all processed chickens—so that meant that it must have been Tuesday. While the egg party was going on Mom and I headed to the garden to harvest the fourth picking of green beans, and Steve spent his day weeding in the garden—so I guess it was Monday after all.
Monday night’s dinner was special, because Clayton supplied the meat! When he was visiting the farm in Pennsylvania he was given the opportunity to go hunting with the farmer’s son and a rabbit crossed his path and Clayton was able to bring it home for dinner. Monday afternoon Clayton seasoned his rabbit and then come dinner time I sautéed it in olive oil and then I sautéed around four to five onions that Clayton cut up. Then I simmered the onions and rabbit together for an hour. The result was a very mild tasting, and tender piece of meat. While Clayton has processed beef, pork, chickens and turkeys this was his first chance to eat something that he had hunted. The last time I had rabbit was when I was 14. The neighbor was freeing his garden of a pest and brought the rabbit over to Mom who was pretty sick at the time and was sitting on the porch. He handed the rabbit to Mom while he was holding the back feet—but Mom grabbed the front feet and when the rabbit flipped the other way he leaked his bladder all over poor Mom. When I got home from school I was ecstatic to find a rabbit in our kitchen and since I was at the age where dissecting was part of science class I talked Mom into letting me dissect the rabbit first. That was very interesting—but the smell lingered too long in my nostrils and when it came time to eat the rabbit after Mom cooked it I had a hard time with the smell. The second rabbit that the neighbor brought our way I locked myself in my bedroom while Mom cleaned and cooked it—and it tasted much better. I have come a long way since then—for I can process chickens all day and still eat chicken for dinner with no problem.
Tuesday seemed to be a little laid back. Clayton and I milked the cows and Mom canned the green beans that we had harvested on Monday. So far we have canned over 60 pints of green beans—and there are still more growing on the bushes. We are so ecstatic over all the beans and just Praise the Lord for the bountiful harvest! I also had to bottle the kefir and make yogurt. After lunch Clayton and I packaged Monday’s bucket of eggs—since we packaged eggs on Monday before we gathered the eggs. It is definitely “tis the season to buy eggs, but the chickens are struggling to lay enough for the demand. Ten years ago we kept 400 laying hens year round (200 in each portable hen house), then slowly we started selling less and less eggs. Every year we replace one house of chickens. Each house is replaced when the chickens in that house are two years old. As we began to sell fewer eggs, we also began to buy fewer chickens when we replaced a batch. So instead of ordering 200 chickens I might just order 150 or 100. Back in 2019 the first week of December we sold around 40 dozen eggs. Then Covid hit and the first week in December 2020 we sold 90 dozen eggs. We sold around 80 dozen in 2021. By May of 2022 we were only selling about 56 dozen eggs a week—so when it came time to order more chickens I took three factors into consideration: 1. The prices of feed was going up—would people pay a higher price for our eggs? 2. The fuel situation was getting pretty scary—would we still be able to get our feed shipped in? 3. We weren’t selling very many eggs so maybe we didn’t need to buy more than 100 new egg layers. So with a little bit of uncertainty of the future we dreamed small and placed our order for 100 chicks. That would give us 200 laying hens, and to our delight they started laying eggs a whole month earlier than normal so we were very excited that just as the older hens were starting to lay fewer eggs, the new hens were starting to lay a lot. We were down to 60 dozen eggs a week and the more the new hens laid the more our egg count increased. The last I counted we had close to 90 dozen eggs in one week. We didn’t always sell every dozen every week so there was a little bit of a cushion—until the first week of December rolled around and we sold 140 dozen eggs! Well, that is we could have sold that many but we didn’t have that many. For the first time in years we sold out of eggs and I wasn’t happy with myself for dreaming so small. Is it the holidays? Is it because we get two to three new customers every week? Is it because our eggs were cheaper than some grocery store eggs of poorer quality? Farming has its challenges and it seems that one of them is the need to be able to predict the future—which isn’t possible. We could go ahead and buy 100 more laying hen chicks—but they won’t start laying eggs until May, and that is when our customers start going on vacation. We usually order them in June, but maybe we shall order them in April so that they are laying eggs in September when everyone goes back to school, or maybe May so that they are laying strong for next Thanksgiving and Christmas. I think that we should order 200 the next time—but will the demand still be high?
While my Tuesday was laid back, Clayton, Mom and Papa had a pretty interesting day. It is really nice when people can see something that needs to be done and step up to the plate and tackle the job. For months Clayton has been eyeballing the milking parlor concrete and the outside walls to the cooler and freezer, but time has not been on his side. While we were milking Tuesday morning he asked me if it would be a good day to pressure wash everything and I thought that it would be, but sent him to ask Mom and Papa if he could. They granted their permission and Clayton spent his day making the walls white again and the floor a light grey instead of black. We were amazed at how much bigger the space looked once it was sparkling clean and white. It is true that dark walls shrink a space and light walls make it bigger—even though the square footage hasn’t changed one bit.
Mom and Papa spent their day in the kitchen installing our new dishwasher. YEAH!!!!! With canning season in full swing I did not exactly like the idea of washing all the canning jars by hand in order to fill them with green beans, broth, potatoes or anything else. So I petitioned to be able to find a dishwasher that would work—even if it wasn’t perfect. Since there was some Black Friday sales going on at Lowe’s I took advantage of them and found a dishwasher. It arrived Monday, but after many hours of trying to install it Papa realized that our hose was too short. So on Tuesday he headed to town to get the needed supplies and then spent more hours installing the dishwasher. It seems that I picked out the most complicated dishwasher to install and poor Papa had many trials and lots of scraps, poke and loss of blood. In the end we rejoiced to be able to load the dishwasher and get on with other chores.
Wednesday rolled around and my friend Lydia arrived for a very long visit—ten days! YIPEE!! We didn’t get to visit very much a few weeks ago when she came up, so we are blessed to be able to cash in our “rain check” so soon. Lydia is fun to be around and you could easily find us if you were blind because of the sounds of laughter and giggles that can be heard wherever we are. Lydia likes to be busy—and there is plenty to be busy with around here. The Bible says that laughter doeth good like a medicine, and since I am still recovering from my last bought of sickness having Lydia around is a giant dose of medicine.
The manure spreader that we throw all the manure in from the milking parlor area is getting very full—well it was heaping full and close to over flowing. Clayton and I want to put it in one of the compost bins and mix it with chestnut leaves—but Mom redesigned the garden and we can no longer drive the manure spreader into the garden and back it up and turn it on and let it empty it into compost bin. That meant that the only way to get it into the bin is to shovel it by hand into the tractor bucket and then dump it over the wall. When we were done milking on Thursday I decided to ask Papa if we could use the tractor and he said “yes”. Lydia and I then drove the tractor up to the manure spreader and then Clayton shoveled the manure into the tractor bucket. Lydia and I then drove it out to the garden and dumped it into the compost bin. My “fun” was not to last very long though because Mom found me and told me that I was supposed to be taking it easy because I was battling pneumonia—and dealing with manure wasn’t the best for me. I wasn’t the happiest of campers because there is so much to do and I didn’t want to “rest.” When I told Clayton that our plans had been changed he blessed my heart when he asked if he couldn’t do it all by himself. Papa gave him permission and then gave him a few lessons on driving the tractor. Clayton was able to get another load of manure emptied into the compost bin, but it was lunch time before he was able to go get a load of leaves and then after lunch Papa needed the tractor in order to plant some winter grass seed. We girls headed to the garden to pick green beans and Papa and Clayton headed out to plant seed.
The first week of February we received 50 little broiler chicks, and every other week until May we received 50 more. Then come June we started getting 70 chicks every other week. By October we had brought in a little over 1000 chicks. We processed chickens from April to December—and last Friday, December 9, we processed the last batch of chickens for the year. For ten and a half months Steve has fed and watered chickens six days a week and for all but two weeks he has had pens to move also. This year the chickens grew much faster than in years past, for usually the chickens weigh around 4 to 5 pounds at 8 weeks of age—but this year they weighed 6 to 7 pounds at 8 weeks of age. Sometimes we chose to process the chickens a week early in order to get some 4 to 5 pound chickens, but sometimes early was not an option and that was okay because some of our customers really like the larger chickens. Usually the fall chickens are the smallest of the year, but this year some of them actually reached 8 and 9 pounds. They were little turkeys! We shall have about a six week break before it will be time to bring in more chickens—but that is not until next year.
Serving you with Gladness,
Tiare