If you’ve ever found yourself thinking that we’re overly critical of factory farms, take a moment to read this nauseating profile of Smithfield Foods’ hog farms from Rolling Stone magazine. 

Author Jeff Tietz reports that “Smithfield estimates that its total sales will reach $11.4 billion this year. So prodigious is its fecal waste, however, that if the company treated its effluvia as big-city governments do — even if it came marginally close to that standard — it would lose money.” That’s a lot of poop, people. 

The article goes on to tell about farms littered with pig carcasses (as many as ten percent of factory-farm hogs die before slaughter due to the conditions in which they live, according to one study), and about people succumbing to the fumes from hog waste lagoons. Lagoons, which, according to Tietz, contain a combination of toxic substances such as ammonia, methane, hydrogen sulfide, carbon monoxide, cyanide, phosphorous, nitrates and heavy metals (not to mention  your typical gut-wrenchers: salmonella, cryptosporidium, streptocolli and giardia). 

If, like any good capitalist, you want to send Smithfield a message by avoiding its products, here’s a list of brands that sell their meat. What is Paula Deen thinking, ya’ll?

Photo by iStockphoto/Bruce Works

Chickens and other fowl have played a large role in history. The first book in the United States that was dedicated entirely to poultry was The American Poultry Book, published in 1843. You can find that historic book and over 1,000 others at the Leonora Hering Memorial Poultry Collection on the campus of Kansas State University.

You don’t have to be a student to access this special collection. Anyone can use the books for research 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday. People come from around the world to read these books, which cover more than U.S. poultry. The collection includes an original copy of Aldrovandi's work on ornithology (this link is to a German site, but it has scanned pages of the original books) published in the early 17^th century in Latin. One volume focuses on poultry. If your Latin is a little rusty, you can read the English translations in the collection.

The library would like to add to the collection, as the donor, Lenora Hering, stopped collecting in the 1980s. For example, if you happen to have an original 1886 copy of The Book of Hamburgs by L. Frank Baum (yep, he wrote more than the Wizard of Oz) the library would gladly accept it.

To find out what’s available before making the trip, search the online catalog. If you’re looking for something special, Roger Adams, the librarian, can help you find it.

Photo by Troy Griepentrog

Just one month ago, in Settling In, I wrote about the pathetically poor dirt masquerading as soil in my new raised garden beds. In fact, I said at the end of that blog post, “Hopefully, the next photo of the garden will include lush veggie foliage — we’ll see!!”

Well, just look at the garden now! I am pleasantly surprised by how everything has flourished. The spinach, lettuce and arugula are not as robust as they could be, but we have eaten a number of fine, tender salads. As of yesterday’s 90-degree-Fahrenheit-plus temperature, the spinach has bolted, but I think I’ll still be able to harvest some lettuce for this evening’s supper.

The tomato plants are shoulder height and there are about five bitty green tomatoes on the six plants. The pepper plants, though not very tall, have already produced an eight-inch roasting pepper. It is so hard to wait for it to turn red and sweet. The pole green beans have shot up over the top of the chicken-wire trellis and attached themselves to the neighboring chain link fence. Isn’t it amazing how vining plants seem to “see” the nearest structure to climb? I can’t wait to see what’s under the clay and straw covering the potatoes. The plants, in their one-foot-high beds are up to my thigh in height and already are blooming. So far, the only failure is the leeks. I think a couple of seeds sprouted, but they are now hiding in the wheat that is covering all of the beds.

Wheat!? Am I growing wheat in my backyard raised beds? Well, no — at least not on purpose. For 20 years, I’ve used straw as mulch in each spring’s garden — holding in the moisture and helping the soil to stay soft. But this year’s bale of wheat straw contained a whole lot of wheat kernels still in the straw. I didn’t realize this until one morning after a couple of days of rain: There was a fine fuzz of green everywhere, in all four beds. When I tried to pull the little grasses, the top came loose from the base, leaving the root structure intact. Shucks! So, now that the wheat is taller and tougher, I just grab a handful of wheat and straw and yank it out of the soil, leaving the uprooted plants right where they are to act as additional mulch.

This has been such a satisfying gardening month. In July, I hope to have an even more exciting growing and harvesting report.

Photos by Heidi Hunt

A few weekends ago, I found myself at the equivalent of a livestock tailgate party. I was in the thick of the Schaghticoke Poultry Swap — a shindig that happens every spring. It's quite an event. What started as a small gathering to trade and sell chickens has evolved over the years into a parking lot festival of sales and bartering. Since the swap’s inception, the stock has expanded well beyond chickens. This year, there were ducks, geese, quails, rabbits, lambs, kids and more (I swear I walked past a box of puppies). And while it wasn't on the roster — had someone walked through the fairgrounds parking lot with a horse — I wouldn't have blinked an eye.

I was there with a short list. I needed some new laying hens to replace birds that passed away over the winter, nothing drastic. But I was also there hoping to find a very specific animal. I wanted to drive home with a young goat kid, hopefully a spunky buckling. I had been researching pack goats (goats trained to help carry gear on hiking trips via panniers or saddlebags), and if the stars aligned I planned to take home my own backcountry prodigy that same day.

The circumstances had to be perfect though. I wanted an Alpine, a breed known for its trail-hardiness and loyalty. I also wanted an animal that could be bottle-fed and hand-raised, learning from its earliest stages to follow and depend on me. (A job I thought would be endearing and simple ... not a strict regime of mixing milk replacer at 4:45 a.m. But you pay as you go in this world. And I had plenty of time to learn how much would be involved in my first goat.) Consequences were not on my mind. I was about to buy a goat.  

When I arrived at the goat pen, I melted. I watched the dozen kids and lambs romp in the back of the truck and then leap out into their grass-lined pen. You haven't seen adorable ’til you've seen a pile of two-week-old goats trying to decide who gets to drive the truck home. They butted and leaped, ran circles and bleated up at the sky. They pretty much terrorized the tepid lambs and loved every second of it. I was one of dozens of people hanging around the pen, laughing and smiling, but unlike most gawking at the show, I was shopping.

"Do you have any bucks?" I shouted across the pen to someone with a clipboard, trying to sound like I knew what the hell I was talking about, "I'm looking for a buckling I can raise for draft work?" They didn't point and laugh at me. My confidence grew.

"Just that one!" The man in charge pointed to a small brown pile of hell leaping out of the truck bed, crashing into a random siblings, and then getting up to do it again. Uh oh. Maybe this goat business was a little more than I could handle? After all, my sheep don't mosh for kicks. But it was too late. He noticed a sucker in the crowd, shook his big floppy ears, and looked up at me with his childish brown eyes. This guy was going home. Might as well clear off the front seat of the car.  

I paid the enabler and quickly found out my new adoptee was half Alpine and half Toggenburg. Two breeds known for their mountain savvy. He was mostly brown with white stripes across his face and along his underbelly. I carried him over my shoulder like a toddler. As we made our way back to the car, I heard more than one person say, "Well isn't he cute? Better her than me!" My confidence waned.

I drove back to Cold Antler with new laying hens in the back of the station wagon and a new kid curled up in the front passenger seat. I could not get over how calm and small he was in the car. He slept like a lamb on valium the entire ride. Goats, huh? What could be easier? I named him Finn.

As it turned out, many things are easier. Most things are easier, actually. Since Finn's came to my farm, he's been a delight, but he's also been a nonstop source of trouble and trickiness. There have been the highs of feeding a suckling darling in my lap on the cabin porch during a soft morning rain — and the lows of screaming at him to get out of the lettuce patch when he broke into the garden (several times). Guess what? Goats can learn to climb chain-link fencing. Over the past few weeks, this kid has gnawed on my last nerve, and yet still managed to brighten my worst days. It's hard not to laugh when you watch a young buck jump and twist in the air or headbutt a rooster. The highs are high.

I'm lucky to have a job that lets its employees bring pets to the office. So, while Finn was being bottle-fed we'd show up at the grind together. He'd wait in the car in a big dog crate until lunch and then run around the company lawn, picking play fights with Labradors or doing some landscaping around the building while we ate out on the picnic tables. Welcome to Vermont, where everyday is bring-your-kid-to-work day.

My hope is that Finn's pack training will be the ambassador I need to discover the great outdoors again. Before I had a farm, you couldn't keep me out of hiking trails and National parks. Now, if enough free time from the homestead reveals itself, I'm too whipped to hike. Free time is currently spent in hammocks or playing the banjo on the porch — never on the trail. But that's all going to change, and soon. As summer rolls in, the garden is planted, and all the young animals are maturing, you'll find me out in those Green Mountains from time to time. A girl and her goat, paying as they go.

P.S. If you want to keep track of Finn, stop in anytime at http://coldantlerfarm.blogspot.com

Photo by Tim Bronson

Five chicks (from the Community Chickens project) hatched late (on a Saturday). They needed a little extra attention, and my wife Sue and I had them in a homemade brooder. The following Tuesday, we noticed that one of our hens didn’t roost at night, but stayed on the nest. That’s a good sign the hen was broody, or “clucking,” as my family used to say.

My mind started to race: What kind of eggs could we give that old cluck hen to hatch?

But Sue had a better idea: Let’s see if the broody hen would foster the five chicks we had in the brooder. I had recently read about Gwen Roland using a broody hen to raise some broiler chickens (Raising Chickens for Meat: Do-it-yourself Pastured Poultry).

On Wednesday morning while it was still dark outside, I moved the broody hen to a secluded box to see if she’d continue to cluck. I left two eggs for her, and she was setting tightly — fluffing up to look intimidating when I’d check on her. By Friday night, I was satisfied that she was committed to the project.

Saturday morning (so I’d have more time to watch the results), I took the chicks from the brooder box — again before sunrise — and tucked them under the old cluck hen’s wings. Although they’d been under a heat lamp for a week, they seemed to sense the hen’s warmth and nestled right in.

The broody hen immediately gathered the chicks, keeping them under her wings. She seemed a little confused by their activity throughout the day and didn’t really want to get off the eggs. In the evening, I removed the eggs. (There were three eggs. She must have laid one more the day I moved her to seclusion.)

Sunday afternoon, I moved the hen and chicks to a small portable coop. The chicks are doing well with their foster mother, and we’re happy to have one less brooder to box to manage during this busy summer.

Photo by Troy Griepentrog

Robert Plamondon’s newsletter is fun to read and packed with great information on raising poultry, gardening and farming. He’s recently purchased a two-wheeled (walk-behind) tractor. Here’s a little bit of what he has to say about it.

We've acquired a new toy, a BCS walk-behind tractor, with a rototiller and sickle-bar mower attachment. It basically looks like a big rototiller, but with a tiller that comes off and other attachments that go on. It has many spiffy features, including a hand lever that, when you squeeze it, throws it instantly into reverse, allowing you to back out of trouble just as easily as you plunged into it. The sickle-bar mower is my new favorite implement, since it allows me to mow an electric fenceline very easily, and without any risk of getting stuck.

If you don’t have the space to maneuver a full-sized tractor, or don’t have the budget to buy one, a walk-behind tractor might make sense. Do you have experience using two-wheeled garden tractors? How does it compare to using a four-wheeled tractor? Tell us about it in the comments section below.

Robert Plamondon is an expert in pastured poultry production. In addition to publishing books he’s written, he also republishes out-of-print books. Here's a sample of what he offers:

Fresh-Air Poultry Houses by Prince T. Woods, M.D.
Success With Baby Chicks by Robert Plamondon
The Dollar Hen by Milo M. Hastings
Feeding Poultry by G. F. Heuser

As I mentioned in Which Poultry Hatching Eggs are in Which Incubator?, I had been incubating duck eggs (20 Golden 300 Hybrid eggs) in a Brinsea Octagon 20 Eco poultry incubator. In my old Styrofoam incubator, I had another 20 Golden 300 eggs and 12 Pekin duck hatching eggs. I’ve been using my old incubator for 12 years and wanted to see how the Octagon compared. Which would be the best incubator?

The Octagon 20 won the competition easily: 18 of the 20 eggs hatched! A 90 percent hatch rate is absolutely remarkable. It’s also amazing that all of the eggs were fertile — the parent flock must have been managed nearly perfectly.

I’ve never been so successful hatching duck eggs or any other eggs. We may have had a 95 percent hatch if I hadn’t cracked one egg slightly when returning it to the incubator after candling it.

Of the 32 eggs in my Styrofoam incubator, I removed seven eggs during candling. They were either clear or had a blood ring in them, which means the embryo started to develop and died. One of the Golden 300 eggs from this group was clear, so I assume it was infertile. One duckling died during hatching, and five eggs didn’t hatch at all. That’s about a 60 percent hatch rate overall — about what I’d normally expect from this incubator using eggs received in the mail.

Both incubators were in my basement, where the temperature and humidity were consistent. But the temperature in the old incubator fluctuated about 6 degrees at various times, and because I don’t have an automatic turner in it, I only turned the eggs once each day. The automatic turner on the Octagon turned the eggs every hour.

Keeping the temperature consistent and turning the eggs frequently seem to have made a huge difference. If you’re thinking about buying a small incubator, I recommend the Brinsea Octagon 20. I’m thoroughly impressed by it.

Duckling photo: Matthew T. Stallbaumer

Incubator photo: Courtesy Brinsea

President Abraham Lincoln signed into law the Homestead Act of 1862, opening up 270 million acres of public domain land for settlers to “prove up.” A filing fee of $10 and a $2 commission to the land agent were the only fees necessary to file a claim on 160 acres of homestead land. Settlers then had five years to build a home and farm on the land before they could receive a patent for the land.

Between 1871 and 1950, more than 1,465,346 people received a final patent on their homestead land. The Homestead Act was repealed in the lower 48 states in 1976 and in Alaska in 1986. You can learn more about the Homestead Act and the pioneers who settled the land at the Homestead National Monument of America just outside of Beatrice, Neb. Their website reports, “On March 19, 1936, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the law and Homestead National Monument of America ‘as an appropriate monument to retain for posterity a proper memorial emblematical of the hardships and the pioneer life through which the early settlers passed in the settlement, cultivation and civilization of the Great West.'"

Do you have ancestors who filed a claim or received a patent on their homestead land? If so, share your family story in the comments below.

PHOTO BY TROY GRIEPENTROG

A few weeks ago, I wrote about a broody hen and my concerns about the eggs hatching, Hatching Eggs: Broody Chickens and Duck Eggs on the Way. It’s very unusual for chicken eggs to hatch so late, but on the 23rd day of incubation, three eggs hatched. One chick was a runt and died a few days later, but the other two chicks are doing well.

The hen has been doing a great job taking care of the baby chicks: showing them what to eat, protecting them and keeping them warm. I love the clucking sound she makes to call them to food. I guess that’s the reason people sometimes call broodies “clucks.”

Lots of things can go wrong when hatching eggs in an incubator. (Power outages spring to mind.) But it’s important to know that natural incubation methods aren’t foolproof either. Only two or three of the dozen eggs she was sitting on were not fertile, so the rest didn’t hatch for other reasons: wrong temperature, wrong humidity, nutrition of parents or something else.

As the summer approaches, hot and sticky summer days often result in a climactic thunderstorm. Though a beautiful natural event, lightning produced from these storms can have damaging, and sometimes devastating, effects on your home and your personal safety. Follow the link below to get helpful tips on how to protect your home — and yourself — from lightning.